- A new award for young writers Eureka Street is delighted to announce the inaugural Margaret Dooley Young Writers' Award
One of the distinguishing features of Eureka Street is its encouragement of reasoned ethical argument based on humane values. These arguments ideally address people who own religious belief, and those whose view of the world is secu lar. To reflect ethically on pub lic issues is a demanding discipline. The Margaret Dooley Award is offered in order to support the development of young writers who will carry on the contribution of Eureka Street in this field.
Margaret and Brendan Dooley have longstanding connections to the Jesuits and Xavier College. Margaret always appreciated the value of communication and education for young people, based on spiritual and personal values . She graduated from Sacre Coeur College in 1950, commenced nursing at St Vincent's Hospital and, with Brendan, raised four children. Margaret died in 2004. The Dooley family are pleased to support this initiative.
The annual award of $2000 is open to any writer, previously published or unpublished, under the age of 40. Entrants must subm it two previously unpub li shed articles that offer: ethical reflection directed to a non-specialist audience on any serious topic, appeal to humane values, such as those that are found within, but are not exclusive to, the best of the Christian tradition, clear argument and elegant expression, and a generosity and courtesy of spirit animating forceful argument. One article should be of no more than 800 words. The second should be of no more than 2000 words. They may take up the same, or different, topics.
Entries are to be submitted by 5pm Friday, 29 July 2005, to: Margaret Dooley Young Writers' Award, Eureka Street, PO Box 553, Richmond VIC 3121.
The award will be made only if the judges believe that the best entry is of sufficient quality. The winner will be published in the September issue of Eureka Street. For more information and an app li cation form plea se go to www.eurekastreet.com.au
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Results published in the Australian, Saturday 17 July. Permit No. 10249/05 EUREKA STREET <)> O:s; ' > I<;;() EUREKA STREE z> cc::! :s: ~ ~ 0 ;; :::5>0 ,., V1~ LETTERS 30 An acti vist fo r the fa ithful Y'"' -i 5 fenny Close, Marianne Cannon , Beth Bruce Duncan remembers the late I Flenley and Gavan Breen Tom Butler, the influential editor of )> the Catholic Worl< er. "'-i "')> 32 Human tra ffic z COLUMNS 0 Many Thai women come to Austra lia -i I 7 Summa theologiae on the promise of a well paid job, but end m 0 Andrew Hamilton Flock and key up working in brothels, writes Georgina 5 Costello. () 8 Archimedes -< Tim Thwaites Positive influences 10 By th e way IN PRINT Brian Matthews Boxed in 34 In a minor key 11 Ca pital letter Lul T m STORY a> COJ Adelaide Festiva l C1l. C1l.05 -1>. C1l. 05 www.adelaidefestivalofi deas. com. au • SouthAustralian Gove 4 EU REKA STR EET JUN E 2005 Held in balance Unbeatable odds I enjoyed reading Andrew Hamilton's Thank you, Steven Churches, for your _letters ~ thoughtful reflection on Marion Mad very telling article, 'Selective evidence', dox's God under Howard: The Rise of the in the April edition of Eurelw Street Religious Right in Australian Politics in which detailed some of the complexi Sleepless nights Eureka Street (May 2005). Fr Hamilton ties in establishing the genuineness of has been very even-handed in his response the Bakhtiyari family's claims for refu I am tempted to ask you not to publish any and has looked at the other side of the coin gee status. more articles on the Australian govern with an equally critical approach. I espe Those supporting long-term detainees ment's treatment of asylum seekers. I read cially appreciated the picture he drew of still in Baxter know all too well the flaws them, and that night I lie awake for hours the atheism/idolatry continuum. I can see of the determination process. seething with anger and contempt. The other relevant continuums here: certainty The limited English of most asylum article by Steven Churches (April 2005) and pluralism; traditional and radical; seekers, and the inquisitorial approach was no exception. spiritual and worldly. often adopted by interviewers, make it The following motion was passed The fact is that all of us are somewhere difficult for clear, accurate information unanimously at the business meeting of between the extreme ends of these continu to be elicited. the International Association of Forensic ums, and during life our position changes. Fear for the safety of their families Linguists, held on 12 July 2003 at the Uni It is helpful to see it like this because then and fear of authorities means that the versity of Sydney: there is a relationship between both sides, full facts of a case are often not told at This conference notes that the Australian and not mutual exclusion. If so, there is no a first or even second interview, leading government is currently engaging several need to demonise those who belong to one to seeming 'inconsistencies' which then European companies to provide 'language side or the other. In politics, as in religion, cast doubts on credibility. analysis' in the determination of the the trick is to live somewhere towards the Information supplied by human nationality of refugee claimants. centre where there is a balance of both rights groups and Australian govern extremes. The trouble is that we never ment departments is often at variance, A preliminary examination of this proc know where the balance is, because it while the fact that interviewers and ess by a group of five Australian linguists is dynamic rather than static. members of the Refugee Review Tribu has raised serious concerns about the Jenny Close nal are all employed by DIMIA does not underlying assumptions as well as the via email foster a process that is objective, inde methods being used in this so-called 'lan pendent or transparent. guage analysis'. What is of serious concern is that decisions made in this process are A voice from within Delegates at the conference of the Interna binding. tional Association of Forensic Linguists We can now consider the late Pontiff's As Dr Churches points out, sub unanimously reject this so-called 'lan repression of women. Scores, and I suspect sequent court proceedings cannot re guage analysis' as unprofessional and millions, of women raised in the Catholic examine the merits of the facts of a case, unreliable. We call on the Australian gov faith have just drifted away from it for this but are restricted only to establishing if ernment to refrain from using thi proc reason. We don't speak out on the subject, due legal process has been followed. ess, unless and until its reliability has but try to embrace Christian values, and When all legal avenues have been been independently established. let the church numbers dwindle until exhausted, the only recourse open to its leadership realises it must change or 'failed asylum seekers' is to appeal to the The report 'Linguistic identification become entirely obsolete. Alternatively we minister to use her discretion and allow in the determination of nationality: a occupy the pews of churches whose pastors the detainee the right to have their case preliminary report' is by Diana Eades, are reprimanded by the Vatican for minor reviewed or to be granted a humanitar Helen Fraser, Jeff Siegel, Tim McNamara breaches of protocol. Like the fathers of ian visa. and Brett Baker, February 2003. It is avail other rigid authoritarian families, the late Since the recently announced able at www.iafl.org. The text of the above pontiff was much kinder to those outside Removals Pending Bridging Visa resolution is at the a me address. his flock than to many members within. It requires detainees to relinquish these Gavan Breen is ironic to think that those in the devel rights and to agree to return home Alice Springs, NT oping world must endure the shroud we when asked, it is unlikely to find many shrugged off decades ago. The Vatican must takers. Eureka Street welcomes lett er fro m our readers. remember that Jesus was a poor, tolerant It is indeed a 'no-hope' visa, as Short letters are more likely to be published, and all political prisoner who upset the authori Bob Brown, leader of the Greens, has letters may be edited. Letters must be signed, and ties and was outcast for empowering the described it. In such a system hope is a should include a contact phone number and the vulnerable. hard quality to sustain. writer's name and address. Dr Marianne Cannon Beth Flenley Send to: eurcka@ jespub.jes uit.org.a u or Ashgrove, QLD Daw Park, SA PO Box 553, Ri chmond VI C 3121 JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 5 judgment in the Fairfax press that the con closed the circle opened in 1955. But Cain ference was to be an exercise in 'denial' also spoke with an eye to the present. An about Evatt's 'predominant role in this outspoken critic of the scourge of faction Labor disaster'.) If Evatt had been the cul alism, he warned that the contemporary prit, then, according to Scully, the ALP party exhibited symptoms of the pathology had been the victim. Labor, he lamented, that afflicted the party in the 1950s and had 'never recovered'-the sloughing off of 1960s: one mob wanting exclusive control its Catholic right wing left it susceptible rather than sharing power. to hijacking by middle-class progressives. Some of the conference's best moments Corcoran, on the other hand, was adamant were unrehearsed: Barry Jones in full that the blame rested with Santamaria and flight on the visit of British Labour Leader his disciples, who had deployed the Catho Clement Attlee to Australia in September The Labor split lic faithful as a Trojan horse in a sinister 1954 as one of the unrecognised ignition I y THE H EA LI NG BEGINS attempt to capture the ALP. They had to points for the Split, and former communist be confronted. Bernie Taft reminiscing about his unlikely OU'RE A FANATIC.' 'You're not While the chasm between Scully and rapprochement with Santamaria in the a Labor man.' 'Rat' ' So the interjections Corcoran could not be straddled, the fol latter's twilight years. Particularly memo rang out with intensifying ferocity late lowing two days of the conference brought rable was the contribution in the final ple on the evening of 19 April 1955 as F.R. a genuine dialogue on the causes and lega nary session by the son (and namesake) of (Frank) Scully, MLA for Richmond and cies of the Split. The participants were a the late Bill Barry, who in April 1955 had until three weeks earlier a member of diverse lot, ranging from veterans of the led the breakaways across the parliamen John Cain's Labor ministry, addressed the conflict and their descendants, Labor Party tary floor. In one of the last acts in that Victorian Legislative Assembly in support elder statesmen, headed by national presi drama, Labor MP Bob Pcttiona, a former of a no-confidence motion in the Cain dent Barry Jones, former Victorian Premier friend of Barry's, showered him with 30 Government. At 4.30am the following John Cain jnr and former ALP Senate silver threepences (the coins are on dis morning, Scully and his fellow Labor ren leader and minister in the Hawke and play outside the Parliamentary Library), egades voted with the Opposition parties Keating governments John Button, trade hissing, 'There you are, you ... Judas.' to seal the Cain Government's fate. Thus union stalwarts, current representatives With an intensity born out of long-nursed the Labor split of 1955 reached its point of of the National Civic Council and Demo grievance, Barry jnr spoke emotionally of no return; federally, it would be 17 years cratic Labor Party, as well as historians and the injustice done to his father and late before the ALP regained office, while in political sci entists from across Australia. mother Mary, who had also been expelled Victoria, the eye of the storm, the penance The opinions expressed were equally during the purge of April 1955. To listen to lasted a generation. catholic, with the discussion roaming over him was to rea lise how deep had been the Last month, on the 50th anniversary of topics including the role of personalities in wound of being cast from the Labor tribe. that momentous debate, Scully, a sprightly the Split, particularly Evatt, Santamaria, Closure had been a theme of the con 85-year-old, returned to its scene to launch Frank Hardy, Archbishop Daniel Mannix ference's last session: when, if ever, did the the Great Labor Split: Fifty Years Later con and Trades Hall Secretary Vic Stout; the Split end? Like the other topics dealt with, ference. This time there were no insults, distinctive patterns that the Split took (or there was no consensus, no easy answers. but a hushed silence from the hundred didn't take) in different states; religiosity Yet the spontaneous applause accorded to plus registrants who were acutely aware of and the Split; the Liberal Party's response Barry left one feeling that the conference a moment rich in historical resonance. To to the Split; and retrospective assessments had been another small step towards a add piquancy to the occasion, sharing the of the DLP. healing of sorts. launch duties was another octogenarian There were highlights aplenty; among - Paul Strangio and Split survivor, Robert Corcoran. In the them a premiere documentary screen 1950s, Corcoran had been one of the earli ing by Griffith University filmmaker est whistleblowers on B.A. Santamaria's Pat Laughren, featuring interviews with clandestine anti-communist organisation, many of the key Split protagonists (some The duel within the Catholic Social Studies Movement ('the now deceased, such as Santamaria and Jim ENDGRING BULLFIGHTING SEASON Movement'). This culminated in a decisive Cairns) and archival footage; a talk by Rob appearance by Corcoran before the federal ert Murray on his writing of the landmark executive inquiry into the Victorian ALP study The Split: Labor in the Fifties; and FROM N OVEMBER TO FEBRUARY, I can that followed Labor leader Doc Evatt's John Cain's passionate address in launch pretend that bullfighting doesn't exist. 'hydrogen bomb' statement of 5 October ing the companion book to the conference. From February to April, it begins to 1954 outing the Movement. If Scully's appearance had been powerfully appear on the periphery of my conscious Old warriors, neither man flinched in symbolic, by no means less so was Cain's ness in the same way that an AFL football asserting that his cause had been true. son of the premier whose government had pre-season always filled me with feelings Scully's shorthand version of the Split been destroyed by the Split, a reformer of of impending gloom. But come April and fingered Evatt as the chief wrecker. (So the Victorian ALP in the 1960s, and Labor the months that follow, I can no longer much for Gerard Henderson's precipitant leader whose election as premier in 1982 ignore it, particularly in Madrid, where 6 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 a festival dedicated to the city's patron saint-San Isidro-marks the pinnacle of a bullfighting season that lasts until November offers some respite. And yet, my discomfort is not what I would like it to be. My problem is the uncomfortable feeling that I cannot entirely condemn Spain's most infamous Flock and key national tradition. Morally, it is easy. Bullfighting is a cruel blood sport, a primitive orgy of death that appears to have no place in modern UNDeRSTAND THEOLOGY, you need to ottend not only to the rune, but to Europe. A Plaza de Taros- the beautiful L the key it is played in. I was reminded of this by responses to Benedict XVI's inau arena where bullfights are held-resem gural sermon at his enthronement. He quoted John's Gospel in speaking of Chris bles the amphitheatres of Rome, filled tian unity: 'I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must lead them too, and with spectators baying for the blood of they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd' (Jn 10:16). Some a frightened wild animal which faces certain death. A British friend and long observers took him to mean that other churches should return to unity with Rome time resident of Spain cannot abide bull under the Pope, instead of journeying together towards an unforeseeable unity. fighting and likens it to bear-baiting and It was natural to draw this conclusion. This quotation from John's Gospel other brutal pursuits where animals are was long played in Barrister's Key. It was sawed to size and hammered together sacrificed for the entertainment of man. I with other texts about Peter, to argue against Protestants that Peter is Christ's cannot argue with him. vice-regent and that the Catholic Church is the one true Church. Documents And yet, there is something, in the from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by Cardinal words of the bullfighting aficionado oth Ratzinger, are also often composed in Barrister's Key, using texts to build a case. erwise known as Ernest Hemingway, In his serm on, Pope Benedict explored the symbols entrusted to the Pope 'elegantly archaic' about the whole spec in the ceremony: the pallium-a woollen piece of cloth-and the ring. He asso tacle. It is the drama of a man dressed in ciated the pallium with the image of the shepherd, and the ring with the image a traje de luces (suit of lights) pitting him of the fisherm an. In the Gospel reading used at the ceremony, these two images self against a SOOkg animal that is revered are tied to Peter. After he had taken an amazing catch of fish, Jesus invited him by spectators. It is the strutting interac to feed his sheep. tion between a man with a red cape eager In his sermon, the Pope refers to many scriptural texts. He does not use to choreograph his own survival with a them to make a case, but plays freely with them, allowing them to generate new statuesque grace and theatrical purity of images. The shepherd, variously identified with Christ, the bishops, Peter and line and a crowd of highly knowledgeable the Pope, evokes the sheep, who are the lost sheep of humanity, Christians gen and sceptical spectators. It is the vividness erally, and Christ, the sacrificial lamb. The lost sheep in turn evoke the desert, of death, the compelling sense of absurd the place where humanity is lost. The images of fisherman, fish, and the sea tragedy, the duel within me between being from which fish are paradoxically rescued, are similarly fluid and generative. unable to watch and unable not to. This is theology played in Poet's Key. Heard in this key, Pope Benedict's I have never been entirely convinced reference to the one flock and one shepherd does not of itself m ake an intran by the moral relativism of Heming sigent papal claim. Images of the one flock and of the fishing net that remains way's defence of bullfighting, whereby unbroken naturally generate images of church unity, and have done so since he argues that, 'I know only that what the second century. The association is natural, and the interpretation of the is moral is what you feel good after and text is fluid. In this key, texts do not define meanings; they open possibilities. what is immoral is what you feel bad The journey to unity is open. after and judged by these moral stand ards, which I do not defend, the bullfight The challenge to any theology played in Poet's Key is to find some firm struc is very moral to me because I feel very ture in the soup of images. In Catholic theology, the shaping principle of theology fine while it is going on and have a feel is the life of the Church, which involves a complex set of relationships between ing of life and death and mortality and prayer, liturgy, teaching and history. In life, nothing is lost. So the Pope's play of immortality, and after it is over I feel very images echoes interpretations of these images over 20 centuries. Nothing is for sad but very fine.' gotten, not even the papalist interpretation of the passage. But each interpretation Even he acknowledges that 'from a is like a facet on a prism that combines with others to generate new perspectives. modern, moral point of view, that is a A theology that attends to images is always wild. Augustine, on whom Christian point of view, the whole bull the young Ratzinger went to theological school, believed that scriptural texts fight is indefensible; there is certainly trail interpretations like baited hooks, each waiting for its reader. He knew much cruelty, there is always danger, that neither texts, nor fish, nor people swim in straight lines. • either sought or unlooked for, and there is always death.' Andrew Hamilton SJ is the publisher of Eureka Street. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 7 Where I can concur with bullfight ing's most passionate and eloquent defender of the indefensible is his asser archimedes tion that 'it is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be pro duced by a man, an animal and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick'. Indeed, Positive influences it is true that never has death been more picturesque and so sordid at one and the same time. Spanish writers have proven to be of little help in my quest to resolve my dis comfort. I eagerly agree with Pio Baroja, H ow oo ''"'"' mnm when to "OP cl•pping 'ft" ' pedmm,ned Why who denounced the practice of fighting was the mobile phone adopted quickly and universally after its emergence? Why bulls as brutal and cowardly, even as did the birth rate in Europe suddenly plummet in the late 20th century? I nod with conviction at the words of The common element is an environment where people are susceptible to the Ruben Dario: 'The spectacle is sumptu influence of others. According to a recent report in the international science news ous, there is no denying it ... the vast weekly New Scientist, two French physicists- Quentin Michard, of the School of circus in which work those jugglers of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris, and Jean-Philippe Bouchard, of the death ... gives off a Roman courage and a French Atomic Energy Commission-who were seeking a model for such imita Byzantine grace.' tive behaviour found what they were looking for close to hom e. The progress of Federico Lorca, the sublime Spanish fads and fashions-in thought, opinion or consumer behaviour-can be described poet who was murdered by the soldiers by one of the laws of magnetism. of the dictator Francisco Franco, spoke It makes sense, when you think about it. Magnetism depends on the behaviour of 'a religious m ys tery .. . the public and of individual atoms. It occurs when atom s align the direction of their spin. An solemn enactment of the victory of virtue overall applied magnetic field-from another magnet or an electric coil-coerces over the lower interests ... the superiority the spin of individual atoms in magnetic material to point in a particular direction, of spirit over matter, of intelligence over but the atoms are also influenced by their neighbours. In other words, the more instinct, of the smiling hero over the froth atoms pointing in one direction, the greater the push for the others to go along. ing monster'. Antonio Machado described Now, if you substitute people for atoms, and behaviour for spin, you have a it as 'a sacrifice to an unknown god'. description of imitative behaviour. When Michard and Bouchard checked the pre But none of these can justify a prac dictions of this model against what happened with mobile phones, birth rates and tice that leads to the deaths of 40,000 clapping, they fou nd these behaviours conformed to the m athematical pattern bulls in Spain every year, leaving me established by the law of magnetism. Their model suggests that the rate of change akin to Montoya, a character in Hem of behaviour accelerates in a mathematically predictable way, and that the speed ingway's The Sun Also Rises: 'He always with which an opinion or technology is adopted depends on how strongly people smiled as though bullfighting were a influence each other. very special secret between the two of It started Archimedes thinking about other imitative behaviours-particu us; a rather shocking but very deep secret larly those relating to seemingly intractable problems, such as dealing with that we knew about. He always smiled as climate change and promoting ecologically su stainable lifestyles, or resolving though there were something lewd about conflicts such as the turmoil in the Middle East. the secret to outsiders, but that it was If Michard and Bouchard are right, their model supports the idea that small, something that we understood. It would but significant, public acts of responsibility can be highly influential. Just as the not do to expose it to people who would dying away of applause at a concert begins with a few people deciding enough is not understand.' enough, so the revolution demanded by climate change needs more people to take But it was Henry Jam es who truly small decisions which can influence their neighbours. spoke to my ambivalence, understanding No one seriously thinks ratifying the Kyoto Agreement will solve the prob it without ever resolving it: 'The national lem of greenhouse emissions. But it can influence people in making sm all, but pastime of Spain is extremely disgusting. important, personal decisions. In fa ct, the work of the French physicists actually One has taken a certain sort of pleasure affirm s that time-worn environmental slogan: Think Global, Act Local. in the bullfight, and yet how is one to As Daniel Lubetzky, at the Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures, admirably state gracefully that one has taken pleas illustrated, such thinking may even work to soothe the world's flashpoints. ure in a disgusting thing, an unusu al OneVoice, his project supporting the expression of moderates on both sides of the splendour? A bullfight w ill, to a certain Israeli-Palestinian divide, contributed to the election of a moderate as political extent, bear looking at, but it will not leader of the Palestinians, thus helping to ease tensions. bear thinking of. ' In the meantime, I long for November. Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. - Anthony Ham 8 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 against versions of liberation theology. The doctrine is 'an integral part of her evange Future justice point that was at times overlooked in the lising ministry'. None of the great social ensuing controversy and anti-communist issues 'is foreign to evangelisation'. The THE CHALLENGE FOR BENEDI CT media frenzy was that his documents were social doctrine 'is not a marginal interest also highly critical of injustice and oppres or activity, or one that is tacked on to the M ANY PEOPLE were disappointed sion in Latin America. Church's mission, rather it is at the very that the cardinals did not choose a pope Cardinal Ratzinger was no friend of heart of the Church's ministry of service'. from the Third World to highlight the des the often rapacious and cruel practices Quoting John Paul II, the Compen perate plight of its impoverished peoples. of capitalism as it existed in many Third dium declared: 'At the beginning of the Cardinal Ratzinger had not previously World countries. His In struction on Cer New Millennium, the poverty of billions attended extensively to global social prob tain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation of men and women is "the one issue that lems as he was engaged with more theo in 1984 insisted that the Gospel 'is a mes most challenges our human and Christian logical writing and teaching. sage of freedom and a force for liberation'. consciences".' However, he had been involved in some 'In itself, the expression "theology of lib With more than 70 per cent of Catho social controversies, notably on the war eration" is a thoroughly valid term' (III:4), lics living in developing countries, Pope in Iraq, and during the liberation theol and the document did not hesitate to call Benedict must highlight the social justice ogy debates on problems of hunger and Christ 'our Liberator'. It urged: 'More than agenda. Watch carefully then to see how poverty. He presumably played a key role ever, it is important that numerous Chris he can draw on the vast expertise avail when his Congregation for the Doctrine tians ... become involved in the struggle able to him to help mobilise world opinion of the Faith reviewed the Compendium of for justice, freedom and human dignity.' to tackle problems of war, poverty, hunger the Social Doctrine of the Church, drafted The second document, Instruction on and injustice. by the Pontifical Commission for Justice Christian Freedom and Liberation (1986), - Bruce Duncan and Peace and released late in 2004. wished to 'set in motion ambitious pro With Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratz grams aimed at the socio-economic libera This month's contributors: Paul Strangio inger strongly opposed the US invasion tion of millions of men and women caught was a co-organiser of the Great Labor of Iraq as morally unjustified. He was in an intolerable situation of economic, Split: Fifty Years Later and co-editor also disconcerted by leading US neocon social and political oppression'. It called of The Great Labor Schism: A Retrospec servatives, especially George Weigel and again on richer countries to help poorer tive, Scribe, 2005; Anthony Ham is Eurel JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 9 Boxed 1n• INA WE UB 10 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 capital Selling the silver letter T E LARGESSE JU E 2005 EUREKA STREET 11 north afri( <1 Anthony H am The story of an unknown Libyan For many years a pariah, the nation run by Colonel Mu'ammar Gaddafi has suddenly become the darling of the West F,w couNnm HAve unde 12 EUREKA STRE ET JUNE 2005 'From the 1980s, the life was very difficult. From then, But now all the world comes to me. I am lucky because I travel the country was closed. We were enemies with Tunisia, with to all the countries- America, Japan, Italy, England-but I stay Egypt, we were at war with Chad. From Europe we were closed. in my country.' There was nowhere we could go and no one could come. Libya Such is the rate of change in Libya that the newfound was like a prison.' optimism is also regarded with caution, a desire that economic For Mohammed, mixed with the bitterness of such memo development and international rehabilitation don't come at the ries, however, is an unmistakable pride in the fact that Libyans cost of traditional values. learned a new self-sufficiency and discovered the deep roots of 'We are Libyan and we have our way of life. Yes, we all want community that sustained them through the dark years and a comfortable life. We want our country to be clean, to be devel which may otherwise have been lost: 'In Libya, if we wanted to oped and everything to make life comfortable. But I am Libyan fix a car, we learned to do it ourselves with whatever we had. If and I want to still eat we needed to build a house, we called everyone in the family like a Libyan on the together and we built it ourselves. We didn't ask anyone for help floor from the commu and everything we built we can look at and say, "We did this."' nal plate, to dress like a It is clear that Libyans like Mohammed also developed an Libyan, to be able to go to eye for opportunity. my friend's house after I 'As the embargo went on, we found out that you could get don't see him for a long many things from Tunisia and Egypt, but no one knew where time and arrive without to find them. We found out and set up a business, selling these ringing first to see if it is things to people.' OK. You know, in Libya, His friends went on to become rich, but Mohammed decided we have a saying-if that smuggling was not his future and went to university to you have a good heart, study engineering. Although the economy was crippled, Libya's one spoon can feed 100 large oil reserves and limited international sales ensured that people. If a friend arrives some infrastructure projects continued. The most grandiose and he hasn't eaten, you and controversial-of these was Colonel Gaddafi's signature will cook something for project, the Great Man-Made River, whereby water from giant him. It is more impor natural aquifers underneath the Sahara Desert was-and still tant to see him than to is-pumped across the desert to Libya's coastal cities. worry whether you were But like his country, which has changed its identity expecting him. But if numerous times-turning to other Arab states for support, we change too much, taking on the leadership of African unity and now transform we lose this, we lose ing itself into a friend of the West-Mohammed would change our roots-' his career path yet again. As in most conver- As a result of Libya's decision to hand over its agents for trial, sations in Libya, the fig- Libya n leader Mu'ammar Gaddafi. compensate the families of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster, ure of Colonel Gaddafi AAP/ EPA/ Eri c Gai llard assist Europe in fighting illegal immigration from African shores appears like a guest and, most stunningly, renounce its nuclear and chemical weap whom no-one quite knows how to treat. Mohammed is sanguine ons program, Libya is suddenly the darling of the West. Western when asked about whether the Leader of the Revolution has been businesspeople are flocking to the country eager for a slice good for Libya and, like most Libyans, Mohammed has a grudg of lucrative oil contracts, following in the footsteps of ing respect for 'the man'. n Western leaders keen to forget Colonel Gaddafi's past. 'They always say that it is better to have the one you know than the one you don't. If we get a new leader now, I don't know, L RHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY for a country so long sealed maybe we have to go back and start again from nothing. If we from the outside world, Libya is booming as a tourist destina have professional democracy, with parties, maybe, but at least we tion. By 2010, Libya is expected to receive one million tourists know how is Gaddafi. I don't care if we have Gaddafi for another every year. 100 years. If he wants to be emperor, I don't care. As long as he Mohammed, a man accustomed to making the most of the lets us live. Before it was difficult, but Libya is exciting now, the times in which he finds himself, has secured a foothold in the life is changing. And Gaddafi, we know him. The Libyan people tourism industry and sees it as the way of the future. In one are simple people. If he lets us live-that is all we want-then we sense, this is economic. can live with Gaddafi.' 'Yes, the new times are good. My life is good, but for me, I Mohammed pauses, lost somewhere between memories of a could live anywhere or sleep anywhere. If you give me bread and bitter past and dreams of an exciting future. water I would live. You know, in Libya we have saying-if you 'I am proud of my country and there are so many opportuni have bread and water, you are OK. But is for my children that I ties here. All the world is coming. I want to help build my coun hope for the better life.' try and now is the time to be here. Libya now is not like before. Yet Libyans like Mohammed are also excited just to be able My children, God willing, can have a good life now-' • to interact with people again. 'Before I could not travel to other countries because of my Libyan passport. Now it is very expensive. Anthony Ham is a freelance writer, living in Madrid. j UNE 2005 EU REKA STR EET 13 Leslie Cannold Paternal insti net Who's the real father? Men's rights, women's quandaries and the truth about misattributed biological paternity FRAUD biologically unrelated HAS BECOME the to the child he par rallying cry of ents-are an artefact the Fathers' Rights of DNA testing and the Movement. Utilising new legal arrangements the radical feminist t hat drive and justify it. insight of the 1960s that The new world order the personal is political, in which dads have Fathers' Rights activ 'For chi ldren, been reduced to sperm ists have seized on the donors provides motives experience of a small it is a loving and consistent relation ship for both mothers and group of men, who dis with a loving male parent fathers to test-motives cover through genetic that would not exist testing that they are th at is primarily of interest, if social rather than biologically unrelated biological definitions of to the children they and in their best interest. ' fatherhood ruled. are pa renting, as a para Mothers sometimes digm through which we test in the hope that should understand the a 'negative' result will power balance between prevent their ex-part the sexes on critical ners having further issues of sexuality, reproduction, mar testing technology to match every child contact with the ch ild. They may even, riage and divorce. Denied, deceived, to its biological father's wallet, thereby according to researcher Dr Lyn Turney, humiliated, cheated and used: paternity ending what one fa mily law specialist of Swinbu rne Un iversity of Technology, 'defrauded' dads are poster-children for called the 'happy-go-lucky days' when enlist the assistance of the biological how the Fathers' Rights Movement sees Australia n men cou ld boast that they fa ther in the process, 'despite him hav men in the post-patriarchal world. T hey didn't even know how m any ch ildren ing had no previous contact or relation are the cause celebre for m en who feel they had. With power to deduct payments ship w ith t he child'. Interestingly, it was disempowered by current social and legal from m en's wages and via the tax system, this possibility that first worried men norm s and practice concernin g m arriage, the Child Support Agency also ended the when DN A paternit y testing came on divorce, sex and reproduction, and want optional nature of child-support pay the scene, with one male legal theorist to reassert control. ments by divorced dads. At the heart of proposing legal strategies and recom At the heart of the paternity fraud the Act was a radical reconfigu ra tion of m endi ng legislative reform 'to protect story are radical-though poorly under how Au stralian society defined fa ther the m arital fa ther's developed relation stood-changes to law and practice hood. With the stroke of a pen-and with ship with his child against interference governing ch ild support and access only the best interests of 'taxpa yers' in or termination through ... non-paternity arrangem ents after divorce. The 1970s mind-lawm akers had transform ed the actions'. saw a steep rise in divorce rates and num age-old definition of fa ther as the moth Fa thers also initiate DNA testing, bers of single women opting to keep their er's husband to the m an whose sperm though not always, it seems, because they children rather than adopt them out. By was implicated in conception . The only are really in doubt that they are biologi 1988 the growth in households headed by exceptions are state and fe deral laws cally related to their child. According single m others had left large nu mbers of that exempt sperm donors from the legal to Turney, estranged male spouses will children living in poverty and the govern rights and responsibilities of parenthood, sometimes demand paternity tests both m ent with a spiralling welfare bill. and allocate it instead to the husband of to insult their estranged w ives and, on the En ter the Ch ild Support (Assessment) the wom an undertaking IVF. advice of their lawyers, to delay payment of Act and the Ch ild Support Agency, whose Cases of misattributed biological child support. As one woman told Turney, role it was to use freshly minted DNA paternity-where a m an is shown to be her ex used the test to avoid having: 14 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 . . . to pay anything for the time being. According to Professor Michael Gilding, However, the small incidence of There was never any fea r in his head that of Swinburne, the data on which such paternity fraud should not lead us to com the child wasn't his. It was just that he'd generous estimates are based is tragically pletely dismiss the claims of the Fathers' been told somewhere along the line that if flawed-marred by biased sample selec Rights Movement. First, while cloaked in he put it off that way, he could stall things tion and illegitimate analytical methods. anger, the 'paternity fraud' discourse can for a while. Indeed, in some instances, according to also be read as an expression of pervasive Gilding, the numbers have simply been male anxiety about their role in women's While Fathers' Rights activists insist plucked from the air by private testing lives and in the business of forming and on assigning mendacious motives to single companies well aware that male anxiety raising families-an expression to which women who 'out' the child's biological father about female fidelity is good for business. compassion and validation would be the to the Child Support Agency-leaving him The real Australian figure, says Gilding, appropriate response. with the obligation to either disprove bio is likely to be about one per cent. A 2003 Men must also be u rged to reverse logical paternity or pay up-such women large-scale survey of 19,307 Australians their passive incorporation of the legal re have no choice. The federal government lends credibility to Gilding's estimate. inscription of fatherhood as a biological is determined to recoup as much of the It found that 95 per cent of men-and 97 relationship into their social understand money it invests in single-parent payments per cent of women-expected they would ing of it-an understanding embedded in as possible, and if a mother fails to identify remain faithful to their regular partner the 'crime' of paternity fraud. Do men, her inseminator, she'll lose her benefit. and that nearly all kept their word, with women or children really understand a Men may also initiate testing to escape only 2.1 per cent of partnered men and 0.6 father to be a sperm donor and believe that previously accepted child-support obliga per cent of women having sex with others the man who parents and loves a child is tions. Men who feel abused by the Child outside their committed relationship. not entitled to both social and legal recog Support Agency's determined pursuit of The implications of such low esti nition as the child's 'real' father? payment (it can access bank accounts and mates of misattributed paternity are vast. I think not. Women's behaviour in use the tax system to extract payments) The basis of proponents of Fathers' Rights cases of misattributed paternity clearly and the refusal of the Family Court to tie calls for changes to social attitudes and suggests that the man they hope is the support payments to access orders, see the policy surrounding marriage and divorce biological, and want to be the social, father discovery of biological non-paternity are high rates of 'paternity fraud', and of their child is their partner, not their ex, and thus the removal of fiscal obligation for their children-as a way of reasserting control over their finances. Says one man Turney interviewed: Men recognise family law settlement and ongoing child support as a sentence into financial hell, and while wanting to support their children, equally do not wish to support someone else's. DNA testing provides a mea ns of distinguish ing between real biological links and often-concealed third-party liaisons that have produced children outside the established relationship. Misattributed paternity may also be discovered by accident, via a genetic test taken for other reasons. For instance, the diagnosis of a genetic disease in a child may lead to carrier status tests on the parents and the consequent discovery of a lack of biological relationship between the child and the male parent. How are we to understand, in political Hea lth Minister Tony Abbott endures the media glare fo ll owing the announcement that he is not the father of and moral terms, the motivation various Kathleen Donnelly's child. AAP/AP/Mark Baker stakeholders have to test? And what are we to make of the results? what such figures suggest about the fate one-night stand or even lover. That women First the facts. While academics of female sexual and reproductive ethics see their child's father as the male parent, and Fathers' Rights activists repeat when women's behaviour is not properly not the child's sperm donor, was shown edly cite figures of between one in ten controlled. But if only one per cent of clearly in the Abbott adoption story. and one in four children affected, such women are 'guilty' of paternity fraud, the Despite Kathleen Donnelly's knowing claims lack a reliable evidential basis. case for change is seriously undermined. there was a possibility that it wasn't the JU NE 2005 EUREKA STREET 15 Health Minister's sperm that was impli genetic over social fatherhood, but rather ongoing legal and emotional relation cated in Daniel's conception, she seems truth above lies. Thus, in the same way ships with their children suggests that at to have firmly convinced herself that it that children born from donor sperm, and one point at least there was recognition was (so firmly, that she exposed herself, who are adopted, are entitled to the truth among some men that the loss of emo Daniel, Abbott and Daniel's biological about their conception (which, it should tional-not kinship-ties with their chil father to considerable public scrutiny and be aclcled, many never get), this informa dren is the real harm. Legal theorist Dr ridicule). Why? Because Abbott was her tion must have neither social nor legal Wolfgang Hirczy has argued that the law regular partner and the love of her life, and implications for their male parent's status should recognise the man who assumes this is what she wanted to be the case. as the 'real' clad. 'responsibility for the pregnancy and the What men incensed about paternity Finally, evidence suggests that even child' as the real father, a sentiment with fraud seem to focus on is the woman's men don't entirely, perhaps even largely, which the fathers of clonor-conceivecl, failure to have sex exclusively with their conceive of fatherhood as a kinship rather adopted and stepchildren are like! y to partner and thus ensure he is their child's than a social relationship. Among the concur. Certainly, this would be the posi only possible genetic father. But this Australian men interviewed by Turney tion of those who speak in the name of overlooks the significant fact that women who have used their discovery of biologi the Men's Rights Movement, which has do choose their partners to be their com cal non-paternity to disavow their fiscal long argued that active fathers-parents, panions through life and to be the men responsibility for their children, few not sperm donors-are essential to the who parent their children. My research thought this shedding of legal paternal well-being and achievement of suggests that, for women at least, this obligations meant the children they loved children, especially boys. latter choice is by far the weightiest one, weren't really theirs. Said one man: with numerous women I've interviewed 0 WHERE DOES alJ this leave US ? ... father arc caught between a rock and S over the years preferring to terminate a There is little doubt that the biologisa a hard place, because in most cases they wanted pregnancy rather than continue tion of fatherhood by child-support laws love the children and have bonded with one to a man who wants to parent, but has profoundly impinged on the way them and vice versa ... and they don 't with whom they cannot bear the thought some men understand the nature and want that to end. of an ongoing relationship. value of fatherhood. Governments have a For children, it is a loving and consist Agreed a not her: key role in sustaining workable relation ent relationship with a male parent that ships between parents, and thriving one The [test[ results ruined my life when my is primarily of interest, and in their best between parent and child after divorce. ex-wife then ordered the child never to interest. Indeed, in the early years, chil There seems evidence that the redefini call me 'Dad' again. And worse still, she dren will have no comprehension of and tion of fatherhood as a biological rather is never allowed to see me again ... I still little interest in which man's sperm con than a social relationship does not con think of her as my daughter. tributed to their creation. Of course, they tribute to this end-putting a handful of may ultimately need or want to know the Incl eecl, the early focus of legal experts father-child relationships at risk in the truth about their biological heritage, but on the capacity of mothers to use DNA face of unexpected results from genetic this is not an argument for privileging testing to lock devoted fathers out of testing, and more broadly undermin ing men's understanding of themselves as valuable to t heir children as parents, not just providers, at a time of significant emotional upheaval. 50 1-\,t>,I/E.. ' 0 because, while every child has a biologi cal father, they don't all have social ones. But the protection of the father-child rela tionship that such a change could offer is clearly worth it. • Dr Leslie Cannold is an ethicist, writer and commentator working at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent book is What, no baby: why women have lost the free dom to mother and how they can get it back, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005. 16 EU REKA STREET jUNE 2005 The Mermaid verse No, I wasn't surprised when I hauled her in gleaming rose and emerald, opalescent in the net. She smiled at me and that I see now is why I would risk everything for the mermaid. For weeks I'd been trying to catch one or more of her kind out there with the flap of the sails, the slap of the prow on the waves. I knew the weather was right- there are some things experience tells - you can't have been fishing so long without an inkling of how to catch a deck full of scales. The miracle of it. Her smile and her elegant tail hitting the deck in a rhythm as strong as a poem. Her hair wasn't seaweed at all though it did have a green bow tying a clump behind one of her ears. On a breast an oyster had settled a natural beautiful brooch which I wouldn't have dreamed of disturbing. Why did I want the mermaid so badly giving up having a car, cleaners, insu rance and the rest of the trappings. I wanted her as a horse wants to run. To som e, I know, she's a m yth they've never seen her and what they don't see they don't believe yet like radio, the merm aid exists sleekly ravishing, gasping and smiling knowing that I'd write this and then let her go watching her swim away in her own muse the water. - Kate Llewellyn JUNE 2005 EU REKA STR E T 17 t hind Jer-e my Clarke The challenge of reconciliation If Pope Benedict XVI can continue the work of both his immediate predecessor and his namesake, there will be cause for thanks D "c"'"' c REUG 18 EUREKA STR EET JU E 2005 Philip Pan, wrote along similar lines. Pan named as his source of missionary methods that had kept local clergy and church Ren Yanli, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, communities subservient to foreign, European, missionaries. and reputedly the foremost mainland Chinese expert on the Holy In this letter, Benedict XV wrote: See, when he wrote on 29 April this year that 'all but nine of It is a deplorable fact that, even after the Popes have insisted the 70 bishops in the government's official church have secretly upon it, there still remain sections of the world that have heard declared their loyalty to Rome and are now recognised by the the faith preached for several centuries, and still have a local Vatican'. Pan's words might be unclear (when he talks of the 'gov clergy that is of inferior quality. It is also true that there are ernment's church') but his use of numbers is not. Rome considers countries that have been deeply penetrated by the light of Faith, itself to be in union with the overwhelming majority of bishops and have, besides, reached such a level of civilisation that they in China, whatever Catholics elsewhere might think or say. produce eminent men in all the fields of secular life-and yet, This movement though they have lived under the strengthening influence of the towards a reconciled Church and the gospel for hundreds of years, they still cannot and unified church produce bishops for their spiritual government or priests for community in their spiritual guidance. China might well be a desire held by the - Ma ximum Illud, paragraph 17 new Pope, Benedict XVI. Hopefully, for His main target was the colonial-minded church hierarchy the upwards of 12 in China. Specifically he was critical of the way the majority of million Catholics European missionaries had limited the growth of the Chinese in China, it proves church, and harassed those, like Belgian Vincentian Vincent to be so. Many have Lebbe, who had sought to do otherwise. commented on the Pius XI brought Benedict XV's dream to fruition on 28 fact that the previ October 1926 when he personally consecrated six Chinese ous bearer of that as bishops. They were their country's first bishops since papal name was Dominican Bishop Luo Wenzao in the 17th century. The state known as a 'Pope ment was all the more emphatic given that the consecration of peace', as one took place at the Vatican. Benedict XVI might well desire to who strove to bring hold the Chinese Catholics in his heart too. about harmony in He will find communities that are experiencing much a war-torn world. growth. There are websites (www.chinacatholic.org), lay forma Less commented tion classes and a multitude of Catholic publications. Liturgies upon is the fact are often vibrant and catechumenate classes are that although his frequently full. successor, Pius XI, A T THIS YEAR's Easter Vigil in Beijing more than 1000 people gathered in the South Church. This church traces its roots back to a community established by Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci in 1605. During Lent, there were usually about 150 people gathered each Saturday evening. Above and at left: Th e regional seminary in Shijiazhuang, Hebei. And some of th e 120 Crammed into the church this Easter night for almost sem in ar ians at the afternoon exe rcises. two-and-a-half hours were people from all walks of life. There were students studying religion at university, business people has been referred to as the 'Pope of facing ethical dilemmas in a burgeoning economy and workers the missions', because of the ways seeking respite from their labours. There were Catholics who in which he sought to institute trace their heritage back for over ten generations and newcom local church hierarchies and for his ers. Fifty people presented for baptism-predominantly adults, great missionary encyclical Rerum many of whom were young. All present were united in prayer Ecclesiae (On Catholic Missions), and in beautiful song. The face of one young man was lit by the in many ways he was bringing to glow of his candle and, as the Easter Candle was carried by, he fulfilment one of Benedict XV's smiled at me as he sang 'thanks be to God'. great dreams. If Benedict XVI can continue the work of both his imme Benedict XV, on 30 November diate predecessor and his namesake in encouraging reconcilia 1919, issued an apostolic letter, Max tion, let alone bringing this about, then there will be cause for imum Illud (On spreading the Cath thanksindeed. • olic Faith throughout the World) that revolutionised the way the Church Jeremy Clarke SJ is completing a doctorate in history at the was structured in the non-West Australian National University, researching the contemporary ern world. He was highly critical Catholic communities in China. Photos by Jeremy Clarke SJ. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 19 ci<•prl'ssion Jenny Stewart Braving our inner weather The journey towards understanding our depression can be the most worthwhile, and the most taxing, that we ever make D H R ESSWN " THE D'5EAS< of to me a sterile prom ontory; this most shape (and are shaped by) a general, social loss. Our lives seem pointless because excellent canopy, the air, look you, this view about what is, and is not, a mental ill we have lost what is most va luable to us. brave o'erhanging firmament, this majes ness. But the solution to the problem, if you But communicating what we have lost, in tical roof fretted with golden fire, why it find one, or even if you don't, is a personal the exact terms specific to ou rselves, is appears no other thing to me but a foul and statement, because the mind that suffers almost i mpossible. pestilent congrega tion of vapours'. the illness must also be the mind that deals A broken arm is a clearly defined con Because depression is so common, the with it. Whatever help you seek, whatever dition, although the subjective experi experience says som ething important treatment you choose, even if you choose to ence may vary greatly from one person about being human. In fact, working out keep what is going on to yourself-all reflect to another. Broken arm s can be treated, how to overcome depression means under self-understandings that, in turn, people feel safe asking how you did it; the standing what it does for you as well as to have implications for the futu re. plaster cast becomes a site fo r get-well you, acknowledging the part it plays in the messages and schoolyard graffiti. economy of you r emotions, and the way 0 URS IS A GARRULOUS, even a con By contrast, there are as many depres you string your thoughts together-the fessional age, and pain that was previ sions as there are people to suffer them. everyday traffic of being 'you'. ously hidden away is, up to a point, now The symptoms differ, not just in intensity Susan Sontag wrote that any impor an acceptable subj ect for public discus but in kind, and also in emphasis. One tant disease whose physical etiology is sion, at least in the rich countries of the person cries, another is numb. One gives not u nderstood, and for which treatment West. There is a real democracy of feeling an appearance of normality, another cow is ineffectual, tends to be awash in sig in all this, as no matter how strange ou r ers u nder the bed, unable to move. Some nificance. Illnesses such as cancer enter history, or appalling our woes, there is calmly plan their own death; others can everyday language as metaphor, or are always someone 'out there' who feels just not work out how to take a shower. them selves conceived in terms of battles, as we do. Even the cult of celebrity is not Treatin ents have unexpected, some victories and wars. But while the labels so much a yearning for a more glamorous times contradictory, consequences. You of mental illness can be joshingly passed life, but a confi rmation that the famous take a pill and get better. I take the same around (as in 'schizoid' to denote a con are really just like us. pill and nothing happens, or I get worse. tradictory person or situation ), they do We may be witnessing, too, a reversal Is what you have the same as what I have? not lend themselves to metaphor. It is as of at least some of the stigmatisation of How much is in our minds and how much though mental illness is itself a kind of mental illness that accompanied the mas in our brains? metaphor, a way of representing the unspo sive intervention of the state in the 19th If we think of our minds as experienc ken to ourselves. and 20th centuries, when large numbers of ing weather, then depression is grey. The Like any illness, depression has multi psychiatric hospitals were built in which actual sensation is difficult to describe-a ple layers of meaning. There is the mean the mentally ill could be both treated and kind of isolation, but intermixed with the ing to the individual, there is the socially sequestered. We now look to government, most terrible fear. It is not the sa me as being constructed meaning, and then the profes not so much for control, but supportive sad, because sadness links us to the world; sional, or scientifically constructed, mean treatment and even early intervention to depression, however we try to describe it to ing. But compared to conditions where we identify kids at risk. And if we are inclined ourselves, takes us away from the world. can see a clear pa thology, there is some almost to believe everyone has a right to a The sense of a life force drying up, or thing u ndefinable about depression . We disability of their own, at least we have a vanishing, is very strong. The branching are not talking about a 'thing' when we better sense than ever before of the extent dendrites of our brains lack flow, and we feel talk about depression, we are talking of ou r com mon human frailty. much as a tree in drought must feel when about ourselves, refracted th rough many Because depression is such a wide the ground cracks around it. As the English types of perception. spread condition, there are dozens of poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins cried to The three layers of meaning are inter books intended for the general reader, tak his God, at the end of a sonnet in which he connected, at least for the patient. As soon ing every conceivable perspective on the lamented that he could not 'breed one work as you go for help, your personal sufferi ng problem . And this 'talk' both describes, that wakes': 'Send my roots rain.' becomes part of, or the object of, current and contributes to, the way we as a soci Or we might recall Hamlet, fi nding professional understandings of the condi ety build up a sense of what it is that is that 'this goodly frame, the earth, seem s tion. And these professional understandings bothering us. (Don't get me wrong, more 20 EU REKA STREET JU NE 2005 communication is almost certainly a good more apparent than real, in the sense thing-when I first encountered depression that our modes of understanding cre as a teenager in the late 1960s, there was ate conflicts and dilemmas where virtually nothing available that shed any none need exist. From the standpoint light on the catastrophe that had hit me.) of 'what works' in treating depression, There are books by therapists, explain the physiological, the social and the ing the latest theories, and including psychological are not different explana accounts of people they have treated. If tions, but simply alternative windows they are very practically oriented, they fall into a complex, systemic reality. into the self-help category. And very useful Which window one chooses is more these books are, too. In fact, some studies a consequence of what can be done in suggest that 'bibliotherapy' (using a self any given situation. While modern 'sadness help manual to teach yourself techniques anti-depressants are certainly more links us to combat depression) produces significant effective than those that were avail improvement in those who try them. able in the past, they do not work to the world; Then there are books by men and for everyone. (In my own case, over women who have suffered from depression, the last 30 years, while my depres depression ... and want to help others by describing what sion was clearly 'biological' in the takes us away.' they have been through. Writing such con sense that it struck most dramati fessional accounts takes tremendous cour cally at puberty and after childbirth, age, although each individual journey is so I was prescribed the latest different. I wonder whether there is much anti-depressants to little effect.) For those who are forced to under comfort there for the sufferer caught in the stand their inner weather, to invent their grip of his or her own illness. A LTHOUGH THE SEARCH will undoubt own form of climate science as a way of There is the sensation, and then the edly continue, I suspect that no 'magic bul surviving, the journey can be the most (self) perception of the sensation. The self let' will ever be found for depression. The worthwhile, and the most taxing, they talk does not just shape depression, it is interaction between genes and biochem will ever make. It was Carl Jung who said depression . It took me years to realise that istry is simply too complicated, the vari that every personality was the re ult of the elaborate theories I had constructed ations between individuals probably too a constant interaction between what we about what had happened to me, and why, great, and the side effects too intransigent, know about ourselves and what we don't. were the problem, not the solution. But for drug therapy to work for everyone. 'The ego is only a bit of consciousness that was only the beginning. I then had to Perhaps, too, the physiological explana that floats upon the ocean of dark things.' find ways of not listening to my habitual tion lets everyone off the hook a little too We are therefore constantly changing, as mental lyrics, and the drumbeat of resent easily. Unhappy families can ascribe their a result of the way we intercalate our sub ment and anxiety that accompanied them. situation to a dud sequence in the com jective and objective worlds. It's a difficult job, because depression is munal gene pool. Individual depressives Over a lifetime, we must all come to such a subtle siren song that you can be can 'blame' their unfortunate inheritance. terms with our inner weather, because lured onto the rocks before you have real And those who are victimised by impos very few people are of so even a tempera ised what is happening to you. sible circumstances can be given a pill to ment that they notice no variation at all in At the intellectual level, I continue to deal with their pain. their mood, energy and capacity. What we wonder about causes. The fact that women Speaking for myself, when I am in the believe about ourselves has a large bear are twice as likely to experience depression grip of depression I feel even more hopeless ing on what and how we suffer, and our in their lifetimes as men (a lthough much (and helpless) if I ascribe my condition to a chances of breaking out of it. Sometimes less likely to commit suicide) raises, in brace of black genes shared with too many the explanations we choose give us hope; sharpened form, the relative importance of relatives who have succumbed to depres sometimes they intensify our despair. biological, social and psychological factors. sion, manic depression, alcoholism and Depression is at one end of this spec Explanations also empower certain suicide, than if I tell myself that such facts trum, not entirely self-chosen, because kinds of cures, and with certain kinds are neither conclusive nor decisive. I can there is clearly a biological component to of cures, certain kinds of knowledge and accept that there is an inherited predispo it, but not ineluctable, either. As Aaron the practitioners of that knowledge. If the sition there, an elevated risk, but my own Beck, the psychologist most associated problem is physiological, it would seem experience tells me that it can be coun with cognitive theories of depression, put logical to look for drug-based interven tered-provided I can find ways of believ it, 'An individual's affect and behaviour are tions, which in turn privilege the medical ing that I have the power to do so. Indeed, largely determined by the way in which he scientist, and inevitably involve the com mental illness, provided we can construct structures the world.' In other words, we mercial aspirations of drug companies. and cling to a frail raft of insight on the may not be what we think we are, but we Psychology takes us into the arms of coun turbulent waters of our minds, differs from are, most certainly, what we think. • sellors and psychotherapists. physical illness in that we can 'talk' more But if we look beyond the politics (the directly to our problem than is possible for Jenny Stewart is a Canberra writer power play) of depression, the problem is those, say, who suffer from cancer. and academic. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 21 1 (l d Bridget Griffen-Faley First lady of the airwaves Known as the Queen of Radio and the Baroness of Broadcasting, Australia's audacious first woman talkback presenter preferred to be known simply as Andrea w.AT TO CAn H 22 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 'hotbed of immorality', Jenner joined the industry demands to overturn a rul speaking circuit in Australia, returned ing prohibiting recording telephone to journalism and was the subject of an conversations for broadcasting. This Archibald Prize entry by Judy Cassab. Day Tonight was there on 30 October Jenner served on the Phillip Street to capture the Queen of Radio's first Theatre board and good-naturedly went live encounter with her subjects. Jenner along with Gordon Chater's performance growled at her listeners, described some cliff edge, wind tossed, [w]ith eager eyes as Andrea to the tune of Little Lady Make of the women who rang in as 'stupid' questioning the world.' Believe, even though she maintained, and criticised producers for vetting her In the years before World War II with considerable justification, that she calls. She was also unhappy with the Jenner moved between the United States, really knew most of the people whose television crew's I ighting: 'They England and Australia, working on names she dropped. made me look a fright.' Victor Longford's Hills of Hate and the Always immaculately groomed, landmark production of For the Term of Jenner put on a beauty spot each morn W SPISHNESS MAY HAVE been a core His Natural Life, and writing a weekly ing and had a facelift. In the late 1950s, component of her persona, but it was column for the Sydney Sun. She adopted just as the Daily Mirror proposed that deemed too dangerous when live to air. the nom de plume Andrea, chosen from she retire, she moved to 2UE to host a By early 1968 Macquarie had decided to a numerology list which 'had every morning show with Tom Jacobs. Along revert to pre-recording Jenner's program. thing on it from cirrhosis to vagina'. A with her stablemates, Gordon Chater No friend of Labor or of trade unions, brilliant concoction of pungent gossip, and Ormsby Wilkins, Jenner was, in she had already been lambasted in character sketches, royal news, fashion the Bulletin's vernacular, an early 'talk Parliament and had attracted libel writs reportage and theatre cnt1c1sm, her jockey'. They occupied a middle ground from the Whitlams and Jim Cairns. In column simultaneously delighted in and between the disc jockeys who emerged 1969 Jenner's crown lost its lustre when satirised the snobbery of society in the 1950s and the 'dial-in' talkback she was dumped by Macquarie; her pro 'Y in London and elsewhere. hosts who emerged in the 1960s. Nor was gram was deemed to have too little appeal Jenner a radio 'aunt' in the tradition of the to younger listeners and to audiences OU ARE A RATHER RARE draught, homely and comforting figures who had beyond Sydney. As talkback entrenched heady, potent, and exceptionally permeat dominated the airwaves for decades. Her itself as an integral part of the Australian ing, and believe me it would take a man's abrasive, sometimes ribald conversational radio landscape, her program was also man to appreciate and handle you without manner unnerved 2UE's management and said to lack sufficient topicality. For the feeling that he was at times outclassed ... I in 1963 she was lured to the Macquarie first time in her life, Jenner had fallen doubt that you will find all that you want Network's 2GB. Here she secured a secre behind the pack. She had brief spells at in any one place, atmosphere or person/ tary, a hefty salary and a promise of £10 the ABC and 2CH before leaving the wrote an unusually perceptive psychic in a week in retirement, bringing her the industry in 1972. November 1940. Within a year Jenner was financial security she had long craved. By now Jenner had been working on off again, intending to dispatch reports Needing a foil, Jenner broadcast along her memoirs for a decade: 'It'll take two on the Far East and beyond for the Sun side John Pearce between 9 and lOam, volumes, of course.' Various co-authors and Woman. One letter of introduction increasing the session's ratings. 'Hello, fell by the wayside before Darlings, declared: 'Mrs Jenner's venue appears Mums and Dads,' delivered in a throaty I've Had a Ball!-written with Trish to be the whole habitable globe. I never contralto, was her trademark. Jenner Sheppard and widely serialised-appeared knew anyone so ubiquitous!' Sir Frederic would rise at 6.30am and study newspa in 1975. Armed with a whisky, Jenner Eggleston, Australia's fi rst minister to pers and magazines before recording the continued to hold court in her Potts Point China, thought her a 'boisterou s, fl orid next day's show, featuring sophisticated flat as journalists came to pay hom age woman'. In Asia, Jenner experienced the patter-'Bobby Kennedy obviously hasn't and speculate, often incorrectly, about best and the worst of times: she had a brief heard of the Pill'-and interviews with her exploits. She died on 24 March 1985, liaison with a British wing commander, celebrities. 'Entertaining, highly provoca aged 94. her one true love, but was then interned tive, shrewd and penetrating and terribly Twenty years after Andrea's death, in the Stanley prisoner of war camp. For self-centred/ declared the market research two fig ures dominate Australian talk three-and-a-half years she kept a diary in 1964. But although Jenner's experiences radio, broadcasting from the two stations on toilet paper, recording the rigours of allowed her to transport her session into that m ade and unm ade her broadcast her confinement, including debilitating 'a world remote from the ordinary house ing career. Alan Jones has never been illne ses and the ever-present fear of rape, wife', it was already apparent that she was regarded as too Sydney in his appeal, and and drily profiling her fellow internees. of little appeal to audiences under 35. Andrea's old friend, John Laws, seem s to Haunting her, too, was the memory of the Later that year, Macquarie's m anag be encouraged to court rather than shirk last time she had had a 'vanilla souffle', a ing director, Stan Clark, visited the US controversy. • reference perhaps to her airman, whom she and studied the success of 'conversation' later discovered had returned to his wife. program s hosted by strong personalities. Bridget Griffen-Foley is a historian at After her release in 1945, when she hit In 1967 the Australian Broadcasting Macquarie University and is writing a the headlines for describing the camp as a Control Board finally acquiesced to history of commercial radio in Australia. j UNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 23 chi ldhood Fran k O'Shea The boy who would not grow up The life and writings of j.M. Barrie gave rise to great creations, controversies and connections )AM 24 EUREKA STREET JU E 2005 Peter was drunk and destitute when, the Llewelyn Davies were centres of a before that and there is even a suggestion in the presence of bystanders, he walked literary and society set in Hans Place in that he may have been the father of one or under a train at Sloane Square station in London, as well as in a house they owned both of Maya's children. 1960. The saddest aspect of the story, is on the northside of Dublin that was regu Among diehard Irish republicans, that neither he nor any of the Llewelyn larly used by Collins as a hiding hole. there was a theory that Collins was black Davies children were really the originals In the years after his death, with the mailed into signing the Treaty by the for Peter Pan. The boy who would not-or memory of the treatment of Parnell still threat that the British would reveal his perhaps could not-grow up was relatively fresh in people's minds, any paternity of Moya Llewelyn Davies's son. J.M. Barrie himself. suggestion that Collins might have had a Any suggestion that he had an affair with sex life was carefully suppressed. Instead, a wealthy socialite would have brought T.ERE IS A CONNECTION with the Irish his routine of daily Mass and Communion embarrassment to deeply Catholic rebel leader Michael Collins, who met was stressed, notwithstanding that if such Ireland in the early years of the century, J.M. Barrie on a nu mber of occasions. a habit existed, it would have marked him particularly as many of the fighters were His biographer, Margery Forster, writes out easily to police and secret agents who priggishly devout in their observance. that 'Collins had always been a lover of were searching for him. If one of his conquests was Moya Peter Pan; the eternal boy in himself was We now know that he had many lady Llewelyn Davies, the sister-in-law of Kate fascinated, perhaps even a little envious friends: Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts in the Winslet's Sylvia, then he picked a highly of him'. It is an intriguing suggestion, Collins biopic), to whom he was engaged; intelligent woman. Her translation of because it is known that when he worked the infelicitously named but highly the Maurice O'Sullivan book Tvventy in the Post Office Savings Bank and later respectable Dilly Dicker; his second Years A-Growing, the story of life on in a stockbrokerage firm in London, cousin Nancy O'Brien, who later married the Blasket Islands, is still regarded as a Collins was a regular theatregoer. his brother; his first girlfriend, Susan classic. She would have been as worthy a But there is an even closer connection, Killeen; and his faithful secretary, Sinead partner for Michael Collins as a heroine and for that we need to go to another Mason. There was unlikely to have been for J.M. Barrie. • branch of the Llewelyn Davies family. anything improper in these relationships. Crompton Llewelyn Davies, uncle of the What has always given cause for Frank O'Shea is a Canberra writer Peter Pan boys, was a lawyer and close whispering was his attractiveness to and educator. confidant of fellow Welshman David society women who would Lloyd George, for whom he acted as elec have regarded him as a tion agent and early sponsor. He drafted conquest. Hazel Lavery, Goo d <;If S h eph erd a number of land-law bills for the British American-born wife of the Youth &Family Service In c government and in 1908 prepared the bill portrait painter Sir John that was to introduce the old-age pension Lavery, claimed that Collins in Britain. For this, he was made a baron was one of her lovers-she Microcredit : and took a seat in the Hou se of Lords; he was sent home by one of More than Just Small Change was also appointed legal adviser to the her blue-stocking friends Celebrating British Post Office with access to many when she turned up at his United Nations International Year of Microcredit 2005 of the intelligence-gathering activities of funeral in widow's weeds. Achievements of Austra lian Microcredit Initiatives the state. Lady Londonderry, whose 25 years of Good Shepherd No Interest Loans Schemes NILS® Crompton Llewelyn Davies married husband was a descendant Keynote Sp eaker: Moya O'Connor, daughter of a former of Castlereagh, was another Prof John Langmore Irish MP in the House of Commons. Her with whom his name was Cha ir: family achieved a tragic notoriety when associated. Mary Crooks her mother, fou r siblings and nanny died But the most persist Speakers: of shellfish poisoning while on a picnic ent and most likely story Catherine Wo lthuizen David Tennant at the seaside. The event was sufficiently concerns Moya Llewelyn Dr Ingrid Burkett well known in Dublin to merit mention Davies. She was quoted as Prof Alison McClelland by Joyce in Ulysses. saying that on the night it Tony Nichol so n It is not agreed when Moya first met became clear that Eamon Beverley Kliger June 9- 10 2005 Collins. She was not initially impressed de Valera was going to reject Hotel Y, 489 Elizabeth Street , Melbourne VIC 3000 by the big Irishman, criticising his the Treaty brought back To register or for more information contact: Renee Burdeu smoking and describing him-quite from London by Collins, Tel: 03 8412 7326 Fa x: 03 9416 2340 accura tely-as bombastic. bringing an end to 900 years E-mail: [email protected] In time, she became more involved in of occupation of Ireland, Irish affairs and was briefly imprisoned '[Collins] was so distressed Proudly sponsored by: for her role, causing her husband to lose that I gave myself to him.' his highly paid job with the British Post But the rumour was that the ¢ Good Shepherd Sisters ~ National Office. That was in 1921, but before that, relationship had begun long JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 25 1ourne\ .:,: I Sarah Kanowski A ship and a harbour Travel ling in order to see how different people live is essential to the formation of a genuine tolerance of other cultures Wenja: 'to be loose or easily moved as a broken of Dreams, in which Herzog is shown driven to the point of bone or the blade of a knife'-'to wander about, or madness by the physical difficulties of shooting in such a roam, as a homeless or lost child'-'to be attached location (heat, disease, helicopter crashes, a sudden border yet loose, as an eye or bone in its socket'-'to war), the Indian cast's blithe obliviousness to his will, and the swing, move or travcl'- 'to exist or be' antics of his star Klaus Kinski (whom one Indian eventually offers to kill on Herzog's behalf). Staring fren ziedly into the -Yaghan-En glish Dictionary compiled by Rev camera, Herzog pronounces the jungle evil, its rapacity and Thomas Bridges (1898) fecundity overwhelming another Kurtz. But, in truth, he more closely resembles Fitzcarraldo: the imaginations of both ulti mately victorious in their battle with reality. Again and again 'I"DEHNn!ON FROM the y,gh'n ),ngu,ge is 26 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 There was a 92-year-old matron I lunched with in Buenos a great absence simultaneously grows: how did the Indians Aires who assured me that evangelisation was for 'the good of the experience mission life? If it is hard now to imagine the real Indians', bringing as it did 'true religion' and a 'superior culture', ity of the priests, then how much more difficult it is for us to but I met others with a more reflective understanding. Margaret sense what it may have been like for the Guarani and Chiqui Hebblethwaite, whose regular columns in Th e Tablet chronicle tos, leaving a nomadic life of communal ownership in the jun her life in the former Paraguayan mission town of Santa Maria gle, and submitting to Jesuit discipline and ideology in towns de Fe, argues passionately that the Jesuits preserved indigenous of up to 6000 people. Unlike the missionaries, these new culture and protected it from the brutalities of colonisation. As converts didn't leave written records. They did, however, pro an example, she credits the Jesuits with the continuance of the duce extraordinary art that, although modelled on imported Guarani language. In fact, the Jesuits constructed a 'Guarani' European forms, carries traces of a different mindset: Christs based on the variety of related languages spoken by indigenous with brown skin, angels with Indian features, church ceilings groups coming into the missions in the 17th century, but it is painted with giant golden suns. Scholars are now working to certainly due to them that this indigenous-based tongue is, along discover the ways in which indigenous peoples contested and with Spanish, an official language in Paraguay today. With the altered the Catholicism presented to them in the 16th century, intention of keeping the Indians safe both from the moral vices but the continuing evidence of this religious dialogue is clear of the colonisers and their slave-raiding parties, the mission sys even to the non-specialist. South America is an intensely tem was built around a philosophy of cultural apartheid-non religious place, and while the majority of people identify as Jesuit visitors could only spend a few days at the missions and Christian, the vitality and popularity of non-Christian tradi were confined to dwellings at their boundaries. Hebblethwaite tions (the worship of other gods, fertility festivals, shamans, contends that as a result the Jesuits kept the indigenous culture the spiritual use of hallucinogens) is striking. Conquest is 'pure' while at the same time 'offering' their religious beliefs. It is clear that she speaks from a place of deep faith, and there is no denying the benefits that her own work in Santa Maria has brought to its community, but this interpretation of mission history fails to convince me, a non-believer. Culture and religion cannot be so easily divorced, most especially among indigenous people such as the Guarani and Chiquitos, for whom religion was not the separate sphere it is today in the industrial ised world, but fully integrated into kinship structures, political organisation, and economics. To assault a religion, therefore, was to assault a culture. The mission system may have helped protect Indians from the worst excesses of colonisation but it also served the colonial project: converted Indians ceased to be a military threat and their lands and labour could be put to the service of the empire. Travelling through South America it also became clear that indigenous peoples were given lit tle choice by the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers when it came to conversion. The anthropologist Guillermo Wilde, whom I met in Buenos Aires, says there was a stark distinction between Indians who converted and those who kept their own beliefs: the former survived. ERTHOSE, LIKE HEBBLETHWAITE, who believe that Christi not such a simple story after all. The Spanish 'triumphed', but anity is a gift, it is perhaps impossible to give the weight I do most South Americans today have Indian blood; the mission to these other considerations. It is true that by the standards of aries 'converted', but the Catholicism of South America is not their time the Jesuits behaved commendably-they worked for the one brought by the Jesuits. the best interests (as they saw them) of the Guarani and Chiq Although today we can see a religious exchange (or, in cases, uitos, rather than for personal gain-but that cannot mitigate more properly an argument) that, of course, was not the way the the fact that, like all missionaries, they went not to discover Jesuits experienced evangelisation. The missionaries referred to but to conquer. I find it impossible to celebrate this history the Indians as ninos con barbas-children with beards-and as a story of salvation, but nor can I condemn the missions this paternalism pervades their letters and records. Their chroni from a modern anthropological perspective. Given what the cles bear witness to the deep cultural gaps separating Jesuit and Jesuits believed, could they have acted otherwise? Rather than Indian, of which the missionaries were blind: they could see only suggesting a superiority to those 16th-century travellers, my the gulf, not the world existing on the other side. One Jesuit, exploration of mission history expanded my understanding of Antonio Sepp, wrote of his exasperation at the Indians being 'so the complexity and confusion always present in the encounter void of sense and judgment', and the priests were often at a loss as between different cultures. to how to explain their theology in a way it could be understood. When visiting the former missions and researching their They were confounded, for example, in their attempts to argue history, a void appears; in the centre of all you are learning from created things the existence of a Creator. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 27 Beset with similar difficulties, Thomas Bridges, the com (as exemplified by the Yaghan culture) over the domestic piler of the Yaghan-English Dictionary, believed indigenous hearth, as from a response to the Victorian naturalist. What thinking, as expressed in its languages, simply lacked the I find in Darwin's discussion of the Patagonian Indians is a concepts into which Christian faith could be translated. He paean to all that which the author himself holds dear, and despaired 'of finding in the labyrinth of the particular words to what he is desperately missing in his two years spent sailing express the intangible concepts of the Gospel', as Bruce Chat the world. Like the Jesuits, Darwin is part of the story of first win puts it. Chatwin argues that the insufficiency lies, in truth, meetings: two radically different ways of being making con with Bridges, who lacked the subtlety to see the layers of meta tact for the first time. The Voyage of the Beagle also records phorical association in the Yaghan language, where the word for the Fuegians' fascinated incomprehension of the English depression, for example, is that used to describe 'the vulnerable men-their displays of waltzing, their absence of women, and phase in a crab's seasonal cycle, when it has sloughed off its old their pernickety care in matters of bathing. shell and waits for another to grow', or where 'sleet' and 'fish Chatwin writes that while the Yaghans' language for the scales' are synonyms. This different way of seeing the world seasons and directions was exceedingly detailed, they did not is observable too in the few recorded words we have from the count to fiv e. The Guarani Indians were similarly innumer Guarani, one of whom responded to the Jesuits' teaching about ate, which shocked the Jesuits; believing that numeracy was heaven by saying 'Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were essential for civilisation and the exact confession of sins, wont to contemplate the earth alone, anxious only to see if they ordered entire townships to publicly count from one to the plain afforded grass and water for their horses'. This is not 1000 in Spanish. Yet, as with Darwin's descriptions of the simple materialism, as the Jesuits assumed, but a spirituality, Yaghan, I see in it not grounds for retrospective critique, but like that of the Yaghans of Tierra del Fuego, rooted in the rela as evidence of one culture struggling in its own way to come tionships of this world. Chatwin's examination of the Yaghan to terms with another. language in In Patagonia points to the ways in which another Which is of course what I was doing in So uth America mode of thinking was operating, rather than the ignorance too. I was overwhelmed by the richness and colour of its cul assumed by Bridges and the Jesuits. Centuries of encountering tural traditions, the endurance of the Andean campesinos, non-European peoples, and the accumulated work of anthro the botanical knowledge of the Amazon, and the willingness pologists and linguists, allow us to appreciate that difference of everyone to throw off the hardships of working life with now, but it's not surprising that the missionaries couldn't. drink and music. But there was frustration and alienation on Yet, Chatwin fails to extend the sympathetic imagination our part as well. Comfortable ideas of social justice were chal he has for the indigenous mentality to that of the lenged in a context of endemic poverty, where foreign visitors first Europeans travelling to South America. represent unimaginable riches. In The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin describes feeling constantly harassed by the local peo C HARLES DARWIN'S RECORD of his journey around South ple, and-sometimes saying 'no' to requests, sometimes saying America, The Voyage of the Beagle, describes the Indians of 'yes'-I shared his exhaustion. But, at the sam e time, my sense Patagonia as 'the most abject and miserable creatures' he has of travelling as a kind of ethical project was strengthened. See anywhere beheld. He confesses that he could hardly believe ing how different people live is essential to the formation of a they were 'fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world'. genuine tolerance, an openness to the stubborn 'thereness' of Seeing these humans so utterly lacking in what he understood other realities. We also met travellers involved in a different to be defining of humanity-clothing, houses, churches, roast kind of journey from the one we were on-thousands of Ecua dinners-sowed the seed for Darwin's theory that modern dorians, Peruvians and Bolivians moving north of the Mexican man evolved from some ape-like species. In Pa tagonia con border so that the money they send home from illegal cleaning demns Darwin for 'sneering' at an indigenous culture, but and restaurant jobs will support their mothers and children, what I fi nd in The Voyage of the Beagle is genuine incompre husbands and wives. hension-how can they sleep out in the cold without any cov Yet, after ten months of moving, the places and the lives ering? Why do the men allow their women to do such demand we were travelling through began to blur. It was the sense of ing physical labour? Aren't they all exhausted by the constant daily life we glimpsed in Ecuador that led to that old travel up-and-moving from one place to another? The Fuegians are ler's paradox-you can only really see a place by staying. Now, more foreign to Darwin than all the strange animals and back in Australia, my husband and I are imagining children. plants he catalogues from The Beagle, defying as they do all What will the next decade bring? Does 'staying quietly in a existing social categories. The life Darwin imagines as one of room' bring with it a different kind of horizon to explore? The relentless hardship, exemplified by the sight of a rain-wet baby, words of the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai have been run held by its naked mother as she curiously watches his boat ning through my mind: pass, pains him-his culture shock is the product of human To live is to build a ship and a harbour empathy rather than of superiority. Darwin's journal depicts a at the sa me time. And to finish the harbour man profoundly confronted by the mys teries of another kind long after the ship has go ne down. of life; yet, at the sam e time, The Voyage of the Beagle is full • of the sympathy that emerges from detailed observation, and is passionately opposed to slavery, the barbarity of which he Sarah Kanowski is a freelance writer and broadcaster. Her docu witnesses in Brazil. Chatwin's castigations of Darwin result as mentary on visiting the Jesuit missions in South America was much from Chatwin's own a priori privileging of 'nomadism' aired on ABC Radio National in May, and can be heard online. 28 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 poetry:2 Emily Bal lou Six moments by the sea 1. First the sky built itself out of nothing, pressed gold over the world until up on the hill, all the houses were on fire. 2.. Morning A bird holds itself in suspension over the cliff, caught in a pocket of air. 4. You The leaf, an autumn leaf stand on the headland clatters hand pressed to your face. across the road on its wheels. It was so early Will it fall in? It will swim. when I wanted you 3. Tides when I wanted to tell you everything I seep out from inside like blood. I can remember. Dripping down the mountain over damp beds of sand to the tideline. 5. Gulls It is low and sweet with debris. The waves leave what they can on the beach. suck slivers of fish from the day swallowing whole the light-soaked bodies. The waves purple as wine. 6. Stones We climb back the tall wet cliff to the dark house. Inside, our four rooms are blue. Outside the wind is a whisk in an egg of air beating the froth. ol>itu,H\ Bruce Duncan An activist for the faithful Tom Butler (1915-2005): lawyer, editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper OF THE LEADING Catholic opponents of It would do Butler an injustice not to acknowledge his B.A. Santamaria's political project, Thomas Michael Butler, died enormous contribution to Catholic intellectual life and social suddenly aged 89 in Melbourne on 8 January. As editor of the activism in this country. By profession a lawyer, he formed a law Catholic Worker monthly newspaper in the 1950s, Butler defied partnership from 1951- 1968 with Gerard Heffey, and with their Archbishop Mannix and the weight of Catholic opinion to con Catholic Work er colleagues they developed their views on the test the Church's entanglement with Santamaria's anti-commu proper role of the Church in politics. nist orga nisation, the Catholic Social Studies Movement. Over four decades, the Catholic Worker sustained a The interventions of the Catholic Worl 30 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 For the Worl JU E 2005 EUREKA STREET 31 ATB•'M ON A WEON>SDAY, I w•lk .mund the Sukhum, men bargain for the service or pay the asking price? At a place vit neighbourhood in Bangkok. It is warm enough to wear a called the Down Under Bar, men watch live sport in a bar deco singlet and thin cotton pants. The air is thick with spices, fire rated with kangaroos and beer barrels. Stools and tables are set and exhaust fumes. People with filthy clothes and grubby legs up on the front verandah. Thai women stand around the bar sleep on footpaths. Neon signs in every colour hang above the on their high heels talking to the men, their long black hair streets. Most of the buildings are dirty. As I blow my nose, brushing the men's skin. Near the front door, two Thai girls out come black bits I have inhaled. and an old white man sit on stools and lean intimately into I walk among crowded foot traffic of tourists and Thais. their conversation. Farther along the street, small children beg Foot jams. I must wait for people ahead of me to move forward. with pleading looks and plastic cups. No tooting but lots of touting. Vendors try to sell me fake Taking advantage of the fact that Western currencies buy Fendi bags and cheap watches. I buy some 'adidas' socks for the so much in Thailand, female tourists treat themselves to mas asking price of 20 baht (less than one Australian dollar). Next sages, manicures and pedicures. In Australia, it is not cheap to morning, in the breakfast room at my hotel, other tourists tell have someone rub the dry skin off your feet, scrape the dirt out me, 'It's much cheaper in Chang Mai,' and, 'Only pay two from under your nails, and smooth their hands over your aches thirds of the price they ask for or you're being ripped off.' and pains, but in Bangkok, such services are very cheap. In Sukhumvit, I cannot avoid the sight of white sex tour Meals are sold by street vendors who pack up their shops ists passing arm in arm with slim, pretty Thai women. Did the at night on a flat kind of wheelbarrow. Takeaway shops. 32 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 Some vendors whip up omelettes; others pour hot soup visa rights that never eventuate and jobs that are, in real into bowls filled with fresh ingredients. The soups have ity, debt bondage arrangements, or that are in prostitution. strong flavours of chilli, ginger, tamarind and coriander. Many Thai women end up in brothels in Australian cit Food is cheap. Freshly squeezed mandarin juice is only ies. Not only must they contend with the humiliation and 20 cents. The Lonely Planet guidebook advises that you danger of forced or coerced prostitution, but there is also can eat from the street vendors because fierce competition the threat of repatriation by Australian immigration offi quickly drives out those who do not provide clean, cials if they are discovered, before they have had a chance fresh food. to earn any money. Bought and sold from one pimp to the next, stuck in debt bondage contracts that require them L E COMPETITION FOR jobs and customers is strong. At to have sex with hundreds of men unpaid, these women restaurants, three or four staff wait on each table. People eke wake up from their Western dream to a nightmare out a living in all sorts of ways. Three people often share a reality. job that could be done by one. One man has a wooden cage of white homing pigeons. It costs 25 baht to 'set them free', P.OJECT RESPE CT rs AN Australian NGO that aims to and tourists pay to lift the wooden cage door and watch the counter the exploitation and violence against women in birds fly away from the crowded Bangkok street. the sex industry. Its documentation of cases of trafficking Some female Western tourists take advantage of the (available at www.projectrespect.org.au) records some of the low cost of labour by shopping at markets. Some Western stories of Thai wom en trafficked to Australia. One woman male tourists enj oy a place where, no matter how ugly they becam e pregnant to a client and was made to pay for her own are, a woman will have sex with them for a few dollars. abortion. Some were beaten. Others were rescued by brothel Of course, there are rich and beautiful parts of Bang customers. Some of the women knew before they came to kok. There is a tranquil sculpture garden at the Art Uni Australia that they would be made to pay back the cost of versity. Women pass in silk suits. At the Bed Supper Club, arranging their trip by working in brothels, but the number young Thais drink colourful cocktails, reclining on white of sexual acts they were required to perform increased once cushioned daybeds. High up the steps of the Golden Mount they arrived in Australia. Other women did not know they Temple, there are views of trees, canals, modern skyscrapers would have to work in the sex industry; they came to Aus and old green-and-white triangular roofs. There are bejew tralia on the promise of a job in a restaurant, bar or massage elled elephant statues, giant golden Buddhas, calligraphic parlour, only to be forced into prostitution. frescoes, mosaics, tropical gardens, white palace walls and The people traffickers who profit from those forced into cute school kids in neat uniform s. Restaurants display large prostitution are now the target of a 23-member task force of dishes of colourful curries and canals carry painted long the Australian Federal Police. To date, however, there are no boats. Bangkok has been called the Venice of the East. programs in Australia aimed at increasing the awareness of But a lot of the city is dirt poor. In Bangkok, you can brothel customers that som e of the women they are having see how hard it must be for many Thais to find a job and sex with need help. In som e countries, where prostitution is earn a decent living. So m any people. Almost no social largely illegal, arresting customers, called 'Johns' in the US welfare. It is easy to see the lure of the West for Thai and 'curb-crawlers' in England, helps deter m en from using migrant workers. prostitutes. Both the US and England have piloted diversion Though the desire to emigrate may be strong, in real programs in which m en attend education days to learn about ity it is very hard for Thai migrants to obtain a work visa the risks of prostitution to themselves and to the women for Australia. As the gap between the world's richest and they pay for. These are isolated examples. Worldwide, there poorest countries continues to grow, the desire to migrate is little focus on the role of brothel customers as consum increases. At the sam e time, Western governments are ers of human commodities in environments which are often reducing legal migration channels and tightening borders. extremely exploitative and dangerous. Australia turns away boatloads of people trying to enter its There are trafficked women in Australian brothels. borders. Italy has plans to deport illegal immigrants to a They have sex with brothel customers, sometimes against detention centre in Libya. German border police control their will and sometimes in conditions of slavery. What their borders with dogs, and many Mexicans die each year responsibility should we place on the customers, who receive trying to cross into the United States. sexual services from women who may be paid even less than As borders close to would-be immigrants, irregular migra Bangkok wages? There are no social programs in Australia tion channels are left as the only option to those who need aimed at raising these men's awareness that the women to change countries. Travelling clandestinely, the seekers of in the brothel might be trafficked and might need help. In safety and fortunes are vulnerable to exploitation by those 2003, the Australian Federal Government announced a $20 arranging their passage. Nowhere is this exploitation more million government package to combat trafficking. Some of degrading than in the sex industry. this money could be well spent on programs focused on sex Many Thai women come to Australia on the traffick industry customers. • er's promise of a work visa and a well-paid job, either in the sex industry or outside it. The women usually intend Georgina Costello is travelling in the United States and to send money home to their families. Unfortunately, many Italy researching people trafficking on a Winston Churchill of these women are tricked into believing they will have Scholarship. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 33 1n print In a minor key Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900, Tony Roberts. University of Quee nsland Press, 2005. IS BN 0 702 23361 7, R RP $32.95 l H<< CONCLU 34 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 for a time, hundreds of impatient, often The oral histories relate grim tales of men Whether he was one or the other, or a lawless itinerants in transit to the and women shot where they lay, or as they mixture of both, our judgments will not Kimberley gold rush of 1886. ran away; babies were dispatched sicken bring the silenced languages back. What And wherever there were cattle, there ingly. There is much hard reading to be done is important is that Frontier Justice intro were duffers too; Roberts recounts one of in Frontier Ju stice and the passages relating duces a minor key into the ballad of our the most fa mous legends-the theft of 1000 these raids are among the hardest. Roberts's bush history-a little discord to the jingo cattle from Bowen Downs near Longreach, discussion of the relative insignificance of ism of the lotus-eaters. allegedly by Henry Readford, an 'outstand cattle spearings compared with the much Evidently, the author has travelled ing bushman', 'known to police in New more prevalent problem of cattle duffing extensively through the Gulf country over South Wales as an intelligent, imaginative gives the lie to suggestions that the response many years and he himself recorded many and resourceful horse thief and cattle duf to Aboriginal violence and misconduct was of the oral histories contained in Frontier fer'. Without naming Readford, one partici in any way measured. In 1883, one of the Justice. His book is clearly a labour of love; it pant was later to document this astounding vigilantes was to admit as much, in a writ is also quite lucidly written and structured. drive, which took the cattle down the back ten request for greater police presence on his His commitment to thorough footnoting is country of the Thompson and Cooper riv property, arguing that: perhaps some guarantee against the worst ers for sale in South Australia. Readford of revisionist mischief-making. At times, the harm [the Aborigines] do is to kill a was arrested and stood trial, but, as Roberts the tenor of Roberts's narrative can be less few head of cattle, which they have a right relates, was acquitted; 'it was rumoured than objective, as he confronts the worst of to do, as all their country has been taken that the jury were impressed with his the white abuses; there is, at times, a pinch away from them, whereas hundreds of audacity [and] bushmanship', among other in the narrative voice that perhaps does not cattle are taken away by whites and not a things. Amidst a conflict that was silenc need to be there. But given the subject mat word about them. ing languages, there was room enough for ter, this is understandable. Frontier Justice some clashing bush myth to take hold, too. At many points in this fine, scholarly tells us that the bloody clash of two alien While relating the thefts, adventures, and harrowing book, the darker events of peoples began in ignorance; it also shows hardships, violence and loss, Frontier Ju stice Australia's pa st intersect with happier, us that understanding and the rule of law also documents the improbable beginnings more familiar myths. Some of the cattle took far too long to impose themselves on of a more genteel life: the description of the duffers and bushmen were perhaps worthy the scene. Borroloola Municipal Library-housing over of an Errol Flynn movie. One of the men Frontier Justice documents the Gulf 3000 volumes of classics, science and litera well known for violence towards blacks country history to 1900. A companion ture and on loan to members from all parts of was, it transpires, a fine bushman and work will continue the story to 1950. • the Top End-is a charming and unexpected veteran of the Boer War. Was he a bronzed vignette. Those of us who sweat to travel soldier-hero or just a vicious bastard? Luke Fraser lives and works in Canberra. across this country in four-wheel drives today might pause to consider forebears who might have ventured forth with a copy of Great Expectations in the saddlebag. Frontier Ju stice does not shy away from painting these human complexi If O~l'{ I'D L..ISiE.NE:.D \o ties, and is the better for it. But for all Ml/, MOIHtR, AND MV of its catholicism, it is the wars between LIFBSi'(L6 &uf R OBERTS DEVOTES SEPARATE chapters to each of the different regions of the Gulf country and, through a large selection of police reports and other documented and oral histories, relates the stories of how justice was dispensed on each of these frontiers. He suggests that a good portion of the Aboriginal violence may have been in retaliation for the theft of women-'lubras'-by white men. Time and again the book recounts the work of whites organised into groups- 'vigilance parties'-for the purposes of 'dispersing' Aborigines. There are chilling accounts of ------~M~~ dawn raids on sleeping Aboriginal camps. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 35 booh:2 Sara Dowse Sensitivity and ski II Unbroken Blue, r ~ll1 Borric. Pandanus Books, 2005. I 'iBN 1 740 76129 4, RRP $29.95 Remnants, N igel Featherstone. Pa ndanus Books, 2005, JSIJN l 740 76 130 8, RRP $29.95 P.DAND< Boo.,, opecating unde< the and in each of their homes she's subjected For reasons that become clearer as aegis of the Research School of Pacific and to a form of neglect or abuse. Still, at the the tale unwinds, Mitchell, outwardly Asian Studies at the Australian National core of Annabella's misery is the initial the picture of unassailable rectitude, sud University, has a new imprint-Sulli desertion. She cannot, will not, accept denly and secretly buys an airline ticket van's Creek. The man behind this is Ian that the mother who loved her would sim to Perth. There he locates the black sheep Templeman, one of the real movers and ply walk away and leave her to her fate. of a brother who has been kept at a conti shakers in this country's publishing. As Barrie is an intriguing writer, with nent's distance throughout their respec founding director of the Fremantle Arts an almost instinctual feel for the har tive adulthoods. Centre in 1972, Templeman established monious disposition of the elements As you'd expect, Lindsay Granville a press that brought to the fore some comprising her art. All the pieces fit. is the antithesis of Mitchell. His physi of Australia's most interesting writers, And though abandonment is often held cal state and circumstance proclaim his including Elizabeth Jolley, Nicholas Has to be the childhood experience with disdain for whatever his brother holds luck, A.B. Facey and Sally Morgan. the greatest potential for damage, and dear. He has no money of his own and Then, in 1990, Templeman took up there are some hideously raw moments no compunction in spending Mitchell's a key position at the National Library for Annabella, Unbroken Blue is not a when at last they meet. His clothes are of Australia. His brief was to develop its sob story-Barrie is too clear-eyed for outrageous. He flouts with hilarity soci publishing capacity, which he did with that. That said, and despite the sharp ety's injunction to age inconspicuously, aplomb for seven years. Soon after that concision of her language, the novel has and delights in taking the mickey out of came Molonglo Press, concentrating on a lovely, dreamlike quality, in keeping those who don't, Mitchell being top of poetry and fine art publication, and, in with its mythological resonances. his list. 1999, Pandanus. Since then Pandanus has Nigel Featherstone's Remnants is a Here's where I settled into enjoying produced material ranging over a multi more conventional offering. It is, like a comedy of manners, as this oddest of tude of cultures and academic disciplines, Barrie's novel, a journey narrative. But couples begin their trek back across the embracing biography, memoirs and fic while Unbroken Blue could be classed continent towards their childhood home, tion. Now, with the Sullivan's Creek a Bildungsroman, examining poetically stopping at several points on the way. But imprint, it's pushing further in that direc one girl's passage from childhood to Featherstone's novel plumbs deeper than tion, spotlighting new writers mainly adulthood, Featherstone's novel is a solid comedy, and by the end a more complex from the Canberra region. exploration of age. Moreover, in Rem relationship between the two brothers Of the two whose work is reviewed nants we find a finely honed perception of has been revealed. Mitchell's past trans here, Jan Barrie has published with Tem the social environment which, owing to gressions are much harsher than either pleman before. Her first novel, Verge, its character, is approached only tangen he or I supposed. Yet his complicity in appeared in 1998 as one of Molonglo tially in the Barrie book. Lindsay's fall from grace is what he must Press's exquisite pocket editions. Unbro Remnants opens with septuagenar swallow before he takes off on his final ken Blue, a more ambitious undertaking, ian Mitchell Granville, a former Sydney journey into the unknown. gives greater scope for her talents. The barrister, knee-deep in loneliness. When I liked both these books a great deal. narrative, held within a string of briet his wife of many years died, he left the Each in its distinct way is written with tantalising, yet lyrical chapters encom bustle of the seaside suburb of Manly, sensitivity and skill. So thanks, Panda passing multiple perspectives, is essen where they spent his retirement together, nus. May you and your authors thrive. • tially her version of the Pleiades myth, and repaired to the house he grew up in. brushed off, polished up and shaped with A huge, cold, forbidding Blue Mountain Sara Dowse is a novelist, storywriter and her poet's touch anew. edifice, Bellstay Green is as unlikely essayist. Under her leadership the first In Barrie's retelling, the focus is less a place to overcome depression as you women's affairs section of the Prime Min on the lost seventh sister, and more on could find. And so it is that, in retreating ister's Department, established in 1974, her daughter, who is abandoned when her to the womb of his childhood, Mitchell became the Office of Women's Affairs, mother disappears. Annabella's plight is leaves himself open to some gremlins now the Office of the Status of Women. to be bounced from one aunt to another, from his past. She lives in Sydney. 36 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 books:> Kiera Lindsey Dealing with old discontents The Best Australian Stories 2004, edited by Frank Moorhouse. Black Inc, 2004. ISBN 1 863 95245 4, RRP $24.95 The Best Australian Essays 2004, edited by Robert Dessaix. Black Inc, 2004. IS BN 1 863 95237 3, RRP $24.95 A , THE NEW Em Ton o f Th' Conscious that m.any published essays collections provide the opportunity to lis Best Australian Short Stories 2004, in Australia began as public lectures, ten to a range of contemporary voices and Fra nk Moorhouse had the task of read Robert Dessaix, the new editor of The seek connections and contradictions. ing through 600 stories to select 27 for Best Australian Essays 2004, expresses a In the final section, historical pieces publication. He says that never before desire to revive the voice of 'the amateur'. are grouped together with more imme has he been 'exposed in su ch a short Dessaix contrasts 'panic and seriou sly diate, 'hard-hitting' journalistic pieces time to such fi ne writing and such inflam ed passions' with the attitude of concerned with detention centres, the intriguing and venturesom e stories'. Of the personal essay and its preference for environment, education and Austral those selected, six are from previously 'imaginative refl ection' and 'tentative ian-Indonesian relation s. In between unpublished writers. In an environment speculation'. Essays, Dessaix suggests, these pieces, Dessaix has spliced fur where Moorhouse fea rs the short story reveal the subtle working of the m ind. ther contradictions: essays which don't has been rendered 'sub-economic', this Orga nised into three categories quite fi t anywhere, but which, it seem s, suggests that the genre is still capable Mem ories, Arts and Artists, and The the editor simply liked. With a pref of surprises. Wider World-Best Essays has a curi erence for loose structures and even The anthology works partly because ous structure. Slightly bitter pieces looser definition s, Best Essays 2004 is of Moorhouse's decision to arrange the such as Herself-Bille Brown's m em ory at its best expansive and open -ended, stories in a way that 'loosely follows of accompanying a dying screen star and at its worst, as one reviewer sug the organ ic order-from stories of youth on one of her final outings-and M .J. gested, 'perversely ephemeral'. through to stories of ageing'. The book Hyland's sardonic biographical reflec Determined to give the short-story offers a range of human experiences, tions on genetic m etal illness in On collection a good 'sh aking down', from the awkwardness of adolescence to Becoming a Mormon for a While and Moorhouse was willing to publish the despair and resignation of old age. Other Madnesses, sit awkwardly next first-timers on merit alone, suggesting Among the collection, two first-tim to Chris Wallace-Crabbe's genially that the walls of Australia's publish ers stand out: N athan Besser's Letter to cantankerou s Bed-riding, and Mind, ing industry are no longer unscalable th e Drowned and Alli Banard's Finding Body and Age, in which Donald Horne or impenetrable. Similarly, Dessaix's the Way Hom e. With a sen se of forebod explores the paradox of the body simul rejection of 'table thumping', coupled ing, Besser parallels the waters rising taneously carrying and holding captive with his attempt to look for w riting around a house w ith the breakdown of a the self it loves and loathes. that persuades through reason and good relationsh ip. In contrast, Banard' work J.M. Coetzee m a kes another impres humour, also indicates a new way of is a terse tale of a country girl returning sive appearance w ith his 2003 N obel dealing with old discontents. home, capturing the atmospheres of the lecture, He and His Man, which recasts If Moorhouse's style suggests that neglected bush and its forgotten peo the relationship between Robinson the walls can be scaled, then D essaix ple. The story ends with the Australian Crusoe and His Man Friday from the has worked on the assumption that the m otif of the clattering screen door. perspective of Crusoe's ambivalence to walls them selves are redundant. Pre Erin Gough's Jump and i.j. oog's the Friday's anthropological observations tend they don't exist, Dessaix seem s to american dream will appeal to those who of his 'civilisation'. Nicholas Shake dare, and you can walk right through relish rich prose. Gough writes of 'salt speare's Somerset Maugham off ers them . It is an attitude that m ay well and chips air' that is 'thicker than pub tight, bright prose very much in keep seem provocative to those who com smoke', while oog places his seething pro ing with its inscrutable subject. plain of bruised craniums. • tagonist in a derelict house in the middle Ann-Marie Priest explores the com of nowhere. Disenfranchised m asculinity munion between writer and reader in Kiera Lindsey read theology and gradu is a theme that reappears in Paul Mitch Towards an Erotics of Reading, the ated with first-class arts honours from ell's In the Shell, a story about two blokes essay that best captures what is best and the Australian Centre, University of Mel working in a service station on the Hume worst about these two collections. If, as bourne, where she is completing a post Highway, and what happens to one when Priest suggests, the act of reading is one graduate thesis on the Hume Highway. the other decides to shoot himself in the where we 'listen in utter silence ... to She is also project officer of the Develop head. These are bleak tales, snapshots of the deepest, most serious, most cher ment of Australian Studies N etworks in people on the edge. ished thoughts of another', then the Best h donesia project. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 37 books >~ Peter Pierce Deep down under Freud in the Antipodes: A cultural history of psychoanalysis in Australia, Joy Damousi. University of New South Wales Press, 2005. l ~BN 0 868 40888 3, RRP $65 l ms NOVEL Double- Wolf 119911, Bci•n history of psychoanalysis in Australia. "cure" or immediate alleviation is prom Castro brought the story of one of Sigmund There are illuminating details of wider ised, looms large in the new millennium.' Freud's most famous patients, the Wolf social history. Despite the unprepossess Many pathways are constructively fol Man, to the Blue Mountains. Throughout ing introduction-'The auditory self in lowed in this book. Damousi examines his career, the poet Alec Hope was alert the age of modernity'-Damousi analy attempts to reconcile psychoanalysis with to aspects of Freudian psychology. In one ses how, 'as with the practice of psychoa socialism, with anthropology (for instance poem he conceived of individuals as 'wan nalysis, radio established a relationship in Geza Roheim's work with Austral dering islands', while in his criticism he between the speaker and the listener, in ian Aborigines) and with feminism. In a borrowed Freud's notion of 'dream work' ways which could be both intimate and less rigorous or academic fashion, Freud to explain some of the generative processes therapeutic'. She also discusses the rise of ian ideas permeated the discussion, from of his poetry. Neither author appears in Joy the 'talkies' and of the telephone, which the 1930s, of the importance of the 'emo Damousi's fine and welcome study, Freud became so vital to business communica tional life'. Summarising this spectrum, in the Antipodes, although she does trace tions from the 1930s. Damousi writes that in the inter-war years the influence of Freud's theories on visual The historical sweep of Freud in the 'the confessional as a form of listening artists, especially in the 1940s. Antipodes begins with Victorian notions began to appear in the popular media, and Damousi (whose book's range is more of the causes and right treatment of in some disciplines like anthropology a inclusive than its title suggests) begins insanity. Physical methods were applied, focus on the auditory began to emerge'. by distinguishing between psychology, but some doctors-such as the Austral World War II highlighted psycho concerned with the conscious world and ian John Springthorpe-began to wonder analytical methods once more. William socialisation, and psychoanalysis, which how they could 'better access the mind'. McRae, Damousi contends, stereotyped 'privileges the life of the unconscious as Damousi aptly notes that before the advent gender roles and pathological deviations the way to understanding psychic life'. Her of Freud's 'talking cure', it was the autobi and was notably affronted by 'the perver intention is to relate the story of psychoa ography (and she might have added lyric sity of women in uniform'. In the 1950s, nalysis in Australia, particularly in intel poetry and fiction in the first person) 'that during the Cold War, she writes, '"nor lectual circles and within less sceptical expressed the inner life of the Victorians malcy" was perceived in a prescriptive sections of the medical profession. What both in Australia and in Britain'. way'. There was an emphasis on 'homoge she does not include, presumably because In the slow but sure development of neity and assimilation', in sex and politics. it might be thought of as hearsay, is the sympathy towards mental illness, the Perhaps it is the case that Damousi's grand penetration of ersatz Freudianism as far diagnoses of shell shock among soldiers of narrative of the history of psychoanalysis down as school playgrounds in the 1950s the Great War was crucial. The notions of in Australia is too much in lockstep with and 1960s, when introvert/extrovert, Freud's that were co-opted included those the broader account of political and social inferiority/superiority complex were ways of defence mechanisms, the repression of developments (and their pathologising). in which kids sought to understand and traumatic memories and the conversion of Damousi sometimes rehearses seem perhaps to brand one another. emotions into symptoms. So the ground ingly familiar material-on 'conscious Dan1ousi's introduction announces was prepared for the developm ent of psy ness raising', women's liberation and three grand themes: the 'gradual move choanalysis in Britain and Australia, and Freud-but does so responsibly, with an through the 20th century in both medi for its gradual institutionalisation. But eye on general and maybe younger read cal and general terms to concentrated not without resistance: one Broughton ers for whom these tales may be a novelty. listening'; the appropriation of Freud Barry triumphantly noted that the use of For all concerned she writes plainly, even ian thought for 'different temporal and the drug Cardiazol to treat schizophrenic handedly, without stylistic flair but with cultural reasons'; and the way in which patients with epilepsy doomed psychoa unflagging attention to the complexities of Freudian theories have been used 'to nalysis. Its adherents, he gloated, 'are left the business. Damousi is to be saluted for shape the idea of the "self" in modern swirling in their own mephitic vapours'. Freud in the Antipodes, as is UNSW Press society'. The movement of the book is Rhetoric apart, the issue was a vital one, (even at $65 for the paperback). • chronological. The narrative is punctu and Damousi returns to it in her conclu ated by pen portraits of leading figures sion: 'The threat to psychoanalysis by the Peter Pierce is Professor of Australian Lit practitioners and controversialists in the pharmaceutical solution where an instant erature at James Cook University, Cairns. 38 EUREKA STRE ET JUNE 2005 books:5 Robert Hefner Heart cuisine Food for Thought at Manning Clark House, edited by Sandy Forbes and Janet Reeves. Manning Clark House, 2005. ISBN 0 958 16341 3, RRP $20 M ANNmG CLARK Hou JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 39 ~t...... f'\" 4 'ij,'~t ...lo{l4.t ...... 1 ~ \ \1 .. ·11• .... t..:lt\1 ,,i< 1\ books c. Kate Stowell On the front line Absurdistan, Eri c Campbell. Ha rpcrCollins, 2005. I ~ B N 0 732 27980 l, R ill' $29.95 E RHCN CORReseONDONT E'ic c ..n p" in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. 'It is a the months during Russia's economic bell is the first to admit that 'most jour 24/7 existence and you can't relax on your devastation in the late 1990s are delight nalists have a book inside them and some days off,' Campbell said from his compar fully picturesque. 'Hundreds were danc believe that's the best place to keep it'. atively peaceful home in Sydney. ing in a miasma of heat and sweat that Keen to avoid cliches, Campbell has pro In Absurdistan, the reader travels extinguished the -10 C draughts blowing duced, in his first book, Absurdistan, an with Campbell as he arrives in the former through the cracked windows ... young adventurous and personal tale of life at the Soviet Union with only a stack of news women in bizarre rctro space-age cloth journalistic front line. clippings and a Russian-English diction ing promenaded through it all in what From 1996-2003 Campbell was the ary. It may take a few months, or in this was apparently an organised fashion show only ABC reporter assigned to cover Rus case, chapters, but the reader slowly sees .. . there was an end-of-the world feeling.' sia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia Campbell's passion for reporting develop But Absurdistan is not without its crit effectively one-third of the world's total during his first international posting in ics. A week before the book was launched, land m ass. Working in tandem with a Moscow. He admits that the job is an all ABC TV's Media Watch panned the book, cameraman, Campbell covered som e of consuming, obsessive affair that cost him exposing one of Cam pbell's sources as a the biggest international stories of the a marriage and meaningful friendships. fraud. While reporting from Afghanistan, last decade: the rise and fall of Boris 'If yo u weren't covering the m ajor Campbell sought expert advice from a Yeltsin, the Chechnya crisis, and wars event, like wars, you felt left behind ... disg raced former US Green Beret, Jack I'd reached a stage where I no Idema-a man infamous among media longer thought it strange to circles for selling bogus footage of terror leave a wife and baby to go to ist training camps to Western journalists. war,' he writes. While Campbell admits that trusting Despite working as an a con man for factual evidence was not international correspond ideal, he told Media Watch that the usc ent for more than five years, of Jack's commentary in his stories was Campbell was thrust into not intended to be misleading. the broader media spotlight 'In war zones, the people you glean in 2003 when his camera information from are very often mass m an and friend Paul Moran murderers, rapists and thieves ... on that became the first Australian seale dealing with someone convicted casualty in the Iraq war. The of business fraud in the US eight years devastating bomb blast pro earlier wa s not something to be unduly vides Campbell with som shocked by,' he said. bre bookends to his story, In Absurdistan, Campbell writes of but also lends gravity and a his doubts about Jack and the dilemma sense of humanity to what is he faced in constructing the story: 'It a compelling read. was tempting to simply dismiss Jack as a The standout feature fantasist and a con m an. After a couple of of Absurdistan is that the uncomfortable days, I decided that it was story is about more than the safe to go ahead with the story-the foot craft of journalism-Camp age was just too good to ignore.' bell's vivid descriptions also With the benefit of hindsight, Camp serve as an empathetic sur bell is more pensive: 'Jou rnalists always vival guide for any person get things wrong. Only dishonest ones suffering a fish-out-of-water say they don't.' feeling. While not overly Such insight provides the reader with laboured, his astute descrip a sense of the perils of working as a jour tions of decadent Musco nalist in a war zone. In one of the more vites, or Novi Russkis, in extraordinary anecdotes, Campbell tells 40 EUREKA STR EET JUNE 2005 poetry: 3 Diane Fahey how his colleague hid forbidden camera tapes inside the metal casing of a flak jacket to dodge inspection from merci less Taliban cu stom s officials. Another amu sing aspect of the story is how Campbell compares life in Aus tralia to the former Soviet Union on his holiday breaks. He recalls being Rock Pool Ramble amazed at how Australians complained about radical social change in Sydney over the past ten years. Additionally, The children are the scholars-periwinkles he is surprised that despite the constant and limpets lifted, named, set back on basalt, stream of international news stories, the warreners closed like trap doors on upturned Australian appetite for current-affairs sea-snails: we score sand mazed with their journeys television, and indeed, ratings for news programs, is waning. and moon snails' finer tracks. The watery click 'There is a theory that there is a "war of soldier crabs echoes beneath our feet- on terror" fatigue/ he said. 'Straight an army of knitters in tide-swept catacombs. after September 11, people wanted to know what was going on in the world but On all sides, a surrealistic feast now they are tending to retreat to their plasma TV screens to watch rubbish. for the eyes, if not the gut: cat shark eggs, 'I've never seen Desperate House and eggs of the sea-snail in aspic sausage; wives, but people say it's very good.' ghost-shrimps on a bed of sea lettuce. Campbell is sensitive to this and also Sea-apples might tempt, but for their nickname: to the personal strains of living far from 'dead man's hand'. On a lacquered table, home. There is a personal undertone to Absurdistan as Campbell recounts feel holdfast plates drip with bubbleweed garnish. ings of bitter homesickness, loneliness, personal injury and love. Curiously, for enthusiasts of Silk Road history, despite the title Absurdis tan, there is little m ention of the -stan countries them selves-Uzbekistan, Kyr gyzstan and Kazakhstan . Campbell said that as a first-time writer, it was a tough Easter Monday editing decision to trim the book to 334 pages. I set forth into a day that offers more 'My publisher felt that I'd prob than could be hoped or bargained for: a seamless ably described enough shoddy Soviet compact between waves and mist and sunlight; architecture, Lenin statues and dingy nightclubs/ he said. 'The thing about children freed by dancing water to be the Soviet Union is that while it is an utterly what they are-or charmed sprites infinitely fascinating place, because of with starfish hands. Strollers pause at rock pools Communism many things, even though showcasing ghost-shrimps and turbo snails, miles apart, can look very similar.' limpet pyramids on long-cooled lava. Absurdistan is a thrilling, emotional page-turner. While there is no doubt that Campbell's account is an absorbing and A girl dressed in yellow throws bread to gulls important text about the craft of journal with sun-fringed wings, drab underbodies. ism, it also will evoke an empathy with I rest, hearing sandals crunch on gravel, any reader who has been lost or confused voices from each threshold of life meeting in an unfamiliar land. • in air, the sea's unconstrained surge filling Eric Campbell is now the host of ABC the estuary, beating like blood, like blood. TV's Foreign Correspondent. Kate Stowell is a final-year journalism student at RMIT University. JUNE 2005 EUREKA STREET 41 books: 7 Madeleine Byrne Sumatran reflections Semar's Cave: An Indonesian Journal, John Mateer. Frcmantle Arts Centre Press, 2004. ISBN 1 920 73 114 R, R RP $24.9.'i E NCOURAGW TO 'HARE hi' lite<· Such reflections sprinkled throughout in his work to scrutinise processes of ary secrets with a sharp-suited British the book are its greatest strength. Few thought and feeling as they form into atti diplomat, John are fully developed (little is heard of this tudes, motives and actions/ Heald says. Mateer admits theory following a bracing exchange with Whether reflecting the author's anxi that he finds a historian who recommends Mateer learn ety about being an Australian in Asia, it difficult to Dutch before embarking on this research), his heightened sense of self due to his trust other peo but in a world fu ll of instant experts, this Zen Buddhist practice, or his prickly ple's work. 'I reticence may not be such a bad thing. persona, Mateer's self-consciousness am forced into Semar's Cave is hard to characterise. ensures that there is little engagement the present, to On one level it follows a stranger-in-a with Indonesia's socio-political situ write in the strange-land trajectory. (The poet arrives ation, or the complex reality of Indo present tense/ in exotic Medan with its 'tropical, vol nesian lives. This is reinforced by the he says. 'This canic scent of the earth, its monsoonal decision to write in the present tense is why I am freshness and its spice of exhaust fumes', about events that happened seven years interested in travels to tourist sights such as Lake Toba, ago, which necessarily creates a sense of reportage, writ on to Java, and then flies home.) Along the dreamy timelessness. Towards the end ing that takes way Mateer encounters a range of English of the book, Mateer records his response the details of speaking expats and a few barely sketched to the Australian troops landing in East daily life and Indonesians. On another, it is a self-por Timor, while the title refers to an earlier personal experience as the evidence of trait of the artist as a young man. appeasement of the Suharto dictatorship unfolding history.' It is written in a deceptively straight by the Whitlam government, but these Readers would be misled if they forward style. Very little happens to the more political reflections are approached this account of Indonesia after author-narrator, or more generally, but presented in a similar style. Suharto's fall as journalism, or reportage. this stasis appears intentional: 'I don't While author Timothy Garton Ash has w rite to present an objective account or a DURlNG THE CONVERSATION With called his essays on European commu truth, but to interrupt norms of storytell the British diplom at, Mateer admits that nism a history of the present, Semar's ing, travel-writing or even history by giv he lacks faith in his authority to write. Cave is closer to a prose poem. ing more detail than opinion; real images This may be behind his decision to use In late 1998, Mateer left for Sumatra instead of my thoughts.' pseudonyms for certain characters. Two to become the inaugural writer-in-resi And yet Semar's Cave is highly opin years ago an extract from Semar's Cave dence at the Australian Centre in Medan. ionated (and frequently fi erce-white appeared in a literary magazine that Stricken by bouts of sectarian violence and Australians with their 'overstuffed, included a pointed characterisation of an the impact of collapsing economies across ungainly, monstrously pale' bodies have Australian poet. It is reproduced in the south-east Asia, Indonesia provided the a particularly rough time in the book). book, but cloaked under a fa lse name, stuff of history in the making, but none of Occasionally Mateer allows himself a which renders it m eaningless. th is is examined at great length in Semar's m ore visceral response, and whenever Semar's Cave is best appreciated for its Cave. Rather, the South African-born these unruly emotions- disgust, shame, lyrical reflections and vivid detail. Other writer says his reason for going to Indo anger, alongside desire for 'mythical Java cultures have been greatly enriched by nesia was a curiosity about the origins of nese prostitutes'-spill onto the surface, the willingness of their poets to engage Afrikaans, the 'kitchen Dutch', or Creole, the narrative is revitalised, but such self with the world around them through used in the Dutch East Indies. exposure is fleeting. extended pieces of prose. Even if Semar's 'This fascinates m e, because not only Critic Michael Heald says that Cave lacks the overarching ambition, or does it undermine the official h istory of Mateer's suspicious world view manifests ego, of Octavio Paz, or Czeslaw Milosz, it Afrikaans/ he says. 'The idea that Afri his South African background (he fled the is to be welcomed on that basis alone. • kaans was a language with its origins in country as a teenager, after experiencing a Europe, belonging to 'white Africans' 'state of emergency', and settled in Perth) Madeleine Byrne is a former SBS journal the Afrikaners- but it also reflects the and this is why he resists conventional ist. She is a fellow at OzProspect, a non secret history of the language.' ways of meaning. 'Mateer is at pains partisan, public policy think tank. 42 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 Playing God, again H "TORY WOULO HAY< H th" reigned as the audience grappled with the Verdi's early opera Nabucco is an allegory characters' names and real identities to of Risorgimento politics and the struggle the extent that one correspondent opined towards the reunification of Italy. Verdi's that the audience would call in vain upon more immediate struggle was with cen its recollections of student history to sort sorship, an issue he encountered through out the plot, which was an 'incongru out his life. Nabucco was his first 'hit' ous amalgamation of incidents, and the and the opera that opened theatre doors jumbling together of epochs and empires, for him outside Italy. Unfortunately for which even the license allowed to the Verdi and his librettist Temistocle Solera, lyric drama will scarcely justify'. this meant dealing with restriction By the end of the century Nabucco where, in England particularly, biblical had been overshadowed by Verdi's mature subjects were forbidden on the stage. The operas, and with its rehabilitation in the Lord Chamberlain's office was especially 20th century, its plot, concerning the virulent over the 'Old Testament opera exile and near massacre of Jews, invari permitted in Catholic countries', accord ably means Holocaust connotations as a ing to the eminent music critic Henry production requisite. Chorley, and an opera like Nabucco, he In David Freeman's new production for explains, 'must here be re-baptised for Opera Australia, the terms of reference we English are not so hard, or soft, as to are widened to include recent Middle East be willing to see the personages of Holy politics. A little of the 'jumbling together Writ acted and sung in theatres. Hagar of epochs and empires' that dogged Nino in the wilderness, Ruth gleaning among was at work again. Beginning with Fiddler Michael Lewis as Nabucco. Photo: jeff Busby the "alien corn", Herodias with the head on the Roof-ish costumed Israelites await of John the Baptist in the charger, are ing the approaching Babylonian army, it coped with the extraordinary vocal subjects of personal exhibition which all is with Nabucco's entrance that Freeman demands of the role-even going for broke thoughtful lovers of art in music must reveals his interpretive key. Nabucco is with the unwritten high C that crowns reject, on every principle of reverence and the mu tachioed, rifle-toting Saddam her famous cabaletta Salgo gia deltrono of taste, and from which the thoughtless Hussein of modern-day Iraq, formerly aurato. Michael Lewis's Nabucco was would recoil, because, perhaps, they are Babylon, and not much has changed. equally good, more incisive than opulent, not so amusing as La Traviata.' The succeeding acts, however, resort to but that only puts him up there with the The character closest to biblical iden telling the opera proper with a kind of great singing actors of the past. tity is the priest Zaccaria who resembles British Museum accuracy. Dan Potra's A far cry from 1842-when there was Jeremiah, so Nabucco was rechristened sets with aqua tiled walls, sculpture no operatic acting to speak of, the only Nino, Re d'Assyria for London in 1846 and costumes are reminiscent of ancient interpretation of the libretto required was with all the characters renamed, Zaccaria Babylon. Nabucco, now costumed in a the composer's 'musical' interpretation, becoming the High Priest of Isis and Stalinesque white dress uniform, is the and adding any further interpretation was the exiled Hebrews renationalised as exception, only if to make way for the considered redundant or even contradic Babylonians. This Nino guise was how opera's most dramatic moment, when tory. It may be this conflict that makes the opera received its Australian premiere he declares himself God and is struck for the furore over 'controversial' opera in 1860. As a further precaution against down by celestial lightning. Freeman has stagings that legitimate theatre with its offending the sensibilities of the Church blood rain down on the pristine uniform text only rarely attracts. of England's colonial flock, it was decided in a way that would make even the most Nabucco is also performed at the that, 'a sacred subject for the purpose of an excessive Jacobean dramatist sick. Sydney Opera House between June 29 and opera being justly obnoxious to most peo Musically, the opera wa finely per August 6. • ple, the incidents were ultimately ascribed formed. Full credit to Freeman for not to Ninus, asserted by Diodorus to have impeding his singers. Rosamund Illing, been the first king of Assyria'. Confusion in particular, as the villainous Abigaille, Michael Magnusson is a freelance writer. )U E 2005 EU REKA STREET 43 make the prostheses all limp. Habiba, noid Android, voiced by eternal English r with her hip-straining walk, is wonderful, malcontent Alan Rickman. whether primping shyly for a photograph What follows is a frantic ride across the or telling men in the bazaar that they universe as the Heart of Gold seeks out !flash in the pan should give her more in alms. The inter clues to what is, in essence, the meaning cut land mine and political footage seems of life. Their journey is narrated by Stephen contrived by comparison-Errol Morris Fry as the electronic guidebook The Hitch (The Fog of War) territory, and best left to hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which today Surviving in Afghanistan him. O'Rourke's art and best energies lie in remains one of the great narrative devices, enticing-or simply allowing-people to in movies or anywhere else. Land Mines, A Love Story, dir. Dennis act out their own complexity in front of his The problem is that what the old TV O'Rourke. The Afghan woman, mysteri intimate camera. show could barely jan1 into six half-hour ous behind her ice-blue burka, suspended -Morag Fraser episodes, this silver-screen production has somewhere between pathos and allure, is to abbreviate even further, making for an one of the sharpest images of the 21st cen obscure and often roughshod ride over the tury. That delphinium blue, still against a original ideas of the late Douglas Adams's background of war and carnage, has drawn Hitching a ride seminal 1979 novel. With Adams himself photographers in their thousands. Some of as a co-writer of the screenplay, it's not them may have read Edward Said's Orien with the original an impossible task. But whatever genius talism, may even have absorbed its cau survived that truncation is suffocated by tions against romanticising the exotic. But The Hitchhil 44 EUREKA STREET JUNE 2005 and the rest of us Earthlings a thing or the very lightest traces of people's lives something in common with him-a little two about the galaxy, is also refreshing the floating bits between people that are piece of Hitler in all of us. humour, animated with European simplic in turn as clear as crystal and mud. We For all that the film allows Hitler ity But unless you're an enormous fan of are not asked to understand the intricate his humanity, it can hardly be said to be the book, and you're writing a thesis on its machinations of each character's mind, sympathetic to him. It offers us a man various incarnations, this one is likely to but rather to realise that much of what we who was kind to dogs and small children, leave you unsatisfied. are is driven by physical impressions-and but whose proudest achievement was the - Zane Lovitt fleeting notions. genocide of the Jews. Winterbottom punctuates his 'songs' What is most frightening, and potent, with actual songs. Broken into its nine in the film (and most disturbing to Brave new worldliness 'suites' by the inclusion of live concert anyone who wishes to maintain pride in footage, 9 Songs does real justice to some humanity by excluding Hitler from it) 9 Songs, dir. Michael Winterbottom. Matt great concert performances-among them is its portrayal of the willingness of the (Kieran O'Brien) and Lisa (Margot Stilley) Franz Ferdinand, The Dandy Warhols, Pri people surrounding him to find, joyfully, are lovers. They share a common interest mal Scream and The Von Bloodies. Winter in his corruption a saviour from their in live music, drugs and sex. Maybe Matt bottom also continues his love affair with own responsibility for making any kind loves Lisa; it's a little hard to tell. But really Michael Nyman (and a good thing too) by of moral choice. This applies not only to it doesn't matter. including Nyman's 60th birthday concert fanatics like Goebbels and his wife (who Michael Winterbottom has made a film in the line-up. murdered their own children rather than with very little by way of narrative particu 9 Songs will bore many, offend hordes let them live in a world without Hitler), but lars, and as the title suggests it seems more and just not do it for others. But for my to those, like Traudl Junge, who chose only like music than your classic plot-appointed money it was lyrical and unpretentious-not to see dog lover, not mass killer. tale. Told in flashback, while Matt is visit brilliant, but brave in both form and content. The film ends with a documentary ing the Antarctic, 9 Songs sets its ground When Matt compares being in the vast white epilogue from Junge herself. For a long time, from the outset. Matt's voice-over frankly of the Antarctic to 'two people in bed-claus she says, she held herself blameless because states that he doesn't remember Lisa for trophobia and agoraphobia in the same place', she was naiive, apolitical, and not aware of what she wore or the jobs she had, but I was moved to watch bodies, in bed and out the extent of the horrors perpetrated by rather for the way she smelt and the feel of of it, grapple with that very notion. her fatherly employer-until, one day, she her skin. -Siobhan Jackson passed a monument to a young German And so we embark with the two char woman executed by the Nazis for her acters on an explicit exploration of just resistance to their crimes. The woman had that. We watch Lisa and Matt make love, been 22 when she was killed-the same really. And while there is no escaping the Choosing to see the evil age Junge was when she started to work reality of the physical acts we are witness for Hitler. At that moment, she says, she ing, it is neither titillating nor gratuitous. Downfall, dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel. Down realised that she could have known if she Something in the frankness of Winterbot fall recounts Hitler's last days, holed up had wanted to: the information was there, tom's camera strips it of any hint of the in his bunker as the Russians and Ameri but she chose not to see it. pornographic and instead allows us to cans besiege Berlin. Although the film If there is a little Hitler in all of us, if experience the physical manifestation of is of course a fictionalised or dramatised Hitler is part of human potential, part of an uncertain love. account, it is based upon Joachin1 Fest's Winterbottom, initially inspired by book Der Untergang (Th e Downfall: Inside Michel Houellebecq's sexually explicit Hitler's Bunker, The Last Days of the novel Platform, wondered why books could Third Reich), and the memoirs of Traudl deal with the subject of sex without shying Junge, Hitler's private secretary (Until the from the graphic, but that film, 'which is Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary, later far greater disposed to it, can't'. Well now, made into the documentary Blind Spot: thanks to Winterbottom, it can and has. Hitler's Secretary). Needless to say, 9 Songs is not the first The film has generated some film to tackle real sex on screen. Patrice controversy for its portrayal of Hitler as Chereau's film Intimacy caused quite a something approximating a human being, ripple when released in 2001. While less rather than an embodiment of pure evil, a juliane Kohl er, Bruno Ganz, Heino Ferch in Downfa ll. graphic, it was a good deal bleaker and the monster and a madman. In Downfall we sexual encounters were inextricably embed see a Hitler who is kind to dogs and small the humanity of the human, then our only ded in a narrative that meandered from sex children and who treats his secretaries redemption is to take responsibility for it to life to love to marriage to loneliness. with paternal affection. Such criticism ourselves. One must choose to see, rather But 9 Songs is more than just real sex. would suggest a preference for the depiction than to remain blind and complicit when It is also a breathtakingly simple piece of of Hitler as a figure of transcendental evil we face the evidence of all too human evil cinema. Without the weight of plot twists rather than as a human being. For if Hitler in the world today. and character expositions we are left with were human, then we too must share -Allan James Thomas jU N E 2005 EU REK A STREET 45 watching brief Unhealthy diets I 'M LOOK 46 EU REKA STREET JUNE 2005 Devised by Joan Nowotny IBVM puzzled Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 134, June 2005 ACROSS 1. Strong feelings expressed about the peculiar pit the Asian detested. (11) 7. Genuinely authorised products should initially fill the space. (3) 9. Slumbering, recite part of password or mantra. (7) 10. Leader of team with money in Russia is in strife. (7) 11. Ate vine rashly? No, it was done in all simplicity. (7) 12. Decide to do this crossword again. (7) 13. In Dr Morgan I see the difficulties I need to make arrangements for. (8) 15. It sounds negative, but tie it anyway. (4) 18. Run out of it and you're in 10-across! (4) 19. As an actor, he's covered in paint, mixed randomly. (8) 21. Miner takes dog, we hear, with some hesitation. (7) 22. Family relation with an unhygienic griminess! (7) 24. Migrant, perhaps, hauling belongings on ox-wagon. Sounds like Tom, the first wrecker! (7) 25. Make mistake at International Committee, for a start. How capricious! (7) 26. Was this a feminist book? (3) 27. Two actors, one with small part, or spare man in the cricket team? (5,6) DOWN 1. Passionate over loss of time in Shakespeare's forest. (5) 2. ACU or TAFE, for instance, but not primary school. (8,7) 3. Put rug down- under the plate, of course. (5, 3) 4. Let it serve to designate book. (5) 5. Bury free components; they can be a hindrance. (9) 6. Does bookie love to employ his wife, perhapsz (6) 7. Made in former French factory, it depicts big Noel with stray pet, maybe. (7,8) 8. Exhibits offerings. (8) 14. A different way to enter trip? Give me an explanation. (9) 16. Conciliates the protestors by changing places at table. (8) 17. Without hesitation, add a line to the spectrum, and the result is spooky? (8) 20. Could one relish being in such a plight? (6) 22. Body of scholars, persistent as a mule, perhaps. (5) 23. More pleasant to rest first at the French resort. (5) Th is subscription is: Your Contact Details: Gift to: (Please also fill in your own contact details, left) D New D Renewal D Gift IMrs/Miss/Ms/Mr First Name II Mrs/Miss/Ms/Mr First Name I Length of subscription: ~Su=rn=am=e======~~Su=rn=am=e======~ D One yea r (1 0 issu es for $70, $60 concess ion for [Street No. Street Name [[Street No. Street Name pens ioners, students and unemployed . Inc. GST. ) P======~ D Two yea rs (20 iss ues for $125, $110 concess ion. Inc. 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