AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW
JULY 200 I Genocide: An essay by Raimond Gaita Bitter Fame: Kerryn Goldsworthy on Charmian Clift Eric Rolls on Peter Timms's Making Nature Andrew Markus: Land Rights to Reconciliation Michael Kirby on Religion and Culture in Asia Pacific New poetry by J.S. Harry and Peter Steele Delia Falconer in New Zealand
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Art Monthly AUSTRALIA
IN THE ]UL Y ISSUE
Stephen \:aylor reports on the Yenice Bicnnale.
Hatched: Jan :\lcLean looks at what is coming out of the combined graduate show this year.
Deborah Clark on the studio tradition in the history of an art school.
ReYiews: / 'err .filii parl· from Taiwan; Tltt' t•ye .
Book RCYiews: Christopher Heathcote on Andrew Sayers' .-lustra/tan .·lrt and Suhanya Raffel
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~z=~ c:ozm S:" w-o mC ;ow o--C:: -n c> :::..,•.., c)>)> oei c· V>-1 --o,., ~_, V> )> COMMENT z 0 4 Morag Fra ser Open spaces --1 I
r-0 0 LETTERS () -< 6 Quentin Dempster, fohn Iremonger and Don Gazzard
THE MONTH'S TRAFFI C 8 Michael McGirr N o feath er in COVER STORY Publisher Andrew H am ilton 51 their caps Editor Morag Fraser 22 Prom ising the world Ass istant ed it or Kate Manton 9 fohn Ricl
I N ) UN c, 'not hn Au""li'n publishing ven tme places are available, with all the energy one can fo lded. muster. The Australian Review of Bo ol
E YNN's succESSOR was the Reverend Fred McKay. He was the man who organised the placement of the original stone. He was also the man who oversaw its removal, return and its substitution with another stone, offered as a gesture of reconciliation by the neighbouring Arrente people. So many stones, yo u might think- why should any particular one matter? In the final edition there was some correspond It takes a story to explain why. And some grace ence about historian Inga Clendinnen's review of and ease in the telling. As the film's co-writer, Andrew Robert Manne's extended essay, 'In Denial: The Stolen Dodd, remarked on the freezing Melbourne opening Generations and the Right'. The featured letter, night, to an audience including Aboriginal elders from written by academic and former Quadwnt magazine Central Australia, 'Reconciliation is something that editorial adviser Martin Krygier, was a model of the doesn't come easily.' kind of civil, trenchant and full discussion that is too You could see the com plexity of the story, and rare in this country of quick, adversarial reflexes. the strains of a reconciliatory process, registering on Reading it, you were left not just with a sense of the face of Fred McKay as he explained, through a the complexity of the historical and justice issues to marvellous, animated interview filmed just before his be addressed by all of us in Australia, but with some death at 92, how he cam e to understand why the stone confidence also that they might be resolved, over time had to go back. You could also see, on the faces and and with imagination and good will. in the voices of the Warumungu and Kaytetye people, Now, with the Review's closure, there is one less what the cost had been to them. place for the exercise of imagination, intellect and As Martin Krygier's letter did, the film made good will, or for writing of an extended, and reasonably space for thought. We need such spaces. • argued kind. That in itself is a reflection on the -Morag Fraser priorities of the culture we are building. But it is also Th e Sacred Stones was made by Albert treet Productions a prompt to take up such conversations, arguments in conjunction with Oxfam Community Aid Abroad. Watch and reflections and continue them in whatever other SBS for a television screening. It is reviewed on page 49.
4 EU REKA STR EET • jULY/AUGUST 2001 Jack Waterford Put your money in a sock
I T'' .cw m "'"'TO impo"ible to "P""c policy hom politi", new ideologies, and have rearranged the machinery of govern but when pure politics is driving the policy, rather than the ment to fit, but the Australian public have not fallen in behind other way round, it's time to get the money out of the bank and them. They still harbour expectations of state protection against under the bed again. the excesses or debacles of free enterprise. A big company goes bust. Thousands of people are thrown When I was a boy I was taught that it was both part of the out of work, most with less than their due in terms of super social compact and statutory reserve systems that the Reserve ammation and other entitlem ents. Suppliers and contractors Bank would not rescue a bank which went broke. I am now have to whistle for their money, even after rescue plans come told that not only is this not the present situation, but that, into operation. Shareholders do their dough. The company's strictly, it was not the system in the past either. Whatever the auditors, who, only months before, certified the company as legal relationship, does anyone really believe that a governm ent trading well, seem to escape the blame. Company managers, would let a bank collapse? Actually, not a few Treasury econo many of whom have earned massive bonuses even during mists would argue that it ought to, if only to link the risks that periods when their companies were insolvent, take a break from modern banks take with their funds to the profits they now the social scene, but do not appear to be suffering greatly, or make. But the practicalities, for a Treasurer seeking even expressing remorse. re-election, are something else. In what circumstances does government intervene? And if it does not have the mechanisms in place to detect and minimise B ODIES sucH AS THE Australian Securities and Investments potential disaster, what moral responsibility does it have to Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority those who are affected? (APRA) have not believed it to be their job to regulate closely The answer, it seems, depends on how many are screaming, any of the bodies under their control. Their approach has been how loudly, who they are, and whether there's a by-election soft regulation- the nudge rather than the whip. APRA, for coming up. There's certainly no evidence of any guiding principle. example, was well aware that HIH was in serious trouble, but Labor governments did not intervene in the Pyramid consciously decided not to intervene because it was afraid that disasters in Victoria, though there could hardly have been a its intervention might only make things worse. All the major clearer-cut case of battlers being hurt. When a multinational regulators, and some of the politicians, knew; indeed they knew miner 'restructures' its ownership of a declining mine in a rural that some other insurance and superannuation companies had, town, then walks away leaving the operation unable to pay and have, similar problems. Nor, strictly, have they lacked the workers their entitlements, nothing is done. When a textile power to do something about it: their decision to do otherwise company with the prime minister's brother on board is run into was a judgment call, in line with a philosophy that resists mar the ground, the outcry is such that government helps the ket intervention. They have done little about other aspects of employees and proposes- then progressively forgets-a national the background problem- including accounting systems which scheme to help workers in such a situation. A major national are becoming an international joke. insurer goes spectacularly bust, with thousands of folk missing There are still fairly sure guides to a business in which one out on their entitlem ents and lawyers facing a major loss of should not invest. Give points for appearances by the frontman income, and a national rescue scheme is put together. in the social pages, the gap between his age and that of his wife, Of course, out in the boondocks, hundreds of small the number of flash cars, aircraft, restaurants and rural retreats businesses go broke every day, but because they fail to make he owns, the depth of the carpet in his office, and the number up a critical mass of voters, nothing whatever is done. In some of flattering references in the glossy business magazines. Add cases, of course, the ventures were of their nature highly extra points if his company has a punctuation mark in its title speculative. But in other cases, people left in the lurch have or if it is involved in IT, communications, or promotes a concept reason to feel they have been misled, not only by the owners one cannot explain to one's mother. Extra points for having and managers, but by the watchdogs appointed to protect their gone to Cranbrook or having James Packer or Lachlan Murdoch interests-the auditors and the regulatory agencies. as an acquaintance, or being prominently engaged in commer At issue are questions not only about what the watchdogs cial sponsorship of sport. A generous gift to a political party were doing but how well they were set up or equipped to do the virtually clinches one's fate-or the public's. • job that the public seems to expect of them. Politicians and bureaucrats on both sides might have embraced and implemented Jack Waterford is editor of the Canberra Times.
VOLUME 11 N UMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 5 LETTERS
Eurelw Streel welcomes letters from its and associ a tes or exacerbat ed some readers. Short letters arc more likely to difficulties with your enemies, but you ABC drama I be published, and all letters may be edited. knew I wanted to expose the political Letters must be signed, and should include bastardry surrounding the ABC. You r late From Quentin Dempster a contact phone numbe r and the writer's and self-se rvin g attempt to repudiate the Mark Armstrong's attempt to repudiate my name and address. If submitting by email, book is just sill y. book Death Struggle (Emelw Street, Ju ne a contac t phone number is essential. Quentin Dempster 2001) is too jesuitical by half. Address: cure [email protected]. au St Leonards, NSW Mark assisted most generously through hours of interviews and checking early draft chapters relevant to his role as chairman of ABC dram a II the ABC (1991- 1996). He did express con cern about some of the warts I wanted to From john Iremonger, Publisher, Allen etJ expose in my warts-and-all account and Unwin through his constructive criticism an d I ca n well understand Mark Armstrong being advice I emphasised the positives and disconcerted by Quenti n Dempster's adjusted the tone on some of the players account of the ABC from the arrival of and events. David Hill to the arrival of Jonathan Shier To now claim, as he docs, that there (' Upping the Aunty', Eureka Street, June were no power-plays at the ABC of any 2001). To have your stewardship of an great significance or within the context of a ungainly beast like the ABC exposed for all struggle for the survival of non-commercial to see can 't but be painful. public broadcasting in Australia is just not T he blurb did not claim to expose 'mis Except ... I know that Quentin gave credible. deeds'. But it did claim and does expose Mark access, before publication, to what he I would have thought an ABC Board 'political malice' towards the ABC from the wrote of direct relevance to Mark's tenure moving to dispense with the services of a named dangerous political animals over as Chair of the ABC. I was present with managing director like David Hill at the the last 15 years of the ABC's existence. both of them when we discussed the inten height of public controversies abou t back Mark defends Brian Johns as a good tion of the book. At no point did I say that, door sponsorship, erratic management, our bloke but conveniently skates over the as the publisher, I 'only wanted a blow by move with equity partners in to the pay TV context of the dispute over the sale of the blow accountofwhathappcnedin the board business and the financial troubles of our Gore Hill site in Sydney, w hich was the room '. For a start, this would have led to a commercial satellite service was a power potential destruction of ABC television as a very lim ited (a nd less interesting or useful) play in anyone's langu age. Don't take my production h ouse. This concern is even book, and whole chapters of Death Struggle word for it. David Hill himself says in the greater now under Jonathan Shier's manag would never have been written. What hap book (a claim denied by Arm strong) that he ing directorship. pens in the boardroom of a major public was sacked through the interference of then Mark ignores, again con venien tly, an institution like the ABC is very largely the Prime Minister Paul Keating. entire chapter questioning Brian 's role in result of pressures from outside, and Mark says the blurb's claim to expose the decimation of Radio Australia. Quentin always pursued the larger view 'misdeeds' by political animals at their most Mark, I'm sorry if the book has embar into ministers' bolt-holes and prime minis da ngerous is not backed up by evidence. rassed you with some of your other fr iends ters' offices, trade union confa bs, the press Study your ACUwd? Masters in Theology or At!Sl'KAUA N CATltOU (" lJNIVIK~ITY Religious Education online
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6 EU REKA STR EET • )ULY/ AUGUST 2001 and, indeed, wherever the purposes, fate for things outside the defined scope of work, and tribulations of the ABC were battled just like a builder claiming 'extras' on a over. building contract. Common sense even MELBOURNE So Death Struggle is much more than tually prevailed as sen sible clients realised UNIVERSITY PRESS Mark acknowledges. It deserves to be judged that you get what you pay for, although fees by larger criteria than those employed by a in general have never returned to the earlier SOLITARY wounded ex-Chair who, incidentally, is six per cent level. WATCHER sympathetically portrayed by a writer But did lower fees deliver lower building acutely aware of the enormous pressure costs? A CSIRO investigation in May last Rick Amor and his anyone in that position as h ead of one of year by Paul Tilley revealed, as one might Art Australia's most important cultural (and expect, that the quality of design and docu GARY CATALANO political) institutions is forced to bear. mentation influen ces builders' tender John lremonger prices, with builders increasing their prices Artist Rick Amor's pai ntings of Crows N est, NSW by up to 11 per cent to cover themselves for M elbourne now rival Tu cker's in their less complete docum ents. Tilley also found reso nance and authority, and have that the quality of design and documen see ped into the consciousness of th e False economy tation also influences the project time ge neral public as defining images of the allowed by builders, with reduced design city. From Don Gazzard input often resulting in projects taking The question, 'who benefits?', raised by longer and construction problem s leading This book focuses on Amor's works. It comments about the dairy industry in to time over-runs. In the end owners ended traces the development of Amor's art from his earliest years as an artist, to th e Eureka Street, May 2001 , is always asserted up paying con siderably more for their prese nt. by the free-trade ideologu es before the event buildings than they h ad saved on fees. but the aftermath is often so confused that Do we have to keep proceeding on such Hardback $89.95 their claim s perforce go untested. an ideologically driven course in so many My own profession of arch itecture areas of our society, with the promises of DRAGON SEED provides an interesting and little- known advantages that in m ost cases cannot even IN THE case-study in deregulation. For a great be properly evaluated after the dam age has ANTIPODES number of years the Institute of Architects been done? We will never know objectively had a Scale of Minimum Professional whether it was desirable to deregulate the Chinese-Australian Charges w hich its m em bers agreed to dairy industry, at enormous cost to the Autobiographies uphold. The basic fee for complete archi taxpayer as it turns out, and once done it is YUAN FANG SHEN tectural services was six per cent of the cost irreversible. of the building, and in a swings-and-rounda The example of architects' fees is one Yuanfang Shen offers us a fasci nating bout way this fe e scale was generally rare example where we are able to see the reading of Ch inese history in Australia, adequate; architects migh t lose a bit on one documented evidence that none of the as re vealed t hrou gh the auto job but they made it up on the next. And promised advantages have eventuated, and biographi cal writings of more t han even more importantly this fee scale per one su spects it is the sam e in other twenty Ch inese-Australians from 1886 mitted an adequate level of professional deregulated areas. to 1996. More specifically, it is about service to be provided. Don Gazzard how Chinese immigrants in Au strali a The introduction of trade practices leg Jamberoo, NSW and th ei r descendants have seen and islation in the 19 70s forced the Institute to portrayed themse lves. abandon this m andatory fee scale and Paperback $32.95 replace it with a Recommended Scale of To advertise in Eureka Street, Professional Charges. It was claimed that HOLIDAY the old system was a form of price-fixing call Ken Head BUSINESS and that competition would lead to lower on(03)94277311 or fees and in turn lower building costs, which Tourism in Australia would flow on to the community in lower 0419 548 658 Since 1870 rents and costs generally. JIM DAVIDSON AND For a while nothing much changed, but PETER SPEARRITI by the mid 1980s architects were being May 2001 Book Offer Winners forced to tender for work, and fees for com 0. D e Bias i, North Sydney, NSW; Tourism is now one of the biggest and plete architectural services fell as low as E. Bl eby, Mil lswood, SA; M . Good, most important industries in Australia. four per cent for a while. Architects did A lph ingto n, V IC; H . H erbert, Chats This is the story of how it has developed what you might expect: they tailored the wood, NSW; R. H orsfield, Launceston, over the past 130 years. work to fit the fees they were forced to TAS; K. M c Carthy, Kew, V IC; C. Hardback $69.95 accept in this competitive situation. In effect M c Ken z ie, Fitzroy, V IC; R. M c Phee, they did less work, drawings were less Vermont, V IC; G . N icho ll s, Box Hill, detailed, architects defined their services V IC; F.L. Pa rki nson, Treva llyn, TAS. www.mup.com.au more precisely and extra fees were claimed
VOL UME 11 N UMBER 6 • EUREKA STR EET 7 The Month us Traffic
that legend. They have regularly been seen which this news needed to be treated by No feather in as heirs to both the fighting and the larrikin The Da n's successors. Secondly, the tea m spirit. Indeed, Warnie' s preference for tim1ed seemed to adopt a mantra in India: 'embrace food might have made him feel more at the culture'. The players went out of their their caps home in the AIF than in the cafes of way to take an interest in Indian culture Marrickville or Footscray. The players look beyond the confines of their hotel rooms I rec kon (sa id Dad) that the like the great-grandsons of the original and training venues. They were acting as country's pes ts Anzacs: young, vital and white. But there some kind of collective Governor-General, Is this here wireless and these are differen ce . T oda y's profe ssional crick aware of the role of symbolic gestures in here Tests. eters seem to take themselves far m ore creating significance. -C.). Dennis seriously than the Anzacs of the original So it must have come as som e surprise 0 N T H EIR WAY TO England this year, most legend. And they are older. The youngest that their appearance in slouch hats has of the current Australi an Ashes team made players, Jason Gillespie and Simon Katich, caused such angst. The players were seen as a stopover at Gallipoli. There the cri cketers were both born in 1975 . The Waugh brothers helping themselves to the use of something were photographed wearing slouch bats. turned 36 at the start of the tour; their sacred. The offi cial website of the Austra lian The picture was worth a thousand words. co mrades presented them with walking Cricket Boa rd responded by creating an The fi nal volume of Charles Bean's sticks. It was a pointed gesture. online poll. Visitors were invited to have official history of World War I is simply a The Australian team has been increas their say: 'Sh ould future Ashes touring book of photos with captions. Among the ingly anxious-as the ga me of cricket has squads visit Gallipoli?' This is as close as most telling photos in the book is one of a become m ore commercialised and its such a site is ever likely to get to admitting cri cket gam e being played on the beach at players seen as more self-serving-to exploit a public relati ons fau x pas. Gallipoli, a week or two before Christmas, any opportunity to cast itself as larger than The Austra lians have reason to ponder 1915. The game was part of the subterfuge life. It knows that for many people it the use of headwear. The baggy green ca p which enabled the Anzacs to slip away embodies a unique cultural significance. It has been increasing! y sacralised. Once upon fro m the Dardanell es far m ore safely than is so keen to reinforce this image that it a time, a test cricketer gathered any number they had arrived eigh t m onths ea rli er. They tends to overplay its hand. Two images of these item s of uniform . They were left 78 18 dead behind. Manning Clark com linger from the Australian tour of India reissued fo r each tour, a practice widely ments that, once evacuated to Egypt, 'soon ea rlier this year. One is of players waking to blessed among organisers of sports auctions. the heroes of Ga llipoli were once again the find that news of the dea th of Sir Don Now, a cap is ceremoniously presented ockers of Cairo.' Bradman had been slipped uncler their hotel before a player's fi rst match. The whole It is understanda ble that the current room doors during the night. Special team team appears in them for the first fie lding Australian XI would want to pay hom age to m eetings indicated the reveren ce with session in each new test. They are a talism an,
8 EU REKA STR EET j ULY/AUGUST 2001 and I have som etimes wondered what kind The curtain was rung down on first-class which is cynical about politicians and the of crisis might face a player who actually cricket while many exchanged their bats political process. But could it also be that mislaid his cap. Or worse, a patriotic dry for rifles and girded themselves for war ... our Constitution is a flawed document, and cleaner wh o lost track of one. After the 1914- 15 season, we put away our that Australians tend to regard the federal At the same time, the Australian Cricket bats, pads and flannels until the sterner system it established as something we are Board makes commercial mileage out of the work was over. stuck with, a structure which in this sense cap. Their ofhcial website is called 'Baggy is accepted but accorded only a modest Green'. During any television broadcast, Later, he comments on the way in which level of respect? the viewer will be invited to that site in Australian troops used to dream about Many of those who have written or order to buy all kinds of m emorabilia. It's a escaping the battlefi eld for the cricket field: contributed to recent books about federation bit like Dick Smith's insistent use of the have rightly stressed the extent to which During World War I, when so many Aus Australian fla g on his expanding range of federalism was a dem ocratic movement, tralians were serving in Europe, England supermarket goods. It's an ersatz spirituality the Constitution Bill being endorsed by and her cricket pitches had a lure which that lends itself so easily to commercial referenda in all the colonies. But by the no-one but a cricketer could understand or exploitation. sam e token, it should be rem embered that fully app reciate. It will be interesting this year to see if there was significant opposition to the Bill Don Bradman can have more influence on I doubt that. Even if you hated cricket, in Queensland, Western Australia and, m ost the team's fortunes from heaven than he the prospect of standing at deep fine leg importantly, in N ew South Wales. Som e of did from Adelaide. Bradman is often pictured must have seemed a far lesser evil than the this opposition could be characterised as in one of his baggy greens, the cap and the w estern front. But Moyes understands that parochial, reflecting interests which saw m an seeming som ehow cast together. In cricket was an escape. If they think other themselves as threatened by the coming of his book, The Art of Cricket, Bradman deals wise, the Australian team is living a fantasy. the nation and a national m arket. with caps in his opening chapter: 'unless -Michael McGirr But there were also those who opposed the weather is dull, I think it advisable to the Constitution on dem ocratic grounds, wear a cap'. He says that catches are dropped arguing that delay would ensure that a by players who lack caps and he questions better Constitution could be achieved in the morality of bowlers who use caps to Federal case the future. The failure of N ew South Wales retain hair oil for them to rub into the ball. to approve the Constitution in 1898 had That's about it. Later, Bradman concludes A ccoRDTNG TO A recent survey, almost already led to the m eeting of premiers which that the world needs cricket 'more than half the population now knows that our had n egotiated som e minor democratic ever before to help it keep matters in proper first prime minister was Sir Edmund Barton. concessions: would not defeat in 1899 m ean perspective'. This h as been hailed as encouraging, that a future con vention would be forced to At the time of World War I, cricketers suggesting that the publicity surrounding travel further down the road to true demo had a different perspective. Johnnie Moyes, the centenary of federation has made som e cracy? These critics of the Constitution whose history of Australian cricket was inroads into our lam entable national have largely been ignored in publicity for published in 1959, is not an emotive writer. ignorance concerning our federal founders. the centenary, and yet their concerns are But among his carefully compiled statis It also confirms, however, that we still have very relevant to the current debate about tics, he muses briefly on the fact that the a long way to go. cons ti tu tional reform. War, which caused the cancellation of the It has often been remarked that Aus Perhaps the m ost articulate proponent Australian tour of South Africa for which tralians, unlike Americans, do not venerate of the dem ocratic cause was the Victorian h e had just been selected as a rookie, ended the Constitution and those who created it, politician, Henry Bournes Higgins, who had his test career before it had even begun: and this has been seen as refl ecting a culture been an important member of the 1897-98
VOLUME 11 N UMBER 6 • EUREKA STR EET 9 Convention. He is particularly remembered for his role in inserting into the Constitution the provision for industrial arbitration, with which, appropriately, he was to be associated as the trail-blazing president of the Commonwealth Court of Con ciliation and Arbitration, 1907- 1921. The Irish-born Higgins had only entered Catching ideas the Legislative Assembly in 1894, and his election as the tenth and last Victorian delegate to the Convention owed much to his being included in the list supported by I T's llAM ON A FRES H AUTUMN Saturday morning in Melbourne- only a little the influential A ge. As a relative newcomer over three hours before the bounce of the ball at the MCG. And 1000 people are to colonial politics, Higgins was struck by queued up outside the Town Hall to hear three speakers spend a couple of hours how most of his more experienced col chewing over the politics of water. leagues came to the Convention with 'fixed You read right. M elbourne. In the footy season, and people are turning out ideas as to what federation involved'. While to listen to a lecture. Surely the spirit of Alfred Deakin, father of federation and Higgins regarded himself as a federalist, he n evert h eless was fond of saying that believer in the occult, has come back to haunt us. His was the name under federation was 'a mere word', and that which a series of 17 lectures was convened by Federation Festival director, delegates should not be dictated to by the Jonath an Mills. They may well mark a sea change in Australian society. American precedent. For these were lectures about ideas, demanding of their listeners, providing From Higgins' perspective, there was no new perspectives on Australia's past and the future, blending science, ideological requirement for a federal legis humanities, society, commerce, sport and philosophy. The speakers came from lative structure to include a states' house, home and abroad, from city and country, from m any generations and many with equal representation for each state, ethnic and social backgrounds. small or large. Such a house offended against And more than 19,000 people came to h ear them (over 1000 a lecture!). If the principle of one-adult-one-vote and was these listen ers were anything like me, they went away with views challenged, therefore undemocratic; the offence was enhanced and changed. ABC Radio National is reporting unprecedented pressure heightened if this upper house had the power on their website's audio-on-demand recordings of the lectures. to refuse supply to a government which commanded a majority in the democratically There have been similar outbreaks elsewhere. A few weeks previously, about elected House of Representatives. The 1200 people crowded a Sydney concert h all for an evening of debate on the purpose of the federal exercise was to hand global environment. In recent years Sydney has also spawned a science-in-the certain specific powers to the central govern pub movement that is now, in various guises, drawing crowds all over Australia. ment, all remaining powers to continue being And writers' festivals seem to have sprung up everywhere like mushrooms. exercised by the states. Once this division How does on e account for such a return of the public intellectual, a figure of powers had been achieved, there was no seemingly anachronistic in our manic, commerce-driven world? I think it has a logical n eed to impose a states' house on great deal to do with the lack of vision displayed by Australia's current crop of the federal parliamentary structure. political leaders, particularly at the federal level. People are searching for some Most of Higgins' colleagues thought his concept, some overview of Australia, the world and their place in it, that goes opposition to the states' house unrealistic. beyond the value of the Aussie dollar and aping of the US. The Convention itself had been elected (or Perhaps it is also a sign of growing maturity, a demonstration that people in the case of Western Australia appointed) on the basis of ten delegates from each are concerned about the future of their nation. During the Alfred Deakin lectures, colony, so the principle of equal represen the listeners showed they were quite prepared to sit for hours and puzzle out tation was embedded in the federal process. quite complex information. The audience, young and old, seemed to want to They felt there was little hope of luring the work things out for themselves a t the grass roots, instead of depending upon smaller colonies into the federal compact their leaders to come up with solutions. unless that principle was respected in the That's just as well, for the list of serious issues confronting us is growing Senate. reconciliation and race, salination, global warming, the regulation of reproduc Higgins, on the other hand, argued that tion, the brain drain, the future of sport, the politics of water, global trade, New South Wales and Victoria had con genetic screening, interaction with our Asian neighbours, the impact of the ceded too much too soon, and that in internet, people-smuggling, drugs .. . All are long-term issues without simple accepting, without a murmur, the principle answers. Their resolution may demand altruism and a sense of community. of equal representation in the Senate, had One thing seems clear. Australians are thirsty for ideas. And any party significantly undermined their own bargaining position. He would have been which attempts to go into the upcoming federal election without a far-reaching interested to learn that when, 100 years and comprehensive vision for the future does so at its own peril. • later, a Convention was being planned, it Tim Thwaites is a freelance science writer. was accepted that equal representation of
10 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/A UGUST 2001 the states was no longer appropriate, and a to an imperi al war. It was not surprising, 'It doesn't worry me whether Mr Howard compromise fo rmula was adopted. therefore, that Higgins' double apostasy led is out of step with the community,' Dr Jensen Of the sm all colonies, South Australia to his losing his seat of Geelong in 1900. told reporters. 'The question is, is he out of and Tasm ania carried the Constitution by Yet this defeat ush ered in a new career step with God? I'd say to Mr Howard if he substantial m ajorities; so also did Western for Higgins. Ironically, the leading critic of were here today, please Mr Howard, keep Australia when belatedly given the oppor- the Constitution was elected to the fi rst reading your Bible, keep saying your prayers, fe deral parliam ent in 1901 as the rep keep listening to God.' resentative of the working-class electorate The prime minister tackled the com of N orth Melbourne. In 1904, although not m en ts the next cl ay on radio, saying it took a m ember of the Labor Party, he was a pretty brave person to presume to know attorney-general in the h is toric, short-lived the conclusive mind of God. Watson Labor Government. Two years later 'It is very important with diffic ult issues Deakin appointed him to the High Court such as this [reconciliation! that community and the Arbitration Court. leaders, including newly elected arch Higgins and his High Court brothers bishops, not take too narrow a view,' Mr found themselves increasingly faced with Howard said. the challenge of breathing new life into the Dr Jensen, apparently at hom e in the dead words of the Constitution: if the people media spotlight, made the cool riposte that were unable to act, the onus was on the he was not being presumptuous, he was Court to interpret the document written in m erely affirming the sovereignty of God. 1897-98 in a way that would cater for Cartoonists and commentators around modern needs. the country seized on the spectacle of an Higgins might well have seen his critique archbishop bearding a prime minister in his tunity. Queensland was more divided, but of the Constitution borne out by events. He den. Mr Howard, who bad a Methodist it shared much of the outlook of N ew South never doubted the wisdom of founding the upbringing but is not a regular church-goer, Wales, the largest colony, which was the nation. But, in our haste to do so, had we now has another archbishop to contend real stumbling block. So, in retrospect, the settled for second best ? Or had we m erely with, and one whose evangelical zeal assumption that it was the small colonies got the Constitution we deserved? prompts comment on public issues, not which needed to be appeased looks suspect. -John Rickard from a populist standpoint, but from the Higgins' other main criticism of the authority of Scripture. Constitution stemmed from its very nature Archbishop Je nsen represents the as a written document. Words could be very biblically conservative evangelicals of limiting, and be was always arguing the State of grace Sydney diocese, who derive their au thority case fo r maximum fl exibility: writing a via what they discern from the word of God. Con stitution in 189 7, they could not F EA RST H AT NEW Governor-General, Peter As principal of Sy dney's theological school, imagine what the needs of a later genera Hollingworth, may kidnap the public image Moore College, Dr Jensen has been respon tion might be. of the Anglican Church for the government sible fo r the fo rmation of diocesan clergy in He also foresaw that the apparently were last month allayed by the m edi a debut rigorous biblical scholarship. But the 'Moore dem ocratic referendum m ech anism for of a novice archbishop in Sydney. College fallacy'-as som e describe their am ending the Constitution could prove On his appointment in April, His Excel claim to possession of the absolute final diff icult to work. The requirem ent for len cy the M ost Reverend D r Pet er truths of those texts-has long foreshad support from a m ajority of states, as well as Hollingworth said he would put aside the owed schism fro m the rest of the Anglican of electors, once again imposed the fa lse accoutrem ents of episcopal office during Church. federal logic that he saw as having domi his term as h ead of state. But then the prime Sydney evangelicals believe that the nated the Convention. So, he was fo nd of m inister said he could keep his archiepis Reformation was compromised and theo h ypoth esising, a m assive n a tion wic\ e copal title after all. He went to sec the logical reforms truncated by various Acts of m ajority in favour of amendment could be Queen dressed in purple shirt and pectoral Parliam ent passed in England's Elizabethan vetoed by slim negative majorities in three cross. And the Archbishop of Canterbury era. Their task is to complete the process of sm all states. gave him a Lambeth doctorate fo r good cleansing the church and setting it up on a In fact, the di sm al tally of 'N o' votes m easure. biblical basis. over the 20th centurywa rarely the product The Anglican Church of Australia faced Dr Jensen's brother, the Reverend Phillip of such a simple dichotom y, but Higgins the perilous future of a broadly secular Jensen, has recruited more than half the was right, n evertheless, in identifying the public accepting the Governor-General's students at Moore Coll ege through his rigidity of the Constitution as a m ajor statem ents as the doctrine of the church. ministry as rector of a Sydney parish and problem . On 5 June, Canon Peter Jensen was part-time chaplain at the University of New Higgins' reputation as a political mav elected as the next Anglican archbishop of South Wales. Both bro thers were short erick was compounded by his opposition to Sydney. Two clays later at his first press listed fo r election as archbishop, but Phillip the Boer War in 1899. Many federalists conference he initiated a national political stood aside at the last m oment in favour of thought it entirely appropriate that the brawl, by offering som e spiritual counsel to his sibling. founc\ing ofthe Australian nation should be Prime Minister John Howard, to help him The iconoclastic Reformed Evangelical marked by a commitment of colonial troops say sorry to Aborigines. Protestant Associa tion (REPA) h as a
V OLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EU RE KA STR EET 11 publishing arm in Phillip Jensen's parish at approach is fair set for battle on issues h ea rd in N ew Jers ey where Barron 's is Centennial Parle This organisation regards confronting the Anglican Church in the uploaded on to the web. ecclesiastical law and conventions as som e 21st century. -Maggie Helass The elegant points being made by thing other than the word of God. REPA Robertson and, for Gutnick, Jeffrey Sher promotes a simple, congregational ministry, QC, provided enlightenment and entertain which is currently provocatively planting Chilling ment for the many lawyers, law students churches in other dioceses. and even socialites who came to listen. It is doubtful whether the new arch By clay two, it was a case of 'one in, one bishop will make any progress against the with sillzs out', as the court jammed to standing room tide which elected him- its momentum is J OHN HEDJ GAN holds many posts. A judge of only. Next day the 'court full' sign went up. towards maintaining Sydney diocese in the the Suprem e Court of Victoria since 1991, Robertson went back to 1848, when a Anglican Church of Australia. Indeed the he turns 70 later this year. court ruled that a libel occurred when a question is how much undue influence the When he graduated from De La Salle servant of the Duke of Brunswick collected Phillip Jensen pantechnicon will exert to College in Melbourne and studied law at an offending newspaper at the publisher's further isolate the di ocese. This radical group Melbourne University, neither h e nor office in France. Australia's High Court regards its association with fe llow Anglicans almost anyone on earth could have imagined also held that a Missouri court should hear as secondary to the task of evangelising the the internet. Yet here he is all these years a case of a Missouri accountant being sued world. Alliances will be forged on issues later, early in an almost balmy Melbourne for professional negligence for advising a such as lay presidency at the Eucharist and June, sitting in Court No.6 gazing down at NSW company that under Missouri law it no ordination for women or homosexuals. Rabbi Joseph Gutnick. Gutnick- mining would not have to pay taxes. This month (20- 27 July) the Anglican entrepreneur and lately President of the Not long ago the Prime Minister of Eire General Synod meets for its quadrennial Melbourne Football Club-had, according su ed the London Sunday Times over an session in Brisbane. Doubtless the urbane to his lawyers, been defamed by Barron 's, a article accusing him of lying to parliament. new Archbishop of Sydney will maintain weekly m agazine published in print and on The House of Lords found that the article gentlem anly relations with his brother the internet by the mighty Dow Jon es was protected by privilege that extended to bishops at the synod, but his presence will empire, owners of the Wall Street Journal. political information. In Robertson's view bring into sharp foc us the question of Sydney Gutnick claimed the article falsely this decision elevated 'investigative jour diocese's continuing presence in the implied that he had laundered money nalism as distinct from reporting journal Anglican Church of Australia. through Nachum Goldberg, jailed a year ism as equally deserving of protection '. Dr Jensen's initial position on govern ago for laundering more than A$40 million Robertson said that cyberspace publish m ent responsibility towards the more through a fak e Israeli charity. Gutnick ers should not be subject to the libel laws vulnerable members of society brings the denies ever doing business with Goldberg, of the 18 7 worldwide jurisdictions where forensic light of Scripture to bear on social laundering money, being Goldberg's cus defamation proceedings may be brought. (In justice. But the problem with the Jensen tom er, or buying Goldberg's silence. some of these countries the cutting off of position is that he belongs to that sub The question Justice Hedigan was being hands is the punishment for publishing libel.) culture of Sydney which believes that no-on e asked to decide was whether Gutnick could He added that having Mr Gutnick's case other than Moore College graduates have sue Barron's in Melbourne or whether, as heard in Melbourne would have the' chilling the proper understanding of Scripture Hypotheticals star and Tony Blair's friend, effect' of inhibiting the flow of ideas and required to interpret it. That doctrinaire Geoffrey Robertson QC argued, it should be information on the internet.
£ARL'{ fEC:.HNO ATTr M,oof2.-€ 12 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/AUGUST 2001 Sher's case was that, because the article was on the internet and could be read by subscribers in Victoria, his client, Mr 1 a e Gutnick, was defamed where he was best known. 'It is the plaintiff's contention,' he said, 'that for approximately 400 years the law has been that publication occurs when the third party to whom the material is published comprehends the material. 'To publish the print journal to five What's in a name people, two of whom were with National Mutual (now known as AXA ) and the AMP Society, two of the largest institutions L E G IV ING OF NAMES is a playful activity. But to realise how serious and involved in investing in Australia, is ... a effective is this play, we need only think of the controversy about the Stolen serious matter and would be actionable ... ' Generations. Or about Columbus' voyage to the Americas. The Jesuit Ignacio The internet publication went to J.B. Were, Ellacuria played with the linguistic possibilities of 'discovery', remarking that a leading firm of stockbrokers. the Indians n ever realised that they were lost. More seriously, the arrival of the Sher said the court was being invited to Europeans was less significant for discovering Indians than for uncovering the make new law-law which would ignore a violent and covetous character of European civilisation. Moreover, the celeb line of authority that stretched back to the ration of these events was really the covering up of what had really taken place. 16th century. Fr Ellacuria was murdered by the military in El Salvador in 1989. He said that the advent of radio, TV, faxes and telexes had led to a simple The unmasking of n am es, now almost a cultural tic, is wearisome when commonsense rule of law which had helped unskilfully played. But occasionally scholars, like John O'Malley, who has spent spread information. 'And what the rule has a lifetime on his chosen historical period, review names in illuminating ways. done is not to prevent the spread of infor In his recent book of lectures, Trent and All That, he reflects on the names that mation, quite the contrary. In this day and have been given to Catholic history in the Reformation period. age information is all around us, in every Protestant sch olars first described the period as the Counter Reformation, single possible form , but what this rule has to suggest that Catholic energies were deployed in trying to crush reform by done is to prevent, or have a chilling effect coercion and harsh discipline. Catholic scholars, who saw the movem ent begun by upon, the sprea d of defamation.' Mr Sher's Luther not as reform but as destructive revolution, eventually accepted the name. and Mr Robertson's uses of the phrase Other Catholic scholars preferred to speak of the Catholic Reformation, 'chilling effect' are clearly at odds. suggesting that Catholics remedied the abuses in the church which led to the Beyond the court, the discussion was of Protestant Reformation. The reform of clergy and spiritual renewal were carried defamation in cyberspa ce, with lawyers pointing out that a doctor in Canada had out by a renewed papacy, assisted by the Jesuits and inspired by the Council of threatened The Age newspaper and the ABC Trent. Protestant scholars, for whom the Catholic Church represented only over material which originated in South opposition to reform , were originally unenthusiastic. Africa. Law yers had visions of jumbo- loads More recent scholars, who have placed church es within their broader of documents and lega l eagles being trans cultural context, u se the name of Confessionalisation to describe the pressure ported at vas t costs across the globe to for inward and outward conformity found in the state and in churches alike. Canada. There is also an action pending by O'Malley claims that, while these phrases describe som e aspects of Catholic a Russ ian official involved in a controversy life, if used exclusively they use straight lines to draw a curvaceous reality. before the Sydney Olympics. If this goes They emphasise too much what prominent people and institutions did, and do ahead, where will it be heard ? no justice to the uncontrollable life of the spirit. The troika of papacy, council When Eureka Street went to press, and Jesuits, for example, often pulled in different directions. Trent hardly Justice Hedigan's decision had not been m entioned the papacy, which it wanted to reform. Popes resisted reform when given, but m os t observers were betting that, nepotism and other interests were at stake; the Reformation was originally whatever the outcome, this would be a case bound for a High Court appeal. marginal to Jesuits, whose missions owed little to the papacy or Trent. The -Kevin Childs Baroque flowering of Catholic art and spirituality was not guided from above. O'Malley finally commends a complementary n am e: Early Modern This month's contributors: Michael McGirr, Catholicism, which sees Catholic life in its local diversity and variety. a former publisher of Eureka Street, is the At issue in any naming of history, of course, is an assessment of the present. author of Things You Get For Free; John In showing that the Council of Trent was not as Tridentine, that the papacy Rickard is an honorary professorial fellow was not as reformed and that the laity were not as passive as conventional at Monash University and the author of wisdom claims, O'Malley undermines monoli thic accounts and ideals of the church H.B . Higgins: The Rebel as Judge and A us today. His advocacy of many names suggests that the relationships encompassed tralia: A Cultural History; Maggie Helass is in the church will never be captured in a single name, in a single order. • a Brisbane journalist; Ke vin Childs is media adviser to the Law Institute of Victoria. Andrew Hamilton SJ is a theologian and publisher of Eureka Street. V OLUME 11 N UMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 13 THE NATION SUZANNE EDGAR Tennant Creek and beyond L AST AucusT WH' " "'vc\Hng to Alice Spdngs, The deep pool is backed by sheltering hills; the I flew over Lake Eyre, at that stage still blue, immense area was an important trading depot for tribes through and shimmering. My plane also stopped at Uluru; out the Centre. It was here too that in the summer of black, watery stains streak Uluru-why does The 1896-97 Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen did the Rock weep? In Alice that evening, I walked down to fieldwork for The Native Tribes of Central Australia the dryish Todd River that passes through the town. (1899), one of the most influential books in anthro Here, groups of Aborigines sleep, sit about and chat, pological history. From 1936 the defunct station, part drink. School kids, joggers, couples with dogs and of an Aboriginal reserve, was a 'home', known as The backpackers on bikes were using the path along the Bunga low, and a school for part-Aboriginal children bank; in the sandy river-bed a cameleer tethered his from all over the territory; they had been removed camels, hoping for tourists. I set off for a spot of from their parents by officers of the Federal Depart bird-watching. m ent of Native Affairs. That year, Charles Perkins N ext morning I hired a bike and rode further out. was deli vered on a table in the former telegraph office. Detouring through rocky hills, I reached the telegraph In August, I was back in town by 5 o'clock to station established by Charles Todd in 1872. He catch the bus to Tennant Creek (Jurnkurakurr), SOOkm supervised the completion of the Overland Telegraph further north along the Stuart Highway and also once Line between Adelaide and Darwin, a boon for Aus home to a telegraph repeater station. A policeman tralia's communication with the world. The old escorted a clean, neatly dressed Aboriginal youth station's fenced-in buildings and outhouses are beside aboard the bus. the waterhole (not, actually, springs) for which the The halfway point of my journey was Barrow town was named. Naturally, the location appealed Creek, where there was yet another repea ter station. because of its permanent water. In a planned assault in 1874, Aborigines attacked the 14 EU REKA STRE ET j ULY/A UGUST 2 001 station's staH and property. For revenge, whole camps of the local Warumungu people). Grog War ( 1997), of them were shot down. The nam e Skull Creek, eight written about Tennant Creek by Abori ginal author kilometres south, commemorates the conflict. I had Alexis Wright, spells it out. been warned about possible racism at the Barrow Like any careful white-skin, on m y first day in Creek Hotel, which makes much of its Aussie 'char town I wore my white, fibre hat bought at the Cancer acter'. With the other white passengers, I used the Society shop in Canberra, and set off to explore the entrance at the side of the pub and was served at the main street. I had to curb m y curiosity because I stuck bar. The young Aboriginal passenger knew his place. out like a bandaged toe. Black faces predominated, H e presented his top half at a hatch in the front of the Aboriginal languages I did not understand were spoken building under a sign reading 'Staff Only'. Since the on all sides. I had the novel sensati on of being youth was not on staff, it seemed clear that he read one of a racial minority in my own country. Wangangu 'between the lines' of this notice. Several passengers Salutary. Not all the faces were friendly; som e attempted to deflect the insult by talking to him as were drunk. Many looked unhealthy. Som e In Warumungu country he smoked on the verandah . The situation recalled belon ged t o children wagging school. the people walk barefoot, the Aboriginal actor and author Leah Purcell's play, Jurnkurakurr now exists m ainly to cater for its Box the Pony. In it, the Aboriginal heroine laughs black residents, I was told, but I saw no black their leather soles uncut at trendies drinking coffee outside cafes in the city. shopkeepers. At least the shop windows were by thorn or flint 'Where I com e from ,' she says, 'if you're drinkin' not caged by the steel grilles that are so com - or brol VOL UME 11 N UMBER 6 • EU REKA STR EET 15 Aftercare Program. This arranges jobs for retired daughter. She is friendly with her neighbours, sells drinkers and sends them out to lecture and to help groceries to them, speaks their language and collects others on to the wagon. The friend I stayed with their art. managed the Anyinginyi Art Gallery and Cul Lunch over, we crossed a river and drove on to tural Centre; located near ACAC's clinic and visit the community. I was instructed in the protocol administrative offices, this complex contains for visiting a household: I must remain in the vehicle a gallery and wood-working and ceramic while my friend went to the gate; she would call the studios. She was asked to arrange weekday owner and wait to be invited through; only then might pottery classes for Aboriginal children but she approach the verandah. Again, she must wait to declined, on the grounds that they should be be invited before stepping up to discuss business. At in school at this time of day. Working in the no time did she expect to be asked inside the house. studios are a number of gifted artists, among Annette, who handles the community's art sales, them Japurula (Jimmy Frank Jnr) and Bidjara had requested the visit by telephone. We stopped out (Duane Fraser). Japurula, at 19, is the young side her house, my friend ready to distribute canvas est of the wood-carvers and learned the skill and oils and to buy art. This she would take back to from his father and uncle who are Warumungu be re-sold at the Anyinginyi shop where the mark-up elders and traditional owners. In November goes to fund ACAC activities. Annette, however, my friend, Japurula, and Bidjara took Wuwala disappeared indoors when we pulled up and did not (Spear), an exhibition of handmade, wooden respond to calls. So we went to another house where artefacts, to the Alcaston Gallery, Collins art was for sale and were welcomed by several women. Street, Melbourne. In Tennant's main street, They were sitting cross-legged on the verandah, the Anyinginyi shop sells paintings, jewellery, completing the decoration of coolamons and oil craft and didgeridoos, made by a wide range paintings and watched by several shy onlookers. of local artists. Profits are booming. The Despite the official nature of such visits, and the tourists speeding between Alice and Darwin good results that flow from them, my friend felt are keen, these days, to possess their own dot uneasy. She had brought the goodies, the new supplies paintings. This year, Bush Fnzits, an Anying and a bank-roll; but she said it felt a bit like the bad inyi exhibition celebrating women's art, will old days of hand-outs, the mirrors and the beads. tour Australia. I stood back, unsure of my role and unwilling to One night, my friend's book group came intrude. I was also experiencing shock. to dinner. All of them were idealistic, I know something of the ties which bind Aborig educated, white women. Like Christians in ines to their land and I had expected to find a harmony, the past, they have come to help Aborigines; an honouring of the country at this place. What with this difference: their 'mission' is secular confronted me was squalid. The dusty red earth had and they are not in charge. They are notable been trashed by the rubbish lying everywhere. White for the deference they show to their Aboriginal plastic bags, which from a distance I'd taken to be bosses. One woman was a linguist, saving and chooks, fluttered at fences and under bushes. Dozens teaching the five languages spoken locally. Sadly, she of deformed, disease-ridden dogs roamed miserably is being relocated to Darwin, following the removal about, apparently breeding prolifically. No doubt of bilingual education programs in the Northern expected to live off the land, they looked to be Territory. The International Save the Children starving. There were also skinny cats, and one plump Alliance report for 2000, Children's Rights: Equal pig, probably fattened on the abundant refuse. Some Rights~, argued that this breached t h e United of the colourfully painted cement houses had an Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; outdoor, covered area containing a tap, sink and Australia has been a signatory since 1989. One draining-board. There was a central, communal member of the book group is a botanist who does field ablution block. The walls of the buildings were work with Aboriginal women, recording the names smeared and grubby as were many people, as were of plants and their medicinal and nutritional their clothes. Friends who have travelled in the Centre properties. Another woman is a teacher, report similar conditions at other remote com another an artist. munities. (The Gurindji's settlement, Daguragu, the earliest to be set up, is evidently one exception.) A FEW DAYS LATER, with my friend driving the Land Through a doorway, that day, I glimpsed a room Cruiser, we set off down the Stuart then turned east with mattresses crowding the floor; through another, along a dirt road to the Davenport Ranges. An the flames of a small cooking fire, also on the floor. Aboriginal community, one of 600 such remote There were too many flies. And although it was only settlements in Australia, was our destination but our August, the easier time of year, it was extremely hot. Above: Bidjara (Duane Fra se r) first stop was at a cattle station, Kurundi. We bought Many of the older women had damaged eyes and scars Ri ght: )apurul a a pie from the rudimentary store and sat under a that looked like the record of blows. A sick, crying (Jimm y Fr,ln k )nr) shade cloth to have a cuppa with the owners' child had streaming snot and a heart-breaking wheeze. 16 EUREKA STREET j ULY/AUGUST 2001 It transpired that Annette is also the local health spend the money as she wished, by subtly handing worker. Had she not been busy that day organising over the fee in a tight wad. sales, she would have driven the sick child to Tennant While one woman waited for her decorated for treatment. coolamon to dry, she showed us her immaculate, new Yet in the Tennant Creek News I read later that baby girl, wrapped in a disposable nappy and a 90 per cent of Aboriginal infants suffer chronic otitis hot-pink towel. Finally, Annette led us to where a media and associated conductive hearing loss; 60 per young woman, Stella, was completing a large, cent of school-aged Aboriginal children experience intricate work. We had to wait for her to finish it educationally significant conductive hearing loss. The and for the paint to dry before we could leave. Then previous federal Aboriginal Affairs minister, John we drove off with the booty and headed for the hills Herron, commented last year: 'One of the problems to set up our camp and swags. There was a lot in some communities is educational understanding to think about. ... to keep the flies off the food, to put disposable nappies in containers where the flies can't get at INGa oc W Af\ Alexis Wright argues that one cause them.' (Canberra Times, 21 November 2000) Herron of the intemperate drinking in Tennant Creek is the often got bad press, but this was sound thinking. The excessive number of liquor outlets, or 'takeaways', Northern Territory Government is developing an licensed by the Northern Territory Liquor Com Aboriginal Hearing Program. mission. Grog is easily available and welfare dollars I felt much better, out there in the blazing sun, pass quickly into the pockets of white publicans and when I became involved in the work: my job was to storekeepers. Tennant Creek has since introduced write the artist's name and other details on the back Thirsty Thursdays (welfare-cheque days) when all of each canvas, carefully roll it up and stow it in our takeaway selling of grog is banned. It is also now illegal vehicle. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the to sell five-litre casks in the town. A review of the ostentatiously nonchalant men who were looking local liquor laws was being carried out late last year. on seemed bored. There was a scrubby, dusty oval The hope was that fortified wine will no longer be where boys were kicking a football but the place is sold in the town. Noel Pearson, adviser to the a dry community in more than one sense; there is Cape York Land Council, said in October no water for recreation and refreshment. During the 2000, 'Our most immediate task is to get rid Olympics, an Aboriginal lea der criticised the money of grog and drugs.' No easy task. squandered in training a few Aboriginal athletes. At the Canberra Word Festival in March He thought it would be better spent on swimming this year, Wright criticised the incorrigible pools for the remote communities. I'm inclined to liquor outlets which do their best to bypass agree. The stark lack of amenities seemed to say, the new, restrictive laws. Likewise, Paul 'you chose to live here, you put up with it! ' At Toohey has documented in the Weekend Aus Kurundi, the owners' daughter has a picture of her tralian (30 September-1 October 2000) that property by an Aboriginal painter: it depicts a large white sly grog-runners are making obscene waterhole surrounded by four smaller ones. What a profits from selling to Aborigines on remote contrast with the poor, waterless Aboriginal communities. Of the recent spate of reconcil community! There is reputedly a land claim against iation marches in the east and the south, Kurundi. Wright commented sadly, 'Up here, we're just It was the same, later, when we camped at Police trying to keep people alive. In the Alice Station Waterhole in the nearby Davenport National Springs Hospital, all the faces are black faces.' Park (proposed). The park has two magnificent, Perhaps the best way to express my con secluded waterholes. The Northern Territory Supreme cern for the Jurnkurakurr people is to end with Court is in the process of investigating a land claim a short story. Soon after I left, an accident against the park. During the contact period, such occurred in the main street. There was a loud isolated police stations were 'the official means by bang and the screech of brakes: an elderly which outback areas were made safe for European Aboriginal lady lay, deathly still, on the pastoralism, through "pacifying" and "dispersing" the asphalt where she had been knocked down. original inhabitants' (D.J. Mulvaney, Encounters In Drunk, she had wandered into the path of an Place, 1989). approaching van. Not one gawking passer-by Yet there in the bush community, out of all that went to her aid and the ambulance took too deprivation, indeed, before our eyes, beautiful paint long to come. The old lady lapsed into a coma. She ings and ornaments were being created that incor died later in Adelaide. The other victim, who had porated designs traditionally used by the people. All inadvertently killed her, survives to be haunted by the artists were women, although groups of men the tragedy. He was an 18-year-old Aborigine at the followed the negotiations over price and were quick wheel of a health clinic van. • to advise the women to hold out for more money. My friend preserved the artist's privacy and her right to Suzanne Edgar is a Canberra writer and poet. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 17 TIME OUT Not all black and white In a London pa ri sh church, Moira Rayner ca me across a paradoxica l history. STPnm'' '" Bdsize P"k is a hun Heath. That was where the great English dred yards from my flat. It's a Victorian Sitting at the back of the Attorney-General, Lord Mansfield, once church of no particular architectural lived. In the remarkable Somersett case int rest, but it is surrounded by lovely church ... I noticed five of 1772, Mansfield found that English trees and was built on the site of Belsize glass-fronted display common law had never acknowledged House, which was once the home of the condition of slavery; he ordered that Spencer Perceval, the only British Prime boards ... A receipt for the the black slave brought within the juris Minister to have been assassinated in the diction by his American owner must be House of Commons. sale of a slave/ jack Ass released upon the presentation of a bill It is beautiful, and it is decaying, with Goliath/ in 857; another of habeas corpus. It was one of the high a darkness about it that I could feel when 7 lights of the history of the common law I dropped in recently t o one of its for the services of a slave and the independence and courage of the monthly free evening concerts. judiciary. It took nearly another 60 years I'd first come to the church for what hunter, dated 7853 . for slavery to be abolished in Great I thought was to be Evensong. It wasn't. Britain, by an 1834 statute. It was a sad little prayer m eeting in the Both looked original. So why were these things found in a side ch apel, attended by a straggling church in leafy Hampstead that had seen group of eight obviously odd and unhappy to attend on Sundays with a waiting list better days and boasted a congregation of, people who didn't know each other, and for membership, and the great man's fine at most, a scorel Because, according to a very Anglo-Saxon vicar called fack, who marble bust-Francis William Tremlett the last and most disturbing of the dis led the meeting with extempore prayers DO, 1821- 1913- was installed in the play boards, the 'most wonderful old man of the entirely predictable kind. In the choir two years after his dea th and was in London' was a passionate supporter of main body of the church were photo tes timony to the glory days of St the Confederate cause. graphs of the congregation: no more than Peter's of Belsize Parle He was not alone. The British govern 20, most of them apparently well past m ent would have benefited from a middle age. No children. But the evening SITT INC AT THE BACK of the church and weakened America and covertly supported prayer gathering, the precious few, were listening to Beethoven, I noticed five the Southern cause, but would not com not of that group. glass-fronted display boards leaning mit support until a success seemed likely. We were strangers. At least one of us untidily against the wall behind me. Lancashire cotton workers had suffered was mentally ill and another unable to Expecting a history of the church, I had a terrible famine when the supplies had sit, and another of us was a backpacker, closer look. A receipt for the sale of a dried up because of the Northern block and another the man who brought the key slave, fa ck Ass Goliath, in 1857; another ade of the Southern states. In 1863 to let us in, and we sat in our semicircle for the services of a slave-hunter, dated Francis William Tremlett had given of seagrass-seat chairs. The paint on the 1853. Both looked original. The transcript several fiery sermons, and published walls is peeling off with the grey bubbles of a letter from a traveller describing a them, on the nobility of the Southern of rising damp, and the macrame slave market in Georgia. A daguerreotype states-the virtues of their cultured, gen ornament is grey with dust. I tried to feel of fohn Brown, old photographs of tlemanly society and of their benevolence meditative and felt embarrassed instead. Abraham Lincoln and a letter from the to the slaves, who loved them, and whom Yet this is a church which had once first and only Confederate President, they had Christianised. He was renowned been crowded and fashionable, whose fefferson Davis, referring to his visit to for his commitment to the Southern first vicar was described as ' the most the vicar of St Peter's of Belsize Park! cause. He petitioned the Houses of wonderful old man in London', a man A storyboard on the British causes and Parliament calling for the cessation of willing to confront his bi hops over effects of the American Civil War, and hostilities by granting independence to injustice. (He was sacked in Boston for on the history of slavery in Britain. the South, and demanded that his bishop setting up a church for the poor without About half an hour's walk from my support the petition. His vicarage, known permission.) Eleven hundred people used flat is Kenwood House, on Hampstead as 'Rebel's Roost', had been visited not 18 EUREKA STREET )ULYI A UGUST 2001 THE RECIO FRANK BRENNAN only by Jefferson Davis but also the Captain of the Alabama and Colonel Beauregard, who won the first battle of the American Civil War at Bull Run. I talked to the current vicar about Tremlett, and discovered that 'the most wonderful old man in London', this celebrated and popular man, had been married at least twice, though no-one ever saw and he never spoke of the first wife, thought to have been 'a chronic invalid'. He had put his own money into the building of the church and had dedicated the balcony to his second wife. His daughter Louise never married and lived with her father, devoting herself to good works, according to a well-polished brass plaque in the side chapel. But the plaque dedicated to Tremlett's m emory is so far above the line of sight that it cannot be read. The display, the Vicar said, is not original but reconstructed. He had found there were no historical documents in the Timor: the june registration process delivered neither church archives at all, which was most remarkable, and inexplicable. He added fairness nor security to those still waiting in ca mps that he found the m emory of Tremlett in West Timor. an inspiration. I did not ask what his example would inspire a 21st-century vicar to do. He I N jANUARY Ia" yw, I .ttended the it wilblw•y< be bu VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 19 representatives that could be rightly per with the Indonesian government, the itarian attempt to make up the shortfall ceived by you Indonesians as arroga nce. Let international community is entitled to in the exercise of national sovereignty m e assure you that no-one in Australia, pressure Indonesia to administer justice which is currently being subverted by a including our political leaders, would through its national institutions in power elite for its own interests. Such an repeat the claims that Australia is anyone accordance with international criteria. international intervention could assist e lse's deputy sh eriff or an yone else's The international cornmunity would be those angels of light in the nation state policeman. Any such doctrine, no matter justified in taking action to rectify these who are advocating greater democ what its nam e, would be seen in contem injustices if Indonesia, after a reasonable ratisation and the rule of law. porary Australia as un-Australian. However time, had singularly failed in the perform At the moment, national institutions it is important that Indonesians understand ance of its duties in accordance with the are inadequate to deliver satisfactory that the spirit of the Australian people who rules of political morality. justice in the extreme cases arising out have supported and stood by the people of To date, the Indonesian legal processes of the redrawing of national boundaries. East Timor since September is the sam e have been too infected to render justice Shifting the burden to a multinational, spirit that motivated the Australian people of any sort, even allowing for differing culturally appropriate, geographically proximate tribunal could provide a nec essary breathing space for the develop The in ternational community should not have ment of more robust national institutions. It could also provide an incentive and a en dorsed (let alone paid fo r) a registra tion process benchmark for those evolving national ins ti tu tions. which could proceed in a closed environment where 'IERE ARE STILL tens of thousands of East Timorese who fled across the border militia leaders and their political masters enjoy a to West Timor in September 1999 who are still waiting in camps until they think it safe to return to East Timor. Those of campaign monopoly without independent scrutiny. greatest concern are people who fled from violence and crossed the border by force to support you during those five long years cultural and political perceptions about or in confusion. They are not militia. in your struggle for independence from the the events that have occurred. Political They are not in receipt of Indonesian Dutch. That spirit stands for freedom and and economic considerations render the government pensions or salaries. They stands with the underdog. establishment of a special international have been without significant inter tribunal unlikely, though in generations national assistance since the killing of Having offered such an apology 18 to come we may see a case for the estab the three UNHCR workers in September months ago, I now feel m ore confident lishment of a permanent West Pacific 2000. They feel trapped in the camps, that Indonesian as w ell as Australian Tribunal to investigate and hear cases either because they are uncertain about readers will also appreciate my concerns. that arise out of cross-border disputes. the situation back home or because There are, I know, many Indonesians who Eventually, many of these matters militia or camp leaders dominate them. share my repugnance at many of the may be put off the political agenda by Along with militia, Timorese TNI things done by som e of their nationals agreement between the Government of (Indonesian military) m embers and acting in the nam e-and with the author Indonesia and the freely elected Govern people in receipt of government payments, ity-of the stat e. These include: the ment of East Timor. This, however, will these 'refugees' went through an Indon killing of United N ations High Commis not guarantee compliance with the dic esia registration process on 6 June 200 l. sioner for Refugees (UNHCR) workers in tates of political morality any more than Two months before the registration, Atambua last year and the resulting will other bilateral agreements in which I wrote to the head of the United Nations failure of Indonesia to provide security governments consider their own political Transitional Authority in East Timor or justice; the release of Eurico Guterres and economic self-interest. Where these (UNTAET), Sergio Vieira de Mello, noting from detention after only 23 days under matters are not resolved in accordance that, 'Asking the simple question whether house arrest, and the damning KPP-HAM with political morality, the individuals people "wish to return to East Timor or report leaked to the Australian who have continued to suffer the wrong whether they wish to settle permanently m edia in April. will be entitled to seek relief, or at least in Indonesia" will provide little guidance agitation of their cause, from the inter about people's real intentions.' 'IERE ARE LEGITIMATE grounds for inter national community, including UN For example: some of those who wish national concern about the protection of bodies and international NGOs. to return wish to do so only when East human rights for people who were sub When international responses are Timor is heaven on earth; others want to jected to Indonesian sovereignty without offered, they should be seen not as cul wait until they see what happens after their consent. While the primary respon turally insensitive interference with the the election at the end of August; others, sibility for administering justice to their national sovereignty of either Indonesia only when assured the security of their nationals domiciled in Indonesia lies or East Timor. Rather, they are a human- house and their land, and so on. Some 20 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/AUGUST 2001 who wish to settle permanently in Indo anonymity is assured, there is a need for but rather of the international agencies nesian territory want to do so only if they a transparent, independent public educa which, by dropping their standards, have can stay in Indonesian West Timor; tion campaign about the process. It was placed people under their mandate at others want to stay for as long as their not in evidence when I visited camps further risk from militia leaders-the salaries are paid; others say so because around Atambua two weeks before the same leaders who were able to exclude they have been intimidated or are in registration. those agencies from the adequate perfor receipt of militia propaganda. The international community should mance of their duties in September 2000 International participation in the not have endorsed (let alone paid for) a by the killing of international personnel. 6 June exercise may have rendered more registration process which could proceed Now the militia leaders have achieved certain the count of those in the camps. in a closed environment where militia their long-term political obj ective because But the collation of answers to the one leaders and their political masters enjoy international agencies have failed to question about people's wishes was a campaign monopoly without independ perform their mandate. always unlikely to distinguish their ent scrutiny. In one camp, even I was seen International agencies should remain realistic expectations or practical inten as an apologist for UNT AET because true to their mandate whether or not tions from their ideal hopes or short-term I was giving both sides of the story. governments around them do deals. fears. Most East Timorese want to return Clearly, there was very little public When the international agencies do deals home eventually. Most of those still in understanding in the camps about the and when the international NGOs the camps want to stay in West Timor in purpose or nature of the registration become too pragmatic, there is a risk that the foreseeable future. That was common process. And yet UNHCR covered half the fundamental principles of political knowledge before the registration. the costs of the registration. UNHCR morality are forfeited for political The registration results will now be would never have conducted such a advantage. used by the Indonesian government, process itself in camps where it had open The Timorese leaders will be well UNHCR and UNTAET to rationalise the and secure access: pragmatism dictated served if they have access to the insights abandonment of the majority of the the funding of a flawed process. It is and wisdom of other leaders who have people left in camps on the basis that they imperative that the confidentiality of the had to face the moral dilemmas that have exercised a choice to stay. identity of those seeking to return be inevitably arise when they come to make UNHCR described this registration as maintained so that militia members the decisions for their people. The 'a necessary first step towards identify cannot instigate further intimidation and Timorese people, and all of us in the West ing and promoting durable solutions for reprisals. And the provision of donor Pacific, even the poorest and most disad East Timor refugees now in East Nusa funds to Indonesia for the resettlement vantaged, will be best served by inter Tenggara, and in particular, West Timor'. program should depend upon this national organisations that uphold their It was nothing of the sort. It was a confidentiality being maintained. mandates. further step backwards after the inter national community's departure in September 2000 and will now be used as Th ere are legitimate grounds for international a step along the way of UNHCR's with drawal from Timor before these people concern about th e protection of human rights for have pursued their preferred durable solution. It is impossible to read any sense into people who were subjected to Indonesian the result of such a simplistic survey con ducted with inadequate public education sovereignty without th eir consen t. and security. It is also regrettable that UNT AET and UNHCR gave credit to such a registration process simply on the On 28 May 2001, UNTAET agreed to And finally, we will all be best served basis that nothing else was achievable. participate in the public education phase if governments of nation states invoke Even though it was th e best solution of the 6 June registration. Agreement at national sovereignty as a shield against proffered by Indonesia, the international such short notice indicates that UNTAET outside interference, not as a sword to be community should have pointed out the was not acting primarily in the interests used in wanton attack on those within deficiencies in such a survey ahead of of the refugees. the nation state who do not enjoy self tim e. For Indonesia, this registration has International donors should insist determination through equal participa been a necessary first step in soliciting that, in fu ture, U NTAET fo llow appro tion in the nation's processes. • US$25 m illion from foreign donors for priate UNHCR procedures and withhold the Resettlemen t Project. participation in processes that fail to meet Frank Brennan SJ is the Director of the Any registration of intention (to the usual UNHCR standards-standards Jesuit Refugee Service in East Timor. remain or return) in camps as insecure which would be applied when UNHCR has This is an edited version of an address to as those in West Tim or is dangerous and open, secure access to refugees. the University of Indonesia's seminar, impruden t unless the anonymity of the My concern here is not to express Identifying Challenges and Oppor registrants can be assured. And even if criticism of the Indonesian government tunitie in the West Pacific Region. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 2 1 I TERVIEW JULI ETT E HUGHES Promising the 'Everywhere you turn in th e environment, it's like swimming w ith world sh arks . And it doesn 't matter what breed, what nature they are, th e sharks in environmental waters are not endangered; th ere are lots of them.' - Labor Senator Nick Bol ku s, on manoeuvring the environmental ship of state. Tm"A ch""'"'"'' tim b 22 EUREKA STREET • jULY/ A UGUST 2001 1Robert1S personal agenda is to give back powers The working group, he says, 'has the job of to the states ... Robert thinks of land management focusing on environmental issues, recognising that 1 totally as a state responsibility1 and h e doesn t they go to economics, international affairs, industry appreciate the importance of national and international policy, regional policy; so we've had basically a standing leadership on the environment ... He himself went committee of the shadow ministry for 12 months.' out of his way to set up a process to undermine World Was this a formal committee with a name? Heritage m echanisms .. . Nice guy1 but some sugar 'No, it's informal, but for instance the ACF has coated pernicious policy directions. 1 com e along and given us huge contributions from time Bolkus also says that Hill has a policy to split to time. We've had CSIRO, we've had the ACF and the environmental movement1 and not to negotiate National Farmers' Federation on dry land salinity with its peak bodies such as the Australian Conser issues and so on. We've had huge discussions on green vation Foundation (ACF) and the Wilderness Society. house, so basically it's one of the few working groups The m atter in the 17 April m edia release con in the shadow ministry. Kim's committed to setting cerned land-clearing/ som ething that the Labor Party up an Office of Sustainable Development in the prime had in its war chest to trade with the Greens to get minister1S department were we to win. That means their preferences in the Ryan by-election . The matter right in the core of government there will be people was considered important enough to warrant a joint driving environmental issues.' announcement; Kim Beazley1s nam e was on the In other words, the decisions will be m ade on assurance. The promise had been made. Something environmental issues by the sam e people who have as important as Green by-election preferences in an always made the decisions. In practice1 the environ election year could not be left to an environment ment has never really been in any environment port minister alone/ even if the issue involved was the foli01S bailiwick, since it crosslinks with virtually all business of his portfolio. Nick Bolkus knows this and the other portfolios, from primary industry to defence works with it. and health. Environmental consciousness has to ~ we could run two strands there: we've got forests suffuse all the other areas of government before any and we've got greenhouse ... [the interconnection] is real change comes in. what the old-style politics doesn't pick up. They see 'In our policy1 adopted last year, people like Laurie it as a sideshow issue, as an issue designated to a Brereton, for instance, has listed environment1 inter minister. OK, Hill is the Leader of the Government national environmental diplom acy, as one of his top in the Senate, but he's not respected or listened to on three international initiatives for a Labor party in environ1nent.' government. It permeates a whole lot of areas. I'm 'Old-style politics1 is his term for the corralling just trying to get the m echanism s in place before we of environmental issues as 1marginal green'. The high win government, so that people are a lot more prepared international profile and general respectability of for it when we do win.' greenhouse issues in particular is something that It would seem to be an answer to one of Bob prime ministers must address. But the interconnec Brown's prayers-a major party greening up. But tion of greenhouse issues with their less establish Bolkus laughs a bit at that. ment-credible issues such as native forest logging, 1We'll never be as green as Bob would like us to be.' land-clearing and fossil fuel use is the area worked by Where would it stop, does he think? environment ministers, less evident in public percep 'We're on the cusp of an era where being green 11 11 tion and therefore less addressed in government provides jobs. I don't know that it needs to say stop • policies. We've go t som e really fundamental problems in the Tve been trying to get a more whole-of-govern country-loss of species1 habitat1 greenhouse issues m ent appreciation of environment as an issue, and plus protection of World H eritage areas. It will never I've been there long enough to know that if environ stop as an on going agenda but the resistance to m ent's left to an environm ent minister, then in the accommodating it will, I think, lessen with time. As normal running of Cabinet, you can quite easily be people become m ore aware, as [green] technology marginalised. becomes more accessible, we'll acquire a 'We've set up a process, we've set up a couple of better quality of life.' things, with a working group of shadow ministers, from people like Cheryl Kernot and Carmen Lawrence A S FAR AS TECHNOLOGY GOES, there are encourag to people like Martin Ferguson and Laurie Ferguson. ing signs in the corporate world, som ething in which Laurie Brereton as well ... ' Senator Bolkus is interested. When the twinning of The vocal inflection goes up slightly at the last BMW with the kingdom of Dubai in h ydrogen fuel name mentioned, but the question does not mean cell research is m entioned, he is enthusiastic. uncertainty-you are being asked if you got the 'There are two issues. There's the corporate significance of that name. Graham Richardson said world, and companies have worked out that if you once that Laurie Brereton was the first person he had can actually do things cheaper, then you'll make more met who had real power. money. So if they can use less fuel, they can reduce 24 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/AUGUST 2001 their costs, and they've worked out the economic ongoing programs no longer com es from core funding imperative, they've worked out that a lot of their in the normal course of government, but from the sale practices are unsustainable, in the eyes of the public. of assets. Part of his battle in a new Labor govern And people are nervous about technology. m ent will be to change that funding culture, w here, 'But I think technology has empowered us with for instance, the Coastcare program has had its yearly knowledge about what it costs individuals and allocation cut from $3 0 million last year to $1 million nations. So when a company acts badly in one part of this year. He calls that 'am ateurish economics', and the world, sales in another part are affected. They can states that normal core funding must be there for see advantages in the marketplace when they act in important programs. The H oward government, he an environmentally friendly way. says, has removed some of the best brains from the 'So there are different motivations that all lead environment department, with 'Finance Department to the sam e outcome. And there are those companies hacks running too many areas of it.' That is some that actually believe in social responsibility. There thing he pledges to change. are a lot more of those around now as well. But what How did he come to the environment portfolio? ever the reason, as I discovered when I went to the 'Kim thought I'd be good for it!' H e enumerates a Hague for the Climate Change Conference, there is number of issues he was close to or worked on when now a huge industry lobby group pushing in the in government, including Coronation Hill, Shoalwater direction of sustainability. So that's why I think it's Bay, stopping food irradiation. He says that an 'inter no longer "industry versus greens", it's "industry and national white-shoe corporate brigade', based in greens" on the one hand versus some industries on Queensland, want to start up food irradiation again. the other. ' He regards this as 'plain loony' when Australia's big He is scathing about the level of ignorance in gest advantage on world food markets is its clean, Australia about other cultures. green image. 'I think Kim thought that environment 'About Dubai. That's an interesting country. would be a sticky portfolio, needing someone with a We're ignorant about the Emirates. When it comes to bit of experience, and that's why I was given it.' salinity, water treatment etc., they are doing what What does he think about the future? He says he we should be doing. They've gazumped us. The leader can't wait for the next six months to be over; he longs ship of the Emirates is smart enough to realise that for certainty as to whether they will be in government. their resources are not endless. They're setting them 'Every day, every week, every month of this govern selves up for a more balanced future. It's a pity other ment is wasted. I just want to get in there and start countries, other companies, aren't taking their lead. shaking the apple tree a bit. Salinity, land degradation And though their attitude to women may not be as and greenhouse: huge issues. I think Kim will have to progressive as we would like ... in resources, they're put those on the national agenda for premiers and for moving.' himself to bash out in the first few months.' The combination of conservative attitudes to He knows he will be in for a fight; when the ALP gender and far-sighted policies on resources is som e put out its statement on land-clearing it was criticised thing that does not surprise him. 'I've been in politics by the National Farmers' Federation. Powerful inter long enough to know you shouldn't expect consist ests, many that have influence in his own party, are ency,' he grins. 'You'd like to get it, but whether it's still making money out of the very activities that an the left or the right, there's no consistency.' environmentally responsible government in the 21st He likes his portfolio. Having been on the front century must curtail. In the meantime he is keen to bench for 13 years, ten as a minister, it helps to like demonstrate that ALP environmental policies are the work, which can be gruelling. 'The jobs get harder. deeply different from the Coalition's. He says he is I used to think Immigration was an impossible 'totally frustrated', for instance, with the CFMEU's portfolio, though I enjoyed it lots. I think the position on forests. Given an electoral environment challenges facing the environment are the biggest where, he says, Bob Brown will be easily as impor challenges facing this country. I'm actually looking tant as Pauline Hanson, given that the election is forward to having a few years where we can work them bound to go to preferences, the ALP must look to its through, put in some long-tenn policies and structures.' environmental credentials. He says the last few years have seen environ But he is there for a fight, he enjoys the tussles in m ental policy basically on a lay-by scheme. the Senate. He had carriage of the Wik issue in the 'They've sold parts of Telstra, they've provided Senate and he talks about it like a warrior remember som e funding. By providing that funding they've ing a battle. claimed to have added new funding to the environ 'If there's a challenge, it keeps me going; if there's ment, but what they don't tell you is that they've cut a fight, I like to be in it.' Why? ' An old Labor politician back on a lot of the old funding.' said to me once, "Enjoy the struggle, because you don't He says that the Howard government has spent get too many victories".' • around $80 million a year less on the environment than did the Keating government. And money for Juliette Hughes is a freelance writer. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA ST REET 25 SPORT FORUM e name o e T,.,,,A " c P" 'dox .t the hw t of encased in that giant circle, the rest of First, professional (and even am ateur) sport. It's this: a sporting contest can the world can cease to exist. N othing sports organisations adopted the cor in cite extreme feelings in people-of else seem s to m atter until the time porate model of mission statements and hope, of joy, of sadness, of rage- yet sport com es to step outside of the magic circle strategic plans and performance indica is, at its core, trivial. It's a game played again. Which is why the experience of tors for 'growing' their sport- business. apropos of nothing but itself. playing or watching good sport can be N ow, cop this. There's a tourism and All sorts of sports get invested with so transporting. hospitality compan y in Queensland all sorts of m eanings by all sorts of people, There's an oft en-heard and over-used called Club Crocodile, which runs a chain but the game itself is, essentially, playful. phrase around professional sport these of hotels and resorts. It has an ann ual T here's no tangible product or service days: the on e about sport being a turnover of around $25 million. After the produced by it, as there is in business. business. I cringe every time I hear it. 2000 AFL Grand Final, the head of the Sport is also transient and ephem eral. Firstly because it's often used to excuse compan y, Pet er Thy nne, decided to The Australian historian Greg D ening or explain all sorts of uncaring or self restructure the entire organisa tion of the magnificently encapsulates an aspect of interest ed behaviour in sport. M ore business using, as his model, the Essen this paradox w hen he says: 'There is importantly, though, it's because at a don Football Club. I interviewed Peter nothing so m om entary as a sporting fundam ental level it is simply untrue, Thynne, a thoughtful and genial man, for achievem en t, and nothing so lasting as and can never be true if sporting com The Sports Factor last year, and what the memory of it.' (Victorian Historical petitions are to continue to survive and follows is essentially what he said in our Magazine, February 1982, p75) thrive. interview. Being at a game of foo tball, or cricket, Before teasing this out, it's worth In this remodelling of business as or netball can be like entering an alter pausing to refl ect on the extent to which sport, each of the m anagement and native universe. When I walk into the the notion of 'professional sport' as 'a coaching and playing position in the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and becom e business these days' has been absorbed. Essendon Football Club has its corollary 26 EUREKA STREET • jULY/AUGUST 2001 Is it profit? Or sportsmanshi p? Entertainment or business? Amanda Smith and Tim Stoney exam ine the state of the sports that are part of the pul se of Austral ian I ife. Th eir disc uss ion took place at a a me Eureka Street M onday forum at Newman College. in Club Crocodile. So, the Executive the other teams in the Australian McDonald's and Ford would be m ore Chairman becom es Kevin Sheedy, the Football Leagu e, and compare it with the successful businesses if they had fewer coach. The Property Manager is James relationship that Club Crocodile has with competitors. The Essendon Football Hird, the captain. When the Chairman its competitors. When you move beyond Club, however, does need the Carlton wants the Property Manager to do som e the possible similarities of internal Football Club and the Collingwood Foot thing that's a bit m enial, or deal with a structures between a sports team and a ball Club and all the other clubs in the boring problem, it's Kevin Sheedy tell tourist business, into the wider structures Australian Football League, in order to ing Jam es Hird to play in the back pocket in which they operate, there's a big have a reason to exist at all. If it's go t for a while, because there's a weakness difference. Sport isn't and can't be strictly no-one to play with, then, in business there. What does Jam es Hird do? He goes business-like. terminology, it's not capable of produc to the back pocket, knowing it's a lesser Geoff Dickson, a lecturer in the ing an output. position thai! centre half forward, but School of Health and Human Perfor What this m eans is that the teams of he goes there, he relishes the challenge, mance at Central Queensland University, the AFL, and sports team s in all Aus he fixes up the problem. Within the puts it this way: he says that the differ tralian leagues and associations, collude. quarter he's back to where he was on ence is that the u ltimate m easure of They operate as a cartel. In business, the fi eld, having learnt more and success, the ultimate aim, of a business, that's anti-competitive and illegal; in achieved more by dint of his time in the is not only to sell more hamburgers or sport, it's the only way that there is to be back pocket. cars than your competitors, but to destroy competitive. This does very well as a model for how the competition. McDonald's doesn' t It's also in the interests of continued team relationships and hierarchies work. need Hungry Jack's or Burger King in survival in the market-place-for team s, The model starts to break down, however, order to survive; the Ford Motor and the leagues they play in- that the when you think about the relationship Company doesn't need General Motors quality of output is roughly equivalent that the Essendon Football Club has with for it to exist in the industry. In fact, across all those team s. That is, there's a V OLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 27 good, even competition . The outcome of In m y recollection, the equivalently huge does in business), it's a fundamental any match between any of the teams in front-page story concerning a comparable denial of the essence of sport. As Gideon the league must be uncertain, and the scandal in the corporate world was when Haigh puts it in relation to cricket match team that wins the big competition at the Nick Leeson ripped off Barings Bank. T he fixi ng, it's 'the ultimate twisting of a end of the season should change year by amount of m oney in valved there was gam e that exalts glorious uncertainty.' year more often than not. squillions. (The Bulletin, 27 June 2000, p29) So professional leagues and associa A m atter of corporate fraud only gets For sport to exist at all, it has to exist tions need to collude in various ways. In this kind of major public and media within an ethical framework of playing the AFL, it's through the salary cap. This attention when it involves enormous fa irly. There's no point to it otherwise. operates to stop a club that has access to amounts of m oney, and/or is a very A gam e of cricket that's fixed has lost all lots of money from going out and buying strange story. The Nick Leeson affair was its meaning. In the corporate world, a rogue up all the very best players they can. The both these things. Whereas a whiff of trader might wreak a lot of financial AFL also has a draft system, to control corruption in a sport, involving compar damage, but still doesn' t destroy the the recruitment and transfer of players, atively small amounts of money, always raison d'etre of business; the presence and there's revenue-sharing, as in the case gets huge attention. The difference is that of a rogue trader in cricket or any other of the proceeds of the television rights. we expect, or at least we're unsurprised sport does. T hat's all the stuff of cartels. by, unethical behaviour in the dog-eat This is why it's so terribly important It is another paradox of sport that the dog world of business. In sport, it is gen that sportspeople understand that taking teams of a sports league must compete uinely shocking to discover that a player even just a little bit on the side is a fun and co-operate, simultaneously. Each could also operate as a rogue trader. damental denial of the meaning of what team wants to beat every other team . N evertheless, there are many worse they do. It's wrong to think that the kind Th e desire to destroy the competition, things that happen in this world to get of cynical acceptance and resignation we however, is only metaphorical. The upset and angry about than discovering might have about unethical practices in defeated team must survive to compete that a gam e of cricket has been rigged. business applies equally to our feelings another day. So, there are lots of ways that Why then does it seem so bad when a about sport. This applies even (perhaps these competitors are also co-operating cricketer pockets a few thousand bucks especially) in the age wh en sport is in a joint venture. This is not to throw a game? In part, it's the sense thought to be a business, and it fails to generally the way of business. that if you can't even trust a gam e of recognise a fundam ental difference cricket to be fair dinkum any more, then between the two. 0 N AN ETHICAL LEVEL, there are also what can you trust in this world? Business matters because it matters clear ways in which sport is not an exact As, in our imagination, sport exists in in this world. In its own space and time, parallel with business. Our expectations a magic circle, so too must its ethics. An sport matters to many of us (to return to of ethical behaviour in sport are not the insider trader, in business, is really just my beginning) because it matters so little. sam e as our expectation s of ethical over-enthusiastically doing what business We are putting sport in a dangerous place behaviour in business. This relates to the does-minimise input, maximise profit. when we absorb the business paradigm uncertainty of outcome that's fundamen It doesn't mean that the business uni without recognising that, in sport, the tal to sport, and what happens when that verse as we know it disintegrates when paradigm does not apply. • uncertainty of outcom e is denied. that happens. The biggest front-page story about However, if you cheat in sport, by way Amanda Smith is the presen ter of The sport last year was the cricket match of trying not to win, you destroy the thing Sports Factor on ABC Radio N ational. fixing and betting scandal: Hansie Cronje itself. To throw a game, to interfere with Transcript of Peter Thynne and Geoff Dickson and his mates on the take, involving the uncertainty of the outcome, is no interviews (17 November 2000 and 9 October some thousands of dollars (and, of course, longer participating in sport. It's not just 1998) at www.abc.net.au/m: T he Sports Factor, the saga of corruption in cricket continues). breaking the rules (as the insider trader Radio National. 28 EUREKA STR EET • j ULY/AUGUST 2001 announced her retirement because she can't afford to keep competing. Asked 'Is Au stral ian sport play ing th e game?', There'd be a national uprising if Tim Stoney turned th e question around. 'What ga me 1s Michael Klim or Ian Thorpe did the same. Au strali an sport play ing?' he enquired. The point is they'd never have to, because individually they're both so marketable and they are in a sport with a long A usTRALIAN SPORT, along with on turning up to the game of their choice tradition of success in Australia. Whereas much of Australian society-education, on a whim as they'd always done. In other Ferris, in a sport which is neither popu the arts, health, the media, politics-has words 'con umers'-we're not supporters lar, marketable nor traditionally one been forced to play the corporate game. any more-would just have to get used we've excelled at, will always struggle. The main value underlying the to the new 'efficient' system. A system Many people are searching for a space corporate game is profit. Successful out- that puts the interests and agendas of the where emotions are freely expressed, comes are measured in dollars, efficiency, stadium managers ahead of the supporters. where connections stretch beyond the productivity and share dividends. Cor- The rhetoric of the market has defined fence, where people find, in participation, poratism believes the market can solve what is possible in areas such as health a sense of themselves that is at the same all society's problems if left unfettered and education. Now sportsmen and time rooted in the immediate experience, by governments and social and com- women and sporting bodies are learning but also connected to a sense of com munity considerations. that the values traditionally associated munity based on something other than In post-Olympics Australia, sports- with sport-community, identity and the personal gain. men and women have never been more common good-are expendable when Sport has always been a public space celebrated or rewarded for their success. they conflict with the bottom line. Turn where people come together. In a world The 'successful' ones quickly learn how a profit or cease to exist. That's the new where not just public space, but the very to 'play the game'-they get managers, rule. Values-they can be packaged and idea of the public has been devalued, the choose the right products to endorse, sold (this is the function of m emorabilia). corporate takeover of sport restricts become media celebrities, rub shoulders To give you an example-the AFL, in access to those who can pay. Corporat the push for a national com ism has so taken over sport-the AFL in petition, has had to break down particular-that a team captain can now the traditional suburban iden sell his name to a brand of cat food; not tities of clubs and create new one but two clubs can sell the once-sacred national identities. But some of jumper to one-off corporate sponsorship the stronger clubs-clubs with deals; and one of the biggest stories in robust identities-have man the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics was aged to reinvent their nostalgic which brand of bathers our swimmers suburban identities on a larger would wear. with other celebrities and turn up to all scale and reap the financial rewards for The patterns repeat them selves in the A-list parties. it. The Essendon-Collingwood Anzac other areas. In universities, economics Sports managers thrive-stitching up Day clash is a good example. It has all and business schools thrive because their deals, demanding a bigger slice of the the nostalgia of a traditional suburban output swells the pool of corporate financial rewards, carefully constructing clash, layered with Anzac Day sentiment workers, while arts departments which and defending their stars' public images and 90,000 paying reasons for both clubs heaven forbid-might teach people to to keep them compatible with the needs to protect their asset. think and understand history, struggle for of corporate marketeers. They're so The corporate culture has even altered survival. In politics, we make choices successful at packaging their stars that our idea of sportsmanship. Conflict based on what we can afford in the short success in sport is decreasingly about makes great TV, so the sledging in the term, instead of talking about the values being successful at sport. Just ask Anna recent Test series between Australia and that should underpin those decisions. In Kournikova whether you need to win India was more widely reported than schooling, parents feel they are risking tennis tournaments to have the right were the achievements of individual their child's future if they don't send image to sell. players, and, in many respects, overshad them to a private school. And in health, In a corporate world-view, the relation owed those achievements. Shane Warne we have virtually given up on the idea of ship between those who manage the is marketable not just because he's a great a universal health system. game, those who play it and, ultimately, player, but because he's controversial. Australian sport is playing the same those who watch it, shifts fundamentally. His antics fill the sports pages more than game. For all its beauty, energy and It's only a year ago that a spokesperson his achievements-by any measure he's importance, it has lost sight of the very for the then-embattled Colonial Stadium big business. things that have made it such a powerful wa reported as saying that patrons would But not everyone's a winner in the m etaphor for our culture. • have to change the way they went to the corporate game. Recently, Olympic cyclist footy. They'd just have to get used to pre Michelle Ferris, a medallist and one of Tim Stoney is a reporter for N etwork booking tickets and could no longer rely the outstanding competitors in her field, Ten. VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 29 Literature under arms I R olf Boldrewood?' The well-spoken young Port Fairy professional puzzled over the name. ' Rolf Boldrewood? Forgive my ignorance. I'm only new to the district. Who is Rolf Boldrewood?' In that moment my passion for research into the land which attracts some 30,000 visitors. Port Fairy is scapes of Australian writers plummeted on to hard unique and beautiful. River, wharf, fi shing boats, ground- but it was only winded. coastline, Griffiths Island and the mutton birds and This happened some years ago during my pursuit lighthouse compete with long lines of towering of Boldrewood around Victoria's Port Fairy district. Norfolk Island pines and street after street of the pink In that chase two things impressed m e. First, that flowering Norfolk Island hibiscus, as well as cosy ignorance of our literary heritage is widespread. looking old stone houses, sedate old hotels, banks and Second, the jolting realisation of the savagery with churches. The place encourages walking, dallying and which early white colonisers of south-west Victoria thoughts of the past. treated the people whose land they took and whose Perhaps it is understandable that William Earle, way of life they destroyed. in the Foreword to Earle's Port Fairy (1896), forecast Port Fairy has been less known for literary a brilliant prosperity for Port Fairy. The Moyne River, associations than for tourist attractions and the Folk he believed, would be 'lined with the world's Festival held on the March Labour Day weekend merchantmen, warehouses and manufactories' and 30 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/AUGUST 2001 EXCURS ION JO HN SENDY 'Griffiths Island will be either a huge m anufacturing developm ent may change its character. This worry centre, or, preferably, the location of the palatial has led to the organisation of the Friends of Port Fairy residences of the capitalist ... ' which actively campaigns to ensure the maintenance Fortunately, Earle's prognostications remain of natural history, built heritage and the unfulfilled: the Moyne is still relatively peaceful coastline, river and rural atmosphere. and pretty and Griffiths Island is still home to its massive sh earwater colony which gives much I N ADDITION TO ALL its other attributes the district wonder and delight. abounds with literary connections-a fact which the The shearwaters, or mutton birds, are incredible. successful Port Fairy Easter Book Fair, first held in They nest on Griffiths Island and the nearby Pea Soup 1999, will undoubtedly help to exhibit and emphasise. area. Each autumn these tens of thousands take off As a youth, Thomas Browne, long, long before for their 15,000km round trip to winter in the Aleutian he start ed writing as Rolf Boldrewood and became Islands and Kamchatka and return via the Californian one of Australia's most prolific authors, set up the coast to cross the Pacific in early spring. Squattlesea Mere run a little over 30 kilometres west At dusk during spring and summer the viewing of Port Fairy in 1844. He spent 15 years there. platforms provide marvellous sights of the birds Close by at Yambuk, Annie Baxter kept her swooping to their nests. In his Foreword to J.N. journals of the 1840s, which Lucy Frost brought to Powling 's history of Port Fairy, Stephen Murray-Smith light in 1992 as A Face in the Glass: The Tournai and recalled his memories of the scene: Life of Annie Baxter Dawbin. Henry Kingsley, it is claimed, spent time in the ... a full moon over the sea on a summer's night, and district in the 1850s before writing The Recollections watching with awe and a high delight as the mutton of Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859). birds swoop low, backwards and forwards over the As a child, Ethel Richardson lived at the Koroit dunes, criss-crossing the moon's face and reminding post office some 30 years before she became Henry Above left: Lighthouse, us that all this was happening before the firs t tired Handel Richardson. Her father was buried in 1879 in Port Fairy, est. 1857, on and anxious seamen found their little haven. the cemetery on the lower slopes of Tower Hill over Griffiths Island. Nearby scenic spots like Yambuk Beach and the looking sandhills and sea. She immortalised him in Above right: Waterloo Crags have windswept views of the rocky monolith, her masterpiece, The Fmtunes of Richard Mahony, Swamp, 4 November 1999. 'A good many Lady Julia Percy Island. They surpass the bluestone describing his resting place in the penultimate Blacks were killed about splendours of Koroit, the choice potato and onion fields paragraph: Dunmore at Waterloo and of Killarney, the Tower Hill State Gam e Reserve and oth er swamps', wrote Eliza the growing glossiness of an expanding Warmambool. A quarter of a mile off, behind a sandy ridge, the surf, Rutledge in 1885. While Port Fairy retains its uniqueness and driving in from the Bight, breaks and booms eternally Photographs by Dawn beauty, many residents fear that unrestrained modern continued on p33 . Sendy VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 31 BOOKS: 1 MICHAEL McGIRR Such is character Rolf Boldrewood: A Life, Pa ul de Servi ll e, The Mi cgunya h Press (MUP ), 2000, ISilN 0 522H 46 1R I , RRP $65.95 I N 1879, as he and his gang prepared to There is some concession that the Marstons' colonial houses such as Tempe and En more rob the Bank of New South Wales in father was transported for a minor crime which have since given their names to Jerilderie, Ned Kelly was also trying to get and may have reason to have a chip on his suburbs. He was an early grazier in the an 8000-word manifesto published. The shoulder, but throughout the novel the western districts of what became Victoria. manifesto has become known as the young Marstons arc seen as both foolish Here he witnessed first-hand some of the Jcrilderie Letter. In it, Kelly describes not and reprehensible not to have followed the earliest contact between European and only his grievances against the police for example of their hard-working neighbour, Aboriginal populations. This was not a the treatment of his family, but he also George Storeficld, and become rich by happy story. When gold was discovered, he presents an account of how he sees the honest means. If they weren't so stupid, did a stint as a butcher on the fields. He treatment of his fellow countrymen by the they would have learned from Herbert tried his hand at farming in the Rivcrina. English. He says that 'there was never such Falkland, a squatter who employs them for He became a magistrate at Gulgong where a thing as justice in the English laws' and a time, that the working classes and the he was part of the group that hosted the 'many a blooming Irishman rather than moneyed classes should trust each other visit of Anthony Trollope. He settled in subdue to the Saxon yoke, were flogged to more. Even Boldrewood's depiction of land- Albury as chairman of the Land Licensing death and bravely died in servile chains but scape has a moral quality: birds hoot Board, a body set up to adjudicate the true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddy's warnings against the life of crime. In fact, competing claims of squatters and selectors. Land.' It is on the basis of such statements the whole novel, narrated for the most part He died at a ripe old age during World War I. that Kelly is increasingly seen as a political as a remorseful Dick Marston awaits his He had had plenty of experience of figure whose career outside the law was lonely execution, has a didactic purpose. bushrangers. motivated by a sense of justice. He has come to a sad end because De Serville's work is painstaking and Kelly died in 1880. Five thousand people E of moral infirrnity. thorough. H e has found, for example, waited outside the jail for his execution, a extensiveevidenceinBoldrewood'slifcand crowd described by one paper as 'young, AUL DE SERVILLE's biography of Rolf work of the impact of his literary hero, well-dressed and respectable' and by another Boldrewood sheds a great deal of light both Walter Scott. as 'a mob of nondescript idlers'. on this phenomenon and on the late-19th- But De Serville's precise scholarship is In 18 82, Thomas Alexander Browne, century Australian society which could undergirded by an argument. He sees writing under the pseudonym of Rolf accommodate such divergent attitudes to Boldrcwood as representative of a colonial Boldrewood, began serialising Robbery bushranging. Boldrewood wrote many entity known as 'conservative Australia'. Under Arms in the Sydney Mail. It was books. Robbery Under Arms comes from The hallmarks of 'conservative Australia' published as a book in 1888 and has never about the middle of his writing career. The are a sense of social hierarchy, tradition, been out of print since. Characters such as author was prolific for the simple reason family identity and so on. Boldrewood's the fallen gentleman, Starlight, and places that h e needed the money. He was so belief in the importance of character is such as 'Terrible Hollow' (a natural for- pragmatic about writing that he once paid a evident in a response he wrote to Henry mation which provides perfect seclusion younger novelist, Louis Becke, for a manu- Lawson's In the Days When the Wmld for a gang of bushrangers) have both found script. Becke thought Boldrewood might was Wide: a place in the popular Australian imagina- usc it as an outline for a story and was tion. To take just one example, John unimpressed, to say the least, when he There is a general complaint against society Marsden's series of books, beginning with discovered that two thirds of Boldrewood's as at present constituted, the justice of Tomonow When the War Began, was one new novel, a seafaring adventure, A Modern which is doubtful. So keen an observer as of the publishing phenomena of the '90s. Buccaneer, had been 'borrowed'. There was the writer should concede that failure and The books deal with a group of teenagers no acknowledgement of Becke and the legal success are largely governed by the who fight a guerrilla resistance against the services of Banjo Paterson were brought individual's own attributes, in all human occupation of their country by an unnamed into play. De Serville does not sensational- societies. occupationforceandincludeanaturalhide- ise this fascinating incident. Here, as out for the young people called Hell. It is throughout this biography, he is even- One of the cold comforts of this bio- eerily similar to Terrible Hollow. handed in dealing with thefailings of a man graphy is the reminder of just how long that Two of Boldrewood's best known bush- whose character he generally admires. particular deb a tc has been going on in rangers, Dick and Jim Marston, arc also Browne did a lot besides write. His life Australian society. • teenagers when they begin life on the run. story could form the basis of a Bryce But unlike the Kellys and unlike Marsden's Courtenay or Di Morrissey saga. He came Michael McGirr, a former publisher of young heroes, Boldrewood's bushrangers to Sydney as a child on board a convict Emel 32 EUREKA STREET • jULY/AUGUST 2001 ... continued From p3 1 When he arrived, Port Fairy had a population of on the barren shore. Thence, too, come the fierce over 500. He became steward of the Port Fairy Racing winds which, in stormy weather, hurl themselves over Club. He bred hacks and draught horses and sold them the land, where not a tree, not a bush, nor even a fence in the yard of the Caledonian Inn where he gave cham stands to break their force or to limit the outlook. On pagne lunches on those sale days. This hotel still all sides the eye can range, unhindered, to where the operates and motel rooms grace that yard today in vast earth meets the infinitely va ter sky. And, under the remodelled stables. He attended parties and blazing summer suns, or when a full-moon floods the dinners at the home of the town's foremost business night, no shadow falls on the sun-baked or moon man, William Rutledge, at 8 Cox Street which now blanched plains, but those cast by the few little stones houses the Youth HosteL set up in human remembrance. The first Port Fairy Hunt was held at Christmas 1844. A trapped dingo substituted for the fox and the The historian, journalist and civil liberties hunt took place on the farmlands near the huge sand warrior, Brian Fitzpatrick, was born not far away at dunes which still hug the coastline towards Tower Cudgee in 1905. Frank Hardy spent his early child HilL The dingo headed that way but eventually took hood on the outskirts of Koroit in a tiny community to the sea when the hounds got too close. It was called Southern Cross. recaptured to be put through a similar ordeal Helen Palmer, daughter of Nettie and Vance, at a later stage. author of many school historical texts and editor of the independent socialist journal, Outlook [1957- N OT FAR FROM Squattlesea Mere near the coast, 1970), taught in Port Fairy during the first years of Annie Maria Baxter held sway over Yambuk home World War II before she joined the WAAF. stead with eye-taking panache. Boldrewood wrote of David Martin and Stephen Murray-Smith were the property in Old Melbourne Memories: caught in a sudden storm off Lady Julia Percy Island in 1962 which nearly resulted in tragedy. The novelist, Yambuk was then an extremely picturesque station, John Hooker, lives and writes in the district. The combining within its limits unusual variety of soil setting of his latest rip-roaring novel, Beyond the Pale and scenery, land and water. The larger grazing portion (1998), is a fictionalised version of early white consisted of open undulating limestone ridges, which settlement there. ran parallel with the sea beach ... wild wrathful gales The 18-year-old London-born Boldrewood arrived hurtled over the ocean waste, rioting southward to in the Port Fairy area in 1844 with cattle, horses and the pole which lay beyond. Mustering then in bad two or three servants. His real name was Thomas weather was a special experience. Gathering on the Brown, which he later changed to Browne. He took up sea-hills, the winter's day darkening fast, a drove of land which eventually he came to own, a huge run of heavy bullocks perhaps lumbering over the sand ridges some 30,000 acres through which flowed the Eumer ahead of us, amid the flying sand and spume, their alla River. He thought it a marvellous spot: 'all the hoofs in the surf ever and anon, it was a season study, land I looked upon was deep-swarded, thickly-verdured worth riding many a mile to see. No cove or bay as an English meadow. Wild duck swam about in the restrained the angry waters. A misty cloud-rack pools and meres of the wide misty fen ... ' He gave this paradise the name of Squattlesea Mere, taken from Sir Walter Scott's novel Woodstocl< 'I hear you've bought Squattlesea Mere,' said th e friend. in which one of the main characters, the liquor-loving, 'Yea h,' replied Mattie, 'and the first thing I'm going to do is irrepressible adventurer, Roger Wildrake, habitually introduces himself as coming from 'Squattlesea Mere, change th at name.' 'Wh at?' spluttered his friend. Don't do that in the moist county of Lincoln'- Scott was Boldre whatever you do. Th at place is history.' Mattie likes telling that wood's favourite author. He carried several Scott story aga inst himself. volumes to Squattlesea Mere and took his writing pseudonym from a Scott poem. In later life, he looked back with great fondness on his years at Squattlesea Mere. His underrated memoir, Old Melbourne Memories (1884), recalled 'no engagements, no office work, no fixed hours, no sums or lessons of any kind or sort'. Within a few kilometres' ride he had friends at Dunmore, the pastoralist partners Irving, Campbell and MacKnight, 'men of high principle, great energy, early culture and refined habits' who possessed qualities he admired: 'elevated ideas' and 'broad and ennobling ideas of colonisation'. VOL UME ·11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 33 Melbomne Memories he maintained that many local Aborigines were 'grandly formed specimens of human ity, dignified in manner, and possessing an intelligence by no means to be despised, comprehending a quick sense of humour, as well as a keenness of perception, not always fo und in the superior race.' He wrote that Aborigines had been treated harshly: 'It was their country, after all' and a policy of conciliation was required. However, after small stock losses and thefts, his white supremacist attitudes and sense of property overcam e whatever enlightenment Boldrewood ll was a green and peaceful/and with grazing sheep on the ridges possessed. He supported punitive actions against the and the ubiquitous northern hemisphere conifers dominating the Aboriginal population, although there seems to be horizon. The moans of lhe past were faint. Screams, shots and no evidence that he accompanied such expeditions. H e believed the black 'uprising' in what he called desperate yells found it hard to cross the divide of 750 years. the 'Eumeralla War' should be crushed, that the whites should not yield to 'savages' as it was not the formed the horizon ... while giant billows, rank on 'English' thing to do so; they could not allow them ra nk, foa med fi ercely around, to m eet in the wrath selves 'to be hunted out of the good land we had and impotently rage on th e lonely shore below us. occupied by a few savages.' In his Scars in the Landscape.· A Register of Afterwards, there awaited 'lights and glowing Ma ssacre Sites in Westem Victoria, 1803-1857 (1995), fires' and a well-appointed table 'presided over by a Ian Clark claims that Aboriginal clans used the chatelaine whose soft and ever-varied converse, mirth safety of the Eumeralla River and the Stony Rises fu l or mournful, serious or satirical, practical or poetic, as bases from which to launch guerrilla attacks upon never failed to soothe or interest. ' settlers ' who had occupied land that contained So Annie Baxter, the young wife and diarist, traditional meeting places and sacred site near Port attracted the squatter bachelors around Yambuk and Fairy, Mount Napier and Lake Condah, areas essen Port Fairy at her home and at the parties and balls of tial to the political economy of the Aboriginal the district. She once wrote of staying up until 2am clans.' with the youthful Tom Browne 'talking very sensibly'. In his first novel, The Squatter's Dream, serial Boldrewood was a skilful horse handler and ised in the Austmlian Town and CountTy {oumal in breeder and an indefatigable rider. On one occasion, 1875, Bo ldrewood dwells upon th e widespread mounted on Hope, one of his favourite horses, he rode pastoralist massacres of black people in both NSW the 30 kilometres to Port Fairy and after dinner and Queensland as grazing land was 'opened up'. In decided upon a ride with friends along the beach to his conservative colonialist way he conceded that such Portland. He described the adventure: 'The tide was treatment provided a problem with which white out. For leagues upon leagues stretched the ocean consciences had to grapple. How right he was and how shore-a milk-white beach, wide as a parade ground long it is taking! and level as a tennis-court, and so hard under foot The popular detective writer, Peter Carris, in his that our horses' hoofs rang sharp and clear.' On the study, Aborigines and Emopeans in Western Victoria following day, Hope carried him back to Squattlesea (1968), estimated that 158 Aborigines were killed there Mere; some 140 kilometres in two days, quite an effort by 1860. Dr Tan Critchett investigated the conflict for for horse and rider. some 25 years. In A 'distant field of murder': Western About 150 years later, I stood on the beach at Yam District Frontiers 1834-1848 (1990), she claims a buk looking across to Lady Tulia Percy Island perched figure of 350 would be nearer the truth. massively in the blue. A hefty fishing boat rocked in Critchett produced some telling observations and the considerable swell. The wide, inviting sand reports from sources which appear to be most credible. stretched round the bay to Portland. No wonder The Chief Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip, the youthful Boldrewood felt enthusiasm! George Augustus Robinson, in a report to Governor La Trobe in 1842, put the ratio of black to white A CONSIDERABLE ABORIGINAL population lived in the killings in the Grampians region of Victoria at 40 to Port Fairy district when Boldrewood settled at Squat one. William Westgarth, businessman, politician and tlesea Mere. His future writings disclosed a contra historian, visited the Eumeralla-Dunmore district dictory attitude towards them. H e expressed near Squattlesea Mere. His Report on the Conditions, disagreement with the widespread white opinions that Capabilities and Prospects of the Australian Aborigines Aborigines were a lowly race. N evertheless, he estimated 200 Aborigines were killed in the area in remained convinced that whites were superior. In Old 1842-1844. 34 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/ AUGUST 2001 In his Port Phillip Gentlem en (1980 ), the historian Broadwater before he went off to do his school bus Paul de Serville saw Westgarth as 'quite the most dis run. Big Waterloo lies further away over a nearby ridge, tinguished of the m en of substance' of the colony but local legend has it that the shootings occurred at whose writings were noted for their 'acute judgem ents Little Waterloo. on colonial society'. Tall grass and reeds covered the little swamp area Eliza Rutledge, the widow of the notorious Port which had not filled for several dry years. A few Fairy businessman and politician, William Rutledge, wattles bloom ed in the late spring. Light rain spotted in a letter to Martha Hamilton long afterwards in down . It was a green and peaceful land with grazing 1885, responded to rumours about bad treatment of sheep on the ridges and the ubiquitous northern Aborigines in the past. She suggested that James Irvine hemisphere conifers dominating the horizon. The of Dunmore could tell that 'a good m any Blacks were m oans of the past were fa int. Scream s, shots and killed about Dunmore at Waterloo and other swam ps'. desperate yells found it hard to cross the divide of James Irvine, one of the three 'gentlemanly' owners 150 years. Small birds twittered, a m agpie carolled of the huge Dunmore run, was an intimate of the and, occasionally, a vehicle passed on the road to Rutledges and a life-long friend of Rolf Boldrewood. Hamilton. A strong breeze arose to make eerie noises A.G. L. Shaw, in his Histoty of Port Phillip Dis around what is m ost likely one of our very own killing trict (1 996), quotes one Western district pastoralist fi elds, w hich remains unresearched and as saying in 1840: ' the Blacks or natives h ave unacknowledged. occasioned me much uneasiness for some time. I could not stand the thought of murdering them [but] .. . N owADAYS, Rolf Boldrewood is little known . Of I believe it is impossible to take up a new run without his 1 7 novels published from the 1860s to the turn of doing so.' Similar observations were made by other the century, only Robbery Under Arms is in print. colonists of the time. His conservative upper-crust English attitudes and Indeed, it seems that a general white settler view penchant for good breeding are off-putting, as is his condoned the shooting of Aborigines who killed sheep old-fashioned style. or stole fl our and held that the killing of a white m an N ettie Palmer, in Fourteen Years (1 948), referred justified the massacre of many Aborigines including to Boldrewood's A Colonial Reformer (1895) as a wom en and children . 'heavy affair- heavy to hold, heavy to read'. Despite According to Shaw, an approximate Aboriginal good chapters she was chilled by the gentlemanly population in Victoria of 15, 000 in 1836 declined to starch setting in 'like a killing frost'. 3000 by 185 1, with the diseases which accompanied N evertheless, as fa r back as 1920 the literary the white invasion killing m ost. critic A. G. Stephens nominated Marcus Clarke's For Mrs Rutledge's comment about Waterloo Swamp the Term of his Natural Life and Bo ldrewood's intrigued m e because it related to Boldrewood's neigh Robbery Under Arms as the two best Australian bours and friends at Dunmore, m en whom he greatly romances until that year. Stephens believed Clarke's admired. Furthermore, this was the only reference to work to be the better piece of literature but Robbery it in all the m aterial I'd read about the colonisation of Under Arms to be the better Australian rom ance. H e south-west Victoria. thought Boldrewood had 'a remarkable knowledge of Som e residents around the Dunmore locality, the Australian life and character of his epoch. ' Many I found, had not heard of Waterloo Swamp. Others, other critics have noted that Boldrewood introduced whose links with the area go back generations, do the fi rst thoroughly Australian characters into fiction. k now of it. Som e speak of the ' troublesom e' Aborigines of Boldrewood's time. One farmer referred 1 to what he called the 'Sunday afternoon shoots' of Th e /bea utiful umbrageous blackwoodS 1 which he cla imed with those days. Others knew stories of the shooting of arguable justifica tion as /one of th e handsomest trees in Australia', Aborigines at Waterloo Swamp: 'They drove 'em into are left only along some roa dsides. Th e numerous wombats are gone. the swamp and shot any who showed above the water. ' Many difficulties im pede research of all the clashes and incidents of colonisation violence, because so many went unreported and oral history handed down fro m past generations can be unreliable, contra dictory and exaggerated after 150 years. N evertheless, taking into account the comments of Mrs Rutledge, the report of William Westgarth and local oral history, it seems pretty obvious that dark deeds were done at Waterloo Swamp. Maurie Sullivan of the Macarthur Historical Society escorted me to Little Waterloo Swamp near the Port Fairy- Hamilton road between Macarthur and VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 35 Stephen Murray-Smith wrote of three less old orchard planted by my father long years ago.' familiar Boldrewood titles, the collection of reminis All this, except for a couple of large trees, is gone. cences In Bad Company and the novels The Colonial The 'new' weatherboard white-and-green homestead Reformer and The Squatter's Dmam. He claimed to stands on a sweeping bend of the road to Bessiebelle. have learnt more about the 19th century in Australia Mattie Dyson bought the place, some 900 acres, from them than from other books he had read, over 50 years ago when still in his 20s. Mattie had particularly about squatting life and attitudes to lived all his life only a few miles from Squattlesea selectors and Aborigines. (Overland 99) This reading Mere but he had never heard of Rolf Boldrewood and left Murray-Smith 'with an affection for the humani attached no special significance to the place. Shortly ty and common-sense of Boldrewood ... ' after the purchase he encountered an old family friend. When I was a child my father often referred to 'I hear you've bought Squattlesea Mere,' said the Boldrewood's writings. At primary school we had friend. 'Yeah,' replied Mattie, 'and the first thing I'm pieces of his The Miner's Right set fo r reading and for going to do is change that name.' 'What? ' spluttered years I ached to read Robbery Under Arms. This book his friend. 'Don't do that whatever you do. That place is better known than the author's name because is history.' Mattie likes telling that story against several film versions have been made of it. himself. The huge pastoral run of Squattlesea Mere was Mattie and his wife came to take shy but sturdy reduced to farm size long ago. The foundation stones pride in their historical site. They bought editions of of the rather crudely built three-room ed homestead Old Melbourne Memories at secondhand bookshops, built in 1844 are all that remains. Nearby in the the only places where they could be purchased, and pastures along the Eumeralla River, long lines of fat gained quiet pleasure when, occasionally, people lambs can laze in the sun on sheltered banks of the stopped to peer at their place. narrow channel-like river. Further away is the stretch The countryside has changed greatly since Boldre of the volcanic Rocks, the lava flow which so long wood's time. The thickly trimmed forests have been ago spewed out from rugged Mount Eccles. superseded by bald farmlands liberally sprinkled with Bo ldrewood's daughter, Rose, in the 1930s clumps and hedges of northern hemisphere conifers. described the place as it had developed then: The 'beautiful umbrageous blackwoods', which he 'A smiling homestead framed in majestic pines, and claimed with arguable justification as 'one of the elms, h edges and orchards, fertile pasture land, handsomest trees in Australia', are left only along broad paddocks, a woolshed away in the distance, some roadsides. The numerous wombats are gone. horses in the stockyard, lovely views on all sides But even that 20th-century landscape is changing, ... the garden ablaze with asters and roses .. . the too. A new hardwood plantation has replaced the Dyson farm. Large timber companies, some with over seas connections, have bought up or leased huge areas of prime farmland extending from Bessiebelle to Penola to plant the quick-growing Tasmanian blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus. This development has 'There is a folklore in language as in everything created local concern about the possibility of a mono else and one of th e most abiding popu lar beliefs culture endangering farming towns and communities. about the phrase "fa ir dinkum" is that "dinkum" Although Boldrewood started writing years after is Chinese in origin and means "true go ld ". It he left the Port Fairy region, it figures importantly in conjures up a vision of exci ted Chin ese on the his works. His Old Melbourne Memories is devoted go ldfie ld s, wav in g lumps of go ld and shouting to it. From here he borrowed much in landscape and "Dinkum! Dinkum! ", probably to distinguish their characterisation for his novel Babes in the Bush. offer in g from th e brackets of foo l's go ld ava il ab le. Squattlesea Mere provided the basis for Marshmead Alas, it is not true. in his first novel, Th e Squatter's Dream, which his "Dinkum" is a word brought to Australia in the hero sold and then longed for again and finally lived di alecti ca l speech of the white sett le rs. It refers upon for the rest of his fictional life. Perhaps Boldre to a share of work requiring to be done, and wood had such longings, too. Squattlesea Mere has considerable national and then to work generally. In Robbery Under Arms literary significance. The site of the original home Boldrewood writes, "It took us an hour's ha rd stead surely deserves suitable recognition and preser dinkum to get nea r the peak." "Fai r dinkum" has vation. in it the notion th at th e allotment of work shou ld And, perhaps more importantly, further candid, be moderate and just.' unvarnished historical work on the colonisation of - Th e Dinkum Dictionary: Th e Origins of Australian south-west Victoria and elsewhere, seems necessary Words, Susan Butler, Text Publishing, 2001 to enlarge and suitably adjust the national record. • ISBN 1 8764 8585 X John Sendy is a freelance writer. 36 EUREKA STREET • jULY/AUGUST 2001 TRAVEL Saharan songs Anthony Ham sets out through the Libyan desert and finds change and tradition, coexisting. IN1974, deep in the Sah"a of 'outh At the sam e time as this corner of the In the winter of 2000, a group of western Libya, a nomadic Tuareg man Sahara absorbs its migrants from the French tourists undertook a camel safari came across a single set of tyre tracks in north, large numbers of sub-Saharan through the Idehan Murzuq (Murzuq the sand. He came to a stop, bewildered Africans also attempt to cross from the Sand Sea), the same stretch of inhospitable and not a little afraid, wondering what south. Libya, the wealthiest country in border territory. They came across a lorry great animal could leave such a trail. He Africa, draws men and women from stranded in the sand. Crouched in the refused to cross over the tracks until he Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Mali, all driven meagre shadows cast by the truck were had erased them. Only then would he to this demanding pilgrimage of survival the bodies of dead Africans, perfectly continue his journey. by the promise of a share of Libya's con desiccated. Little remains of this world of siderable oil wealth. In Niger in 2000, On my first night in the Sahara, apparent innocence. Whole plains and I witnessed poorly maintained trucks, I walked a short distance from the camp. valleys of the Libyan Sahara are now laden with human and other smuggled Suddenly alone, I was overcome by a pro given over to the trails of four-wheel cargo, inching northwards towards some found sense of abandonment. This is not drive enthusiasts and oil prospectors, ill-defined North African or European El a place to die. their vehicles now more often than not Dorado. At checkpoints, single men from Desert travellers now follow the propelled by Tuareg drivers. Guinea and Sierra Leone routinely faced ancient trans-Saharan caravan routes for Travellers are drawn to the Jebel two reasons-survival or adventure. In a Acacus, a range of other-worldly monoliths postmodern reversal, they are now the humiliation and the prospect rising up from the sand in forbidding that they would be allowed to go no testament to the volcanic power of the further. nomads, while only the traditionally natural world. Its wadis (dry river valleys) On the southern outskirts of Sebha, nomadic Tuareg retain an abiding con and caves conceallO,OOO-year-old, ochre the largest town of the Libyan Sahara, nection to a homeland, a landscape, a coloured rock paintings of giraffes and trucks wait weeks for passengers and territory which for them exists elephants and rhinoceros, of wedding goods to materialise before commencing without borders. scenes and lovemaking. The Idehan Ubari the journey south across the desert. (Ubari Sand Sea) to the north-east con Patient passengers wait to carry their 'I.E TuAREG ARE an ancient people. sists of thousands of square kilometres new-found 'wealth' back to their families, Some say that they are descended from of sand dunes, towering and shifting. Hid wondering if they will find them alive or the Berber nomads of North Africa. den among them are the famed Saharan find them at all. Others trace Tuareg roots to the ancient lakes of Mavo, Gebraoun, Mandara and In mid-May 2001, the Irish Times Garamantian civilisation which flour Umm al-Maa (the mother of lakes) reported: ished in the oases of the Fezzan (south deep-blue water framed with palm trees The bodies of 93 Africans who died of thirst western Libya) from 900BC to SOOAD. and surrounded by sweeps of fine sand have been found in the desert on Libya's Others say simply that they have always known as fish-fash. This is the desert southern border ... A Niger-registered been in the desert. I thought existed only in my imagination. truck carrying people from various African There is a disparity between the way Judging by the tracks which criss countries entered Libya on May 8 and the Tuareg are viewed by outsiders and cross this landscape, I am not alone in broke down, leaving the 93 to die. Another the way they see themselves. The name being drawn to this place. The year 1974 26, including the Sudanese driver, were 'Tuareg' derives in part from the Arabic seems a long time ago. able to escape and receive medical care. word tawarek, which means 'abandoned VOLUME 11 N UMB ER 6 • EUREKA STREET 37 ------by God'. In the past, not surprisingly, the I later learned that this giant of a man and villages of the oases. The crusty old Tuareg have preferred the title of played the oud, a soulful stringed instru man of the family pronounced himself imashaghen-'the noble and the free'. ment renowned for being difficult to weary of travellers. Such travellers Perhaps to counter a romanticising of the master. Three days into the journey, he appear in search of photographs of his punishing Tuareg lifestyle, some Tuareg confessed that, 'In the desert, I don't bright blue robes, silver amulet jewellery call themselves simply lwl tamasheq know the day or the date. Sometimes and 300-year- old spear. They never people who speak the Tamasheq language. I forget my name.' His large silver watch purchase the few handicrafts he offered Increasingly they have taken to calling sat in the car, ignored until his return to for sale. His public role had become that themselves ju st Tuareg-as if to make it the town . of a sideshow for tourists wanting to easier for outsiders to understand them. The driver of the other car was known m eet an 'authentic' Tuareg, a role he Frederick Bornemann, a German simply as Sheikh, a term of respect for regarded with unconcealed disdain. And explorer of the Sahara in the 19th cen the elder statesman of our party. When yet h e assured us that he would not tury, called them 'a mighty people'. Hugh ever we made camp close to sunset, he choose to live anywhere else in Clapperton, a British traveller of the sa me withdrew a discreet distance from the theworld. generation, called them 'fanatical' and group. There he would remain just within warned that they were not to be trusted. earshot and sit, uncorrupted, watching in 0 N OUR SECO D NIG HT in the Acacus, My Tuareg companions through the silence from the desert. His 50-year-old we camped in one of the small tributary Sahara highlighted the absurdity of all face was chiselled and angular; I fo und valleys of Wadi Tashwinat. A light soon such variants of exotic romanticism. Our myself envious of his aloof and silent appeared out of the darkness. The teen two four-wheel-drive vehicles were dignity. age son of the old Tuareg man emerged driven by Sallah and Sheikh. On the first day Sheikh suffered our and sat with us by the campfire. Sallah Sallah is a man of the town, 20-some food of canned beans and tuna. Thereafter, and Hakim, our Berber guide from the thing and larger-than-life. On first appear he disappeared to cook for himself- a north of Libya, began to sing, their Arabic ances, he seems to have retained little of simple meal of tagila (a damper-like bread lyrics haunting the bluffs and carried off his heritage. A chemistry teacher by cooked beneath the sand) and noodles. by the wind. Sallah was in typically fine training, Sallah did his Masters degree in 'Desert food', as he ca lled it. In his voice. From time to time, he would add Sebha and he was completely at home in driving, he never seem ed to accelerate, an imprompt u, gently teasing verse the towns. Wandering with him through yet always arrived before us, judiciously aimed at Sheikh, who laughed. the open-air market of Ghat oasis, not far choosing his path. Whereas Sallah prayed The young man, wrapped in his olive from the now-uninhabited mudbrick old in close proximity to the camp with little green turban, sat quietly beside Sheikh. city and the sand dunes lapping at the apparent need for privacy, Sheikh would When he spoke, he did so in barely town's fringe, he seemed completely in wander off to pray on the ridge-line of a audible tones, with obvious shyness and tune with the rhythms of urban life. sand dune, silhouetted against the only in Tamasheq. He was deferential to In the Jebel Acacus, Idehan Ubari and towering peaks of sand. all, but reserved a certain reverence for Idehan Murzuq he became suddenly I had taken with me to the Sahara a Sheikh, one of the respected bearers of transformed, urging his vehicle onwards tape of Tuareg music. Hearing it, Sheikh this young man's Tuareg heritage. through the fish -fa sh with shouts of announced, with some gravity, that this Three generations of Tuareg men encouragen1ent and curses, one arn1 was the old, true Tuareg music. My most together, united by language, landscape trailing out the window as if driving a enduring memory is of him listening to and tradition, and by the imperatives of reluctant camel. Sallah was perpetually the music, rocking back and forth with modern life. This heritage, of which the on the verge of extravagant movement hands beside his head, utterl y oblivious yo ung man will one day be custodian, an explosive celebration or a cry of to our presence. will contain stories of men like Sallah anguish. His driving was as enthusiastic Other Tuareg figures inhabited the and Sheikh, of the young man's father, as it was impetuous. He would frequently perimeter of my experience. In Ghat we and perhaps even of the dislocated launch headlong upon an impossible met Abram, a Tuareg from Niger. He was Abram. They will be stories of m en who ascent when an easy alternative existed, a man seemingly plagued with aimless made their own tracks in the sand, tracks occasionally becoming airborne as he ness. He hovered on the edge of conver which are unmistakably Tuareg and yet misjudged a ridge of sand. And yet sations, selling the handi crafts of his still very much their own, tracks which always we forgave him because his people's heritage, perhaps because they will one day be erased by those who charisma left everyone feeling that the were no longer items imbued with fo llow. But by then, the Tuareg will have excitement of goi ng over the rim of a significance in his dislocated life. Where moved on, adapting all the while to new sand dune was like traversing the very others had adapted to the changes realities. They will still inhabit the rim of the earth. He told us-without the wrought upon Tuareg society, Abram Saharan landscape which others will slightest concern for his reputation- that seemed cut off from his past, unsure how continue to pass through. But the Tuareg one time, close to Kufra in south-eastern to survive, with dignity intact, in the alone will understand it and they alone Libya, it had taken him a full two days present. will remain. • to cross a single sand dune. When finally In Wadi Tashwinat of the Jebel successful, he wept tears of exhaustion Acacus, we visited a Tuareg family, one Anthony Ham is a Eureka Street cor and joy. of the few still living outside the towns respond nt. 38 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/ A UGUST 2001 BOOKS:2 PETER STEE LE Travel bent Holiday Business: Tourism in Australia since 1870, jim Dav idson and Peter Spearritt, The Miegunyah Press (MUP ), 2000. ISBN 0 522 84884 2, RRP $65.95 Mediterranean Journeys in Time&. Place: A Traveller's Guide, Toru and Mal Logan, Black Inc., 2000. ISBN l 86395 282 9, RRI' $24.95 IT" WMmM" difficult to go ,u tho w•y w ith the French . Here, for instance, is Paul Va lery: Our craving fo r fic tion, for foreign travel, and for the extraordinary is clu e to a lack of vis ual imagination and an incapacity fo r thorough-going absences of mind. Yet it is enough to stare at anything at all for a few minutes and the known becomes the un known, life a dream, the moment an eternity. The same holds good for mystical and metaphysical speculation. I don' t believe him- if I understand him correctly-in that last sentence, which sends a flicker of uncertainty through the rest. Yet Valery himself can specialise in the visionary-as in, 'The whole world breathes into a seed and m akes of it a tree' aswellas in the flintily acute-as in, 'Maxim fo r Persons in Authority. When a man is I HAVE JUST ARRIVED AT LAU NCESTON licking your boots, put your foot on him before he starts to bite you .' He is usually on to m atters of significance. 'Fiction ... fo reign travel ... the extra ordinary': oft en, they have been a trio in the history of w riting. When Othello bewitched Desdemona with his traveller's tales, with his 'antres vast and deserts idle', his 'm en w hose heads / D o grow beneath their shou lders', he was already late in the day so far as yarning went. Sacred expeditionaries like Moses, secular venturers like Odysseus, and all those who went w ith them or after them, have been drawn by reports which blended the rem arkable, the exotic, and enough varnishing to make the eyes grow round. The time cam e when the novel itself was to be the offspring of all this talked-up travel, as if Herodotus had been th e god father of Cervantes: later still, countless novels have looped back into the process, revisiting the old paths, rekindling old l HAVE JU Sl ARRIVED A T SYD NEY curiosities and hankeri ngs. In a less obvious VOLUME 1 1 N UMBER 6 • EU REKA STRE ET 39 way, but to perhaps no less a degree, poetry Walter Pater, discussing travel, would REVIVING THE REPUBLIC has played a similar hand, both formally speak of go.ing 'north of the Humber', as if with DIRECT ELECTION and by implication-The Waste Land' is at this were much like leaving the known least as esoteric as Moby Dich. world. But each of us has a Humber, or a The Melbourne Republican Group Notions such as these come to mind collection of them-the borders of the presents when one thinks of Holiday Business: familiar, the com prchcnded. Nobody draws TWO FREE LECTURES Tourism in Australia since 1870 and a map these days and put 'here be mon Thursday 12 July, 6- 8pm Mediterranean Journ eys in Time and Place: sters' on it, but we all have appetites for, A Traveller's Guide. The first, handsomely and often fear of, the monster-like. Hence Mr Ray Cassin, produced by Micgunyah Press, reflects, as the very possibi I i ty of tourism and the Sunday Age columnist, on: its authors say, 'a continuing conversation touristic, which is conducted on the sup Whose republic is it, anyway? ... aboutpast and present Australia, and the position that our attention can be stretched imprint of travel and tourism on the land without easily being snapped. Holiday 8usi Professor George Winterton , scape'; the second 'does not pretend to be a ness is interested, among other things, in the Faculty of Law , University of NSW , on: scholarly work, but it docs attempt to show ways in which the wondrous can be served The t·csurrection how much more can be gained from a basic up in manageable portions. Sometimes, it of the republic understanding of how geography and his is thoughtfully rueful about the outcome. tory have influenced each other over a very Its last paragraph, for instance, reads: Chaired by Professor Stuart Macintyre, long time to produce what is on the ground The cost of producing the movie Tilanic, Dean of Arts, the University today. ' The result in each case is a book which fortunately for its backers became of Melbourne which is informative, stimulating and the highest-grossing movie of th e twentieth illuminating. The authors of Holiday at The Public Lecture Theatre century, was sli ghtl y more than the cost, Business arc professional historians, and The Old Arts Building inflation adjusted, of building the ship itself. those of Mediterranean journeys profes The University of Melbourne That an infotainment product can cost sional geographers, and on that count alone Enquiries: Dr Walter Phillips , Convenor, more than the real thing is testament to a each place touched on in the books is Melbourne Republican Group world where makcbelicve or virtua l Telephone (03) 9435 3572 likely to be, in a sense, a place of the experience seems to be valued more. e-mail: wwpcphill [email protected] mind, having the 'pitch' appropriate to the discipline which is brought to bear upon it. Such a conclusion has been foreshad Both arc sober works, but neither owed in the book, and it would be odd if it lacks vivacity. had not been, given the very title. The reduce , reuse, recycle, busyness of being off-duty, the task of M EDITERRANEAN / OUJ 40 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/A UGUST 2001 the oldest cities and oracles in Greece. stand for those sought-out insights which Zeus, the father of all gods, was worshipped were allegedly the rationale of the Grand here from the earliest times, and the oracle Tour and remain so in many m ore plebeian which flourished until the fourth century adven tures; there is th e rustling of the leaves AD attracted notable figures from all over in the oak tree, which is something like the Greece. It delivered advice through the countless material processes and moments Reasons for rustling of the leaves in a sa cred oak tree the sway of palms, exotic sunsets- which travelling Paradox: going away just makes you think m ore of h om e. Instance H exh am in Tyn edale, a venerable spot in N orthumber land, h om e to ancient ruins and site of a recent outbreak of 'lowping ill', a tick-borne ailment that infects h efted hill sh eep and look s suspiciou sly like foot-and-m outh disease. The UK Ministry for Agriculture, reports the Hexham Courant, sent a Spanish vet to deal with the English problem (by culling). The locals w ere furiou s. M aybe a political reconciliation job ~ GOIMG TO DAYLESFORD COMIHG fROM DA YLESFORD for the n ewly elected m ayor of H exham? H ere h e is: ' Eat in g in fac t was one of the activities people associated with guest-houses.' Postcards, thi s page and page 39, fr om Holiday Business. that was central to the cult of Zeus. Today are the boast of travel agents; there is the Dodoni's major visible heritage is a huge Greek theatre itself, emblem of 'dram atic' but elegant Greek theatre, capable of hold buildings, ancient and m odern, the world ing 18, 000 and one of the best preserved over; there is the sequence of Greek-to fr om ancient Greece. It was built in the Roman, itself a form of drama, and an third century BC in the time of King Pyrrhus example of that possession/dispossession of Epiros, but was remodelled by the which is a fea ture of virtually all societies, Romans. The Greeks used it for dramatic given time; there is the orchestra, a token of events, but the Romans introduced blood art's ubiquity, though here also of its ironies; sports. To provide protection to the spec there is the blood-channel, eloquent tators fro m the savage animals they built a reminder of the violence upon violence barrier between the seating and the orches which has been feared, ritualised, and very tra, and also du g a channel around the oft en endorsed by otherwise peaceable orchestra to drain away the blood. There groups; and there is the hillside with views, are remains of an acropolis located on a easily appropriated by the spectator, of a hillside wi th magnificent views. nature which precedes and will succeed The n am es each of us. Hexlw m Courant 'A channel around the orchestra to drain When geography m eets history, som e him as Michael Way. But surely he away the blood': it might be an emblem of such panoply is inevitable. Left to herself, is John H oward, aka John H oward our species' proneness to m atch sophis though, Clio, muse of history, singles out of The Games and aka Bob Jelly, tica tion with savagery. But the passage also the individual, the corporeal, and oft en the recently of Pearl Bay, n ow m oon tou ches on eight elem ents likely to be found comical. Holiday Business has a good lighting m ayorally between acting in the course of much travel writing, number of su ch m om ents. So, fo r example, jobs. answering to experiences in travel itself. when trea ting of that sometim es depress There is Z eus, embodiment and patron of ing subject, T he Guest-house, its authors And there will surely be a twist the sacred, to which pilgrimages are by write: in the tail of any deal he does definition devoted, but which can also Ea ting in fact was one of the activities between the pow er-brok ers in present itself in oblique forms to those with people associated with guest-houses. 'Rita London and the hill-farm ers of no overt expectation of it; there is the is well and has got quite fa t', wrote some H exham. -Morag Fraser oracular communication, which m ight one back to Melbourne from Adelaide, as if VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUR EKA ST REET 4 1 with a sly smile; putting on a few pounds behind it. Two resources comm ended to Dismissive remarks about the Australian during a holiday was, until the 1960s, the wandering English in the 18th century landscape arc legendary. But as George regarded as quite desirable. Indeed in were Portable Soup and Travelling Sauce: Seddon has shown in rebnion to the Men of hospitality Living and proclainling God's hospitable love As lived out by StJohn of advocacy and reconcili ation Will you dare to accept God's God over fiv e centuries ago, for those marginalised by our invitation to a life dedicated our vocation is to give of society. to hospitality? ourselves completely and Our core of hospitality If so please contact: fr eely; to be a brothe rl y compels and urges us to Br.John Clegg 01-1. presence; a symbol of hope deepen our relationship with Vocations J)irector. PO 13ox llN I 055, for th e world; proclaiming God, ourselves and with Bunvood North. N W 213-t God 's hospitable love to those w hom we share our Australia. all. 1i ves, comm u n 1 ty and Telephone (02) 9747 1699 W e are ca ll ed to a ministry. Facs imil e (02) 974-t 32(,2 charism of hospitality and W e are the: 'Brothers of Email provin [email protected] love that promotes hea ling, Stjohn ofGod.' W ebsite: www.stjohn.com.au 42 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/A UGUST 2001 OPERA JIM DAVID SON Turbulent voices Batavia, by Richard Mills and Peter Goldsworthy. Opera Australia, 2001 . S UMM" ot TH' Seventeenth Doll, the Besides, as Peter Carey has remarked, N evertheless I wonder whether framing previous operatic collaboration between colonial Australia was in effect a vast the work with monologues from the composer Richard Mills and poet Peter orphanage. Probably on account of the geo valetudinarian Pelsaert predisposes it Goldsworthy, had not, so I was told on graphical remoteness of the wreck, the story towards an open verdict; even the just returning from overseas, been a complete of the Batavia has not been well known executions become summary. This may, of success. So with som e misgivings I took outside Western Australia until relatively course, have been intentional, since the out the video, mindful that operatic versions recently. necessity of forgiveness and the realisation of well-known works often end up as a lot The themes of the opera- clearly much that in the end we only have each other is of sound and fury signifying nothing. I was discussed by both librettist and composer central to Mills' interpretation of the story. surprised by its power. The music allowed concern the conflict Richard Mills uses a richly the subtext of the Doll to em erge more between good and evil, diversified tonal palate in this clearly, since it manoeuvred great blocks of and the contrast be work, and ranges across it con m ood with more precise pacing. Again, tween religious faith fidently. First there is the instead of being handicapped by the flatness and human suffering. orchestra, which is u sed of ordinary Oz speech, the music caressed In addition, there is the astringently in tandem with its every inflection; intensely lyrical, its journey-both real and the vocal line, but comes into negotiation of the various operatic forms m e taphorical-and its own in post-Janacekian duet, quartet and so forth-became a way of the transformations it interludes and at key points in expressing warmth, almost (perversely) brings. Difficult mate the drama. These are further everydayness. rial to bring to book, elaborated by electronic sound The Doll is indubitably Australian. As but Peter Goldsworthy eff ects: primal moments far as the play's audiences are concerned, is remarkably success dem and elem ental sounds. In the materialities of the story centred on ful in doing so. At contrast, a baroque string band canecutters having their lay-of£ in Carlton times the libretto is creates a space for the reflec (quite likely, in the '50s) m ost often eclipse perhaps a fraction too tions of Captain Pelsaert, a the universal themes it also embodies: of dense with 17th sense of period being brought ageing, of the nature of love and romance, of century references out by quotations from promise turning into compromise. (and misattributes the Dowland. Finally there is a With Batavia, Mills and Goldsworthy nam e Batavia to the brass choir, used particularly have taken another Australian story, but ur-Djakarta, rather to emphasise the public and one of clearer universal significance. It than to the original Francisco Pelsae rt, 17th-century the formal in crisp, n co concerns the wreck of the Dutch East India people of the N ether Commandeur of the Dutch East baroque fanfares. As for the In dia Company (VOC), Company ship Batavia in 1629 and its con lands). But these are in a contemporary portrait voices-holding centre stage sequences, which included the murder of m ere quibbles. It is for 90 per cent of this opera 125 people. William Golding, we are told, well-paced, finely honed, and almost never there is not here the warm lyricism of the picked up the story and transmogrified it intrusive. (A rare example is the use of the Doll, nor the more obvious use of operatic into Lord of the Flies; but Manning Clark, word 'commonwealth'-perfectly proper forms. Instead there is something much concerned at that point in his History to 17th-century English, but surely a word to more sophisticated: sustained ensemble pas describe the country, followed Batavia's be avoided given the Australian con sages at a number of points, elaborating and Commandeur Pelsaert down the coast notations during the federation centenary.) even advancing the tensions postulated in and missed it. Poetic turns of phrase abound, but they are the libretto. And then, when one least So universal are the implications of disciplined, assisting the exposition rather expects it, a regular aria, as Wiebbe Hayes, shipwreck and a utopia gone wrong that the than indulging the author. Appropriately, the Everyman hero of the opera, closes the director, Lindy Hume- in what can only be an extended metaphor appears only in the work with what is both a lullaby and ben seen as a late example of the cultural work's final expansive moments: ediction as he addresses his 'darling sons'. cringe-insists that it isn' t really an Sleep my darling sons In the Melbourne production the main Australian story at all. It merely happened In the vessel of God's Heart, set, which served both the Amsterdam scene here. But marginality is also crucial to the The whisper of His Breath and the shipboard ones, had been ingen experience of white Au tralia, while the Doth sing upon the ail iously devised. When the ship is required, a Edenic inversion and criminality can also And play about the ropes suitably curvaceous wooden frame advances be seen to prefigure the convict period. like bow upon a viol. and encloses the cast on a platform, holding V OLUME 11 N UMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 43 them in, like an enormous rib cage. Since It may have also been prompted by another internationall y- particularly at the level of they have remained stati onary, the point compulsion of present-day opera , which (as conducting and directing- than it has ever about their inherent fra ilty as they set out if paying its dues for the past excesses of the been before. In Europe as elsewhere, the on their journey is beautifully m ade. form) seeks to spurn parabola and be a contemporary preoccupation with all form s Similarl y the major furnishings were small everyday, or as documentary, as possible. of brea kdown and the exposu re of basic trunks- chillingly assembled in serried Peter Goldsworthy has been almost apolo instincts ca n only aid its progress. Ou r very ra nks at the opera 's beginning- stamped getic about the fact that the ship actually own little holocaust is loos'd upon the with the initial s VOC, those of the Dutch ran aground in calm seas, instead of being world. East India Compa ny. These recur through wrecked in an operatic stonni and that the At hom e this work is even more signifi out the work, a m etaphor for the flotsam two put ashore on N ew Holland at the end cant. After the false dawn of Voss-which the people them selves become. were both males, rather than a young m an derailed itself at the very beginning by Foremost am ong the cast at the prem iere and a woman. But no-on e expects historical excursing into Bellini ra ther than drawing was Bruce Martin as Pelsaert- the Flailing accuracy in opcrai the force of the telling of on real affinities with the outsider-fi gures Dutchman- measured, world-weary, near the m yth, and its resonance, is what counts. of German romantic opera- we at long last the end of his tether. But it is only in Indeed I would have preferred m ore trans h ave the beginnings of an Aust ra li an Martin's performance, not in the music, formation, not less. That great man of the operatic repertory. The Doll and Ba tavia that there is an echo of the Wagnerian thea tre, Meyerbecr (though not so grea t as arc head-and-s houlders above anything else character, and entirely to good effect. a composer) knew what he was about when achieved here so far. Mills has said that, if Opposite him as Jeronimus Cornelisz was he made his false prophet a ringing tenor. he writes another opera, it will be a comic Bernard Lewis, who sang with suitable The defiance of Jeronimus needed to be onei Goldsworthy has already suggested an sangfroid and purposefulness. The women translated more fully into musical terms Em Malley. An opera about a hoax and its were less impressive. But there was a strik so that while there might be a little less consequences would really be something, ingly good performance from John Bolton insinuation, there might have been a great and could be comic in the way The Wood as the predikant, or preacher (who deal more contrast and confrontation. Ma stersingers is. Let's hope they do it, and when sounding forth managed to do so in a Batavia should travel well. Its careful advance further along the path of setting Dutch accent). This was as well, for Batavia diction, rooted in traditional English, will Australian speech to music they began on could otherwise have been sunk by the six m ake it accessible anywhere, while the so promisingly with The Doll. • prayers in the first act. Bolton-Wood was n o intelligen ce of its libre tto should ensure less impressive in the fi nal act, as the it a safe passage. It is very much opera for Jim Davidson is Associate Professor in the preacher who had lost all fa ith. export, and com es at the right time. Department of Asian and Intern a tiona! Stud Parts of Batavia are brutal. There are Australian op era is better connected ies at Victoria University of Technology. executions both licensed and unlicensed, while one of the two rapes is perhaps the clim ax of the action. Centrally staged, so EX HIBITION tha t Jeronimus might as well be also thrust AN DREW BULL EN ing at the audience, this second rape is strong m eat indeed. Richard Mills is aware that the opera 'is not a pleasant evening in the theatre', but the issue goes beyond this. It is all very well to talk of catharsis, but the Monet's floating problem is that the violence lasts longer and perhaps produces a deeper effect than the numb honesty of the resolution. The Greeks gave their drama a better chance of world achieving true catharsis by having all violence occur off-stage. That ain't the case today. The innocence of Hair or the love I NMON m Y Jmmt tho N "'"n'l c,H,.., Inexorably the viewer is drawn closer, and m aking scenes in Ken Russell's film Women of Australia one could stand by Okamoto one's eyes, like mayflies, hover and flicker in Love now seem a lot longer ago than the T oyohiko's screen Pines, with its three over the surface, settle on the lilies par late '60si now that virtually anything goes, steadfast pines against a golden expanse of ticularly, skim over the water. Close up the everything becomes spectacle, entertainment. emptiness, and turn to look through the surface of the painting reveals a pitted Small wonder then that the public executions next room to Monet's vast Waterlily pond. texture of dry paint- touches of lavender, once derided in schools as being brutal and From that distance Monet's painting palest green, yellowy white, like a soft rain, uncivilisecl are now creeping back in the was as detailed and clear as a landscape, with a few dabs of red or pink to indicate the United States, or that tourists in Malaysia amazingly an inverted landscape. One sees blooms. On this screen all imagery dis can, on visiting the gallows where Cham through misty air to the water surface, solves into coloured light. Apart from bers and Barlow were hanged, hear a tape whose refl ections draw the eye into a world paint there is nothing to see: can that be recording of heartbeats trailing away to death. where the clumps of trees and a central enough ? The calm of the sheer surface, full So Mills and Goldsworthy probably had openness to the cloudy sky are upside cl own. of emptiness, absorbs any questioning into little choice about the inclusion of so much Right way up, and floating-well that's the a peaceful acceptance of whatever it violence if they wished to be contemporary. impression-are archipelagos of lilies. shows. 44 EUREKA STREET • )ULY/ AUGUST 2001 It's the format of the huge screen that the Impressionists, the colour in these prints had on Monet's brushstroke. To do this makes this possible. Monet's debt to jolt the eye with startling contrasts that firmly it needed examples of Japanese Japanese art for the format is the final point nonetheless convince you that this is how the calligraphy. In Monet's paintings of hi made in the overall argument of this exhi world looks. It was the Japanese print that garden at Giverny his representation of bition. The Japanese connection hints that coloured the Impressionist palette. Although, willow leaves dangle in loose imitation of a Buddhist understanding of mystical ironically, as the Catalogu e indicates, the the vertical format of oriental writing, delight in the ambiguity of emptiness finds deep blue colouring of many Japanese prints strikingly so in Waterlili es. By happenstance its parallel in Monet's art. Other connec was itself imported from the West and the point is m ade in the exhibition Renoir tions are more boldly made. Certainly this created a fad for blue among Japanese art to Pi casso (Queensland Art Gallery, Bris is done in the text of the Catalogue and the ists. Here too, perhaps, there was an unno bane, 29 March-20 May; Art Gallery of notices affixed to the walls. Ultimately, ticed familiarity underlying the apparently N ew South Wales, Sydney, 1 June-29 July; however, it's one's eyes that have to be exotic which made the translation easier. and National Gallery of Victoria on Russell, convinced, and the argument has to be One wonders also if the prints of the M elbourne, 10 Augu st-30 September) , carried by the telling juxtaposition of 'floating world', the pleasure quarters in which supplements the Walter/Guillaume Japanese and Monet's art. Japan, gave Monet a poetic phrase that Collection with three of Monet's late works The exhibition is rich in Japanese prints, developed into his obsession with his from the Galerie Larock-Granoff in Paris. m any of them examples of those Monet water garden. Maybe the dreamworld Weeping Willow, Giverny drops tangled himself owned. The five haystack skeins of green, yellow, blue and red callig paintings on di splay show soft raphy all over the canvas. It's a shocking Fujiyamas, the Haystack, sunset wonder of a painting. of 189 1 (lower right) a close quote Nonetheless, Monet eJ Japan is an of Hokusai's famous Red Fuji (in intensely focused and carefully orchestrated the Catalogue as South wind, clear exhibition. It opens one's eyes to Japanese sl VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 45 L CCNHNAeY oc fodec,ion w" cel Australians who have influenced our sense This extraordinary piece blends live ebrated in Melbourne in surprisingly of how and who we are as a nation. There perfo rmances on a small stage by fiv e elaborate fa shion with a big, one-off arts were also art exhibitions, more music con different personae, intercut with video festival, running from 9-27 May. I guess it certs (wi th a strong Indigenous emphasis) taped appearances by numerous others on a was Melbourne's turn to claim the lime and a huge program of public lectures. The large projection screen above the perform light, after Sydney's dominance in the 1988 whole event was curated as an enterprising ance space. The conceit framing the piece is bicentenary celebrations and the Olympics. sub- contract by the Melbourne Inter that the Prime Minister has summoned Besides, Australia's first-ever parliamen national Festival management, headed by some of our most influential Australian tary sitting was held in Melbourne's Royal its current artistic director, Jonathan Mills. figures-our seminal influences-to Mel Exhibition Building so, not surprisingly, Quite how such a diverse range of events bourne to help him celebrate the centenary one of the Federation Festival's music responded to any Federation theme remains of federation. After his opening half-hour centrepieces (Ma hler's Symphony of a a bit of a mystery. In the official brochure peroration, the PM leaves the stage so that Thousand) was given in that august venue, Mills draws attention to two important we can eat our dinner and be regaled by refurbished for the occasion. anniversaries-the first sitting of Par various 'poets, pontificators and ex-patriots' There was a wide range of events, liament on 9 May 1901 and the referendum (note the spelling of the latter). including a new opera from Opera Aus of 27 May 1967 enabling Indigenous After a video session between Les tralia about a gruesom e incident from Australians to vote for the first time (the Murray and P.P. McGuinness, Geoffrey Australi a's past (Batavia, reviewed by Jim dates neatly framing the Festival). He notes Blainey takes the stage, with his shock of Davidson, page 43), a new play for Playbox that the 'Festival recognises the ceremonial white hair, patrician dem eanour and high about some gruesome individuals in St and reconciliatory nature of these occasions', blown language the main fea tures in Gillies' Kilda's present, an Australian interpretation but says little about his curatorial principles. caricature. There is then another interval, of one of Shakespeare's late plays, contem Nonetheless, the 'Fedfest' produced during which m ore videotaped Australian porary stand-up comedy challenging some m emorable and very lively theatre. visionaries appear. These include ABC assumed notions of national identity, a Arguably the best of it was Guy Rundle's supremo Jonathan Shier and Barry 'dance musical' celebrating the history of one-m an show, Your Dreaming: The Prime Humphries (who bem oans the disappear the old Tivoli Theatres and some very smart Minister's Cultural Symposium, starring the ance from our thea tre foyers of the elegant political satire featuring many of the incomparable mimic/satirist Max Gillies. chocolates of Mr Hillier and many oth ers- 46 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/A UGUST 2001 as well as the disappearance of our elegant on TV (a nd barracking for the West Indies) theatre foyers and indeed the very theatres when Lawford ambles in looking for a L'ARCHE AUSTRA LI A themselves). Gough Whitlam and Rupert partner in a game of pool. Initial jokes based Arc you seeking a way of life rather than a job? L' Arche communities Murdoch (now a Chinese citizen: 'I've always on racial and cultural misunderstandings offer you an opportunity to felt a bit Chinese') also appear on screen. give way to a series of orthodox solo stand di scover the gift of people with an Then it's Germaine Greer's turn on up pieces telling personal stories which in te ll ectual disability in a shared stage; she's arrived back in Australia at increasingly l ead to greater mutual lifestyle. For more information short notice, but still refuses to begin h er understandings between the two 'charac contact: Regional Co-ordinator, latest task on Indigenous land (and it's not ters'. His stories include his flight from ph: (03) 6278 \883, emai l: to promote her latest book; she is adamant Vietnam in a dodgy boat and his arrival in lsutton@ ip rimus.com.au, about that!) until her Indigenous welcom Australia. Hers include how she learnt or vi sit our w ebsite: ing committee bows up. N ext up is a English-at 13-on a Fitzroy Crossing cattle www. kyri e.com / l'archc shambling Bob Ellis, who's lost his notes station before going to Perth for her second but not his faith- especially in the fact that ary education and then to Alaska as an no decision ever taken by Gough, or Bob, or exchange student. Both are thus 'others' in OLD FINE & RARE BOOKS bought and sold . Paul (or even Chi£!) was made without his Australia in ways that are different but Louella Kerr & Lorraine Reed , advice and direct involvement. Ellis was surprisingly similar. Hung Le and Ningali I 39 St Johns Rei nearly the highlight of the evening. Lawson are n aturally gifted, skilled Glebe NS W 20 37. The show-stealer, however, simply performers and both are deadly funny. Tel: (02) 957 1 5557 called 'Bedtime' in the program, was the After its brief Melbourne season, their Email : lnl books@an zaab. com. au return of the PM in jarmies and gown, with show went to Fremantle for Deckchair Catalogues iss ued , or browse Bovril, hot-water bottle and bedside lamp. Theatre in late May and is going to the through our entire stock on our It is Rundle's masterstroke that John Adelaide Festival n ext year. I'd be sur website: w ww .anzaab .eom. au/ Howard is Barry Humphries' quintessential prised if it doesn 't tour m ore widely still. - In Ib ooks 1950s crea tion Sandy Stone, complete with This and Your Dreaming made for superbly a typically Sandy-like list of things that juxtaposed festival programs. have to be done ... tomorrow (or before the Finally, I must m ention Simon Phillips' PSYCHOLOGIST next election, if you want to read it that production of Shakespeare's The Tempest Julie Houniet way). for the Melbourne Theatre Company and (B.A ., Dip. App. Soc.Psych., MaPs.S., Member of A.P.S. and Gillies and Rundle don't get all of their the Federation Festival. Brisbane readers clinica l member of V.A .F.T .) visionaries and pontificators dead right. will recall a 1999 version of this in which Individual/ marital / famil y therapy; Whitlam's pomp is there, for example, but Prospera (in a compelling performance from anxiety; depression; relationship little else. ThewritingforGreerisgood, but John Stanton) lords it over an island whose difficulties; phobias; compulsh·e Gillies lacks her height and angularity of indigenes are not a monstrous Caliban and di sorders; addiction. physique and the razor-sharpness of her an aery Ariel but just a big blackfella and an Tel: (0 3) 948 1 7836 delivery. The Murdoch vision-piece is based earthy emu-spirit dancer. Phillips' new on a one-gag idea that isn't sustainable over production pursues the sam e ideas: the the length it's given. shipwrecked Italian usurpers and hangers But the best (Blainey, Ellis, Humphries, on of Prospera's past are Georgian English Classificds arc now also Shier and McGuinness) are excellent and adventurers (would-be invaders, in fact) and publish ed o n o ur w e bsite, at http://www. the PM-as-Sandy-Stone idea is a coup de the comic duo of Stephana and Trinculo are c urekastrcet.com.a u I pages I thrHitre. Since the demise of the Pram convicts, whose provision of alcohol and classificd s. html Factory and the Tilbury Hotel-and apart promises of advancement to their ignorant from Rod Quantock's more complex hybrid subject Caliban lead to predictably debili EUREKA STREET CLASSIFIED$ of political satire and stand-up comedy- tating consequences. This is made more Got something to ell or lease? we've seen too little satirical revue poignant in that convict and Aborigine Want to buy? Need staff? Want to of this kind and quality. are equally oppressed in the play's world offer professional services? view and in the coloniser Prospera's Eureka Street clas ifi eds ads for just A s IF YouR DJ VOLUME 11 NUMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 47 And it is that unknown thing: a new musical film. Not that the music is new, just the form of film musica l which I think ended20 years ago with Grease. Here, songs like Eden Ahbcz's 'Nature Boy' and Elton John's 'Your So ng' arc mined ruthlessly for relevance. Suddenly those corn y hooks arc philosophy: 'All You Need Is Love'; 'Lov e Is A Many-Splendored Thing'; 'I Will Always Love You'-thcsc become significant, and their sentiments resonate as though they were quantum theory, which in this film they in fact arc. As in a wedding, popular songs suddenly coruscate with mea ning for a brief hour, so it is here: a fresh take, even. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman pl ay the lovers. He is always good value, and she has that elusive something that marks out the real star. The camera adores her. Thi is her tar vehicle, and she rides it with relish and aplomb. She is a very able comic actress, reality TV as a genre-the repetitiOn of as it turns out. This is a good thing, because sensational footage, the relentless usc of the love story has very little impact- it is Killing time teasers to hook us into the next episode, show that drive the show. Both stars ca n 'confessional' interviews with the contest dance and sing nicely, but it is good to see Series 7, dir. Daniel Minahan. I suppose ants, and so on. More than anything else, brilliant Australian talent such as Caroline Series 7 should be described as a parody of Series 7 seems to suggest that the content of O'Connor and ChristincAnu ge t a showing. 'rea lity television', given that its basic such shows is shaped not by any 'reality' Lu hrmann has been generous in the handing prcmi cis more or less 'Just like Survivor taking place in front of the cameras, but out of guernseys to Australi ans and it has but with guns!'. The film presents itself as rather by the form of commercial television served him well; they do us proud. Even the seventh series of a reality TV show itself. The most unsettling thing about the Kylic Minogue ge ts a funny and charming ca ll ed The Contenders, in which six people film is not that a show like The Contenders cameo as the Green Fairy, who materialiscs (pictured above and right) are chosen is the logica I next step for rca li ty TV; it i at the drop of an absinthe. (S he is so like random! y and given guns; the wi nncr is the that in principle, there is already nothing to Tinkerbell that Disney probably will sue.) last left standing. The plot is as contrived distinguish Th e Contendus from what we O'Connor's flamenco/ tango to 'Roxanne' and artificial as only reality TV can be sec on TV right now. is something that will remain in the more akin to some kind of absurdist soap -Allan James Thomas memory, as will ome hilarious Fcydea u opera than it is to documentary. Of the six likc scenes with Toulousc-Lautrcc (John contenders, two are former lovers: Dawn, Leguizamo cavorting about on his knees). pregnant single mother and reigning More is more-ish Cavorting. Yes. There is a lot of cavorting champion of the show, and Jeff, now an in Moulin Rouge. ex-gay married man with testicular cancer. Moulin Rouge, dir. Baz Luhrmann. Nothing And if you want to ce 'Like A Virgin' Will their passion reignite? Can they bring exceeds like excess, and this is one of the camped up even more than Madonna, look themselves to kill? Will he sacrifice him most extraordinary visual displays you will no further. If you want to sec spectacle self for her? Can they confront their past ever see. Imagine all sparrows transformed piled upon showiness and heaped upon dis and which one of them will have a future? into birds of paradi e. Don't go to this film play, here you arc, enjoy. Then go home and Imagine these questions being posed in a wanting violets because all you'll get is take a Panadol and go to bed. frenziedly dramatic voice-over as we cut to whopping great cabbage roses, jostling - Juliette Hughes an ad break, and you'll get the fee l of the fi lm. with sunflowers. The eye at times quails The problem is that reality TV is already at the barrage-you zoom into the picture so absurdist in its conception and execu vertiginously as Luhrmann works the Lemon Ruski tion that it seems to be virtually impossible camera-on -rails overtime. The po-mo to parody-you can't make it any more potlatch is here: all experience, perception, Russian Doll, dir. Stavros Kazantzidis. appalling that it already is. In fact, the fi lm objects, tossed in a gargantuan salad and Screwball comedy can be a real delight. recreates the look and feel of these show so served to you by a singing waiter. In drag. With its insane mix of loves-me-loves-me perfectly that if you put it on TV and plugged Moulin Rouge does this with a sm all nots, switcheroos, flawed motives, crooked in some ads, there would be nothing at all to tale that betrays the writers' background in laughs and crying babies, it is one of cinema's distinguish it from anything else on the opera: Verdi and Puccini should sue. A con most buoyant genres. Granted, screwball's small screen. However, the fact that we're sumptive courtesan . A fervid young writer/ heyday may have fi nished in 1940 with the watching all this in the cinema makes us all lover. A nasty duke. An apoplectic MC/ end credits of Howard Hawk ' Hi Girl the more aware of the conventions of the Pandarus. Friday, but handsom e lea ds falling into 48 EUREKA STREET • j ULY/ AUGUST 2001 feeble emotional traps should always raise The House of Mirth has a lot going for it: a laugh. But will they? the acting is fine, the film is beautifully Katia (Natalia Novikova), a Russian shot and the story is well-written. But the Not red hot internet bride, is fl ying into Sydney to meet film only occasionally succeeds in making h er online fiance. Unfortunately he is complex historical social convention The Crimson Rivers (Les Rivieres Pourpres), DOA- not the live wire she was hoping for. credible to a modern audience- a crucial dir. Mathieu Kassovitz. If I were controller The teary young Katia is stuck in a foreign fault, and one that undermines the film's of the universe I reckon I'd look into that country, lacking funds and fiances. finer features. sticky, age-old problem of translating books Enter Ethan (David Wenham) a success Despite these good points-the acting to the screen. Th e Crimson Rivers, having ful, happy, married book publisher, unable and dialogue are treats, for example-it is started life as a 400-page book, is now Mathieu to walk past a weeping woman with a possible that The House of Mirth will not Kassovitz's latest 105-minutecrime thriller, plunging neckline. Add to this mix a pushy, find an audience at all. Not only is it and, as good as much of it is, something has m atch-makingwife(Rebecca Frith), a weary, depressing and frustrating, but it is a period been- how shall I say?- lost in the trans private-eye best friend (Hugo Weaving), piece with neither narrative enchantment lation. It is not a loss of quality necessarily complicated wedding plans and voila, all nor stylistic innovation. (not having read the book I couldn't com the ingredients for a standard issue -Annelise Balsamo ment): it's about missing information, the screwball- just add dialogue and mix. loss of cold hard facts that are so vital to a Unfortunately, the quick-trick recipe film satisfying thriller. It is always a dead give rarely works-and Russian Doll is no Stone free away when the media notes tell you things exception. about a character's past that the film The film has no shortage of beaut comic The Sacred Stones, a documentary co neglects to mention. actors (Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, written by Andrew Dodd and Peter Thomas Max (Vincent Cassel) and Pierre (Jean Sacha Horler ), nor was it light-on for plot and produced by Albert Street Productions. Reno), policemen working different crim e possibilities. So why wasn't I tripping over Drift is an occupational hazard for scenes in separate small French towns, find my own laughter? Well, there was not a documentary makers. Point the camera, themselves drawn together when it becom es morsel of surprise, no screwy m otives (just bounce off an incident here, lean on a fact apparent their inv es tiga ti ons are con nee ted. your regular bawdy stuff) and little if any there. Forget narrative shape. The Sacred Confronted with appalling murders, local colour (a drunken night out in a Rus Stones has the virtue of a perfect sian club showed promise, but alas was not tory: beginning, development, exploited). Is Australia's comic style too complication, resolution. It also laconic to fit the rapid-fire style of a classic has the astounding red land and screwball? N ahhhh- we just need to write great rocks of Central Australia. them funnier. -Siobhan Jackson Is there a landscape anywhere else on earth that registers quite this way on film? Bleak house The narrative follows three peoples, the Warumungu, The House of Mirth, dir. Terence Davies. Kaytetye and Arrente, two men, I often look at the cast of a film and feel and two great stones. The men despair. I did it with The House of Mirth are John Flynn- the iconic Flynn of the desecration of graves, ancient glaciers, Gillian Anderson, Dan Aykroyd, Eric Stoltz inland mission and the flying doctor eugenics and academic snobbery, the two and Elizabeth McGovern. Powerful alter service-and his successor, Fred McKay. blunder about testing the patience of the local egos weighed two down, and the others The two stones, the first one taken from law enforcement and resident brains alike. were faded stars of promise. But this film Warumungu and Kaytetye land, the other There is nothing unusual about the way allowed Anderson and Aykroyd to move one offered half a century later from Arrente the plot plays out in The Crimson Rivers: beyondX-Files and Blues Brothers, and they land, are obj ects of sacred significance to clever murderer leaves cryptic clues leading both offered believable performances in a their people, and become so for the white to subsequent victims; instinctual detec very bleak piece. Stoltz and McGovern were people who come to share their land. The tive leaves PC Plod floundering in his wake; likewise strong. first is used as Flynn's burial marker. The snobby academics fail to realise that the The House of Mirth, from the Edith second, an Arrente gift, finally replaces the detective is as clever as they are, and so on. Wharton novel of the sam e name, is set in stolen stone, which then returns to its home. All the film's fl air is to be found in the the suffocating atmosphere of N ew York The film uses archival footage, a acting and visual style. high society, circa 1905. It follows the sparkling interview with McKay, location Cassel and Reno are both great fun, their delicate tangle of deceit and intrigue that shots and stills to piece the resonant story skill adding a depth that is absent from the appears to have been daily fare for the social together. It also uses clever re-enactment script. With Kassovitz's arresting visual set, and the fall from grace of one young (too clever perhaps, introducing the only style (remember his earlier masterpiece La woman, Lily Bart. The fall is not due to ambiguous note in an otherwise clear Hain e) and astute visual connections, The any real transgression, but rather a series narrative). Crimson Rivers is better than your average of misunderstandings and manipulations In a different climate, you might see it common or garden-variety thriller but it's and, most depressingly, Lily's innate as a matter of course on the ABC. Now, not just not as good as it should be given the integrity. necessarily so. Watch SBS. -Morag Fraser assembled talent. -Siobhan Jackson V OLUME 11 N UMBER 6 • EUREKA STREET 49 Digesting My Brother jack INTH' "'" 1970s when I w.s' uni " udent liming in the all-important. The first half was adapted pretty decently by John inner city, the ABC did a radio serial of My Brother Jack. I think Alsop, but the second half, adapted by Sue Smith, was just not that the reader was probably someone like Ron Haddrick (he of up to the standard of the first. No matter how much Smith the grand resonating vocal chords and unobtrusive but authen m ay disagree with George Johnston's creation of David's wife tic Australian accent). The theme tune was perfect: a mouth Helen as an empty, calculating petty bourgeoise, her bland, organ playing the aural equivalent of those street cricket paint politically correct take on it leached all the zing out of the end ings by Russell Drysdale-a Chinese burn of nostalgia before a of the story. The poignant promise offered in the book by the single word was uttered. The reading was m easured and young and glowing Cressida Morley withered in her portrayal pellucidly clear. We listened. Our attention was compelled by (by Claudia Karvan ) as a rather tired, untidy older woman. It these simple things, clarity, resonance, the power of a story was an inexplicable lapse-in the book we are encouraged, that m eant something to everyone who heard it: that aft er a rightly or wrongly, to re bel again st H elen . Jo hns to n 's hard birth at Gallipoli, the infant nation was delivered damaged. attitudes may have been questionable, but showing us far George Johnston's novel showed this to us when the ideal too much of a beautiful actress and then deciding (no doubt Australian, Jack Meredith, embodying all that was right about through using a bloody focus group) that you had to make the the new nation, has to be a 'battler', because in the damaged land beautiful one more sympathetic, does not a great both luck and justice were scarce. And his brother David, the adaptation make. narrator, so wounded in his courage by the fa ther who came back soul- ruined from the war, is a perpetual outsider, the observer MYIDEA OF A cooo novel adaptation is one which takes m oulded by the forces he sees but cannot fu lly engage with. considerably more time than television production companies There was an ABC serial of the novel in the '60s in black want to pay for these days. In the old days the public broadcaster and-white, and it would be interesting to compare it with the would take the risk and spend som e of our taxes on doing a slick production values of the well-packaged mini-series version good and thorough job, som ething in six episodes at least, or as that Ten presented in early June. By its very nature the Ten long as it took. They still do that sort of thing. They employ production compelled you to watch, and given its limitations teams of scriptwriters to churn out interminable sludge like did a creditable job. The things that were right went swim Neighbours and Home and Away: long, leisurely narratives mingly: Simon Lyndon as Jack was great, and so was William whose intertwining subplots chug on for years. Soaps are the Mcinnes as the tortured father of the two Meredith boys, back proof that you can take your time setting scenes, establishing from the war so damaged that he damages all those around him. tones and developing characters. Look at the grandaddies of The whole Sam Burlington affair was done so well that it raised them all, Days of Our Lives, Coronation Street, maundering your hopes. Jack Thompson, who would have been the best on for whole generations, vaster than empires, and more slow. Jack imaginable 30 years ago, contented himself and us with a These days it's all the ABC can do to keep track of the tour de force as the tough old newspaper editor. changing names on pigeon holes, if they can afford pigeon holes T here were some good things done in the style depart these days. Too little of the exiguous amounts the government ment- William Mcinnes as David's father was aged convinc doles out to the national broadcaster ever reaches our screens. ingly. So why couldn't they do the same for the m other? Angie Jonathan Shier seems content to repeat Yes, Minister (a phrase Milliken looked ridiculously young until close to the end when he must be familiar with, I suppose) m ore often than the cable she was supposed to be in her 60s, whereupon som e makeup companies, while employing ever more m anagers to manage girl puffed a timorous bit of talc in her hair, which looked all other managers. It is, it seems, profligate and irresponsible to wrong and '90s at the front anyhow. Such a simple thing yet use our taxes to pay artists, writers, journalists, researchers and seemingly beyond the powers of the wardrobe people. They had archivists-all the deeply skilled staff who have been the back a great time doing fi nger waves on Helen (Ellouise Rothwell). bone of the ABC for generations, all worried about being sacked The lass has a good head of hair and a very good figure and the as restructures sweep through again. (Why does 'restructure' directors showed it more than was strictly necessary. And for never m ean 'add more much-needed people'?) • some reason they couldn't let the tone of the book show through here, especially in the second half, where tone and subtlety are Juli ette Hughes is a freelance reviewer. 50 EUREKA STR EET jULY/A UGUST 2001 Eureka Street Cryptic Crossword no. 95, July/August 2001 Devised by Joan Nowotny IB VM ACROSS 1. Some of them scared us kids in the half light. (4) 3. Attributes his good appearance to correct neckware. (10) 10. Delight about topless Eve reaching this height. (9) 11. Some limp elastic yields to force. (5) 12. Which did you say? The one on the heath, in play' (5) 13. Cut the spending, perhaps. Unusually, coin is in no purse or pocket. (8) 15. The sort of rain that can change the m eeting time. (7) 17. For a m odel, former flame has plenty! (7) 19. Weird spectre wins this, at least, from those it frightened. (7) 2 1. Generally, Laura's out-towards the east. (2,1 ,4) 22. Message on the world wide web, finally changed, to be held in custody. (8) 24. Title claim? Correct! (5) 27. The current import. (5) 28. Best wishes for a good trip to Paris! (3,6) 29. The perpetual convalescent-one who hangs round after mother. (10) 30. I object, on ship, to the disorder. (4) Solution to Crossword no. 94, June 2001 DOWN 1. In those dark still places, what I thought I saw petered out. (4,6) 2. Weary, after having been extravagant, perhaps. (5) 4. Sort of flour doing this by itself? (7) 5. All pain suffered with style! (7) 6. What the queen does, we hear, when it is 15-across. (5) 7. I'm on time; you apparently are too, when speaking off the cuff! (9) 8. To be so depressed, seemingly, makes one go it alone. (4) 9. English spa town on the hour for ablutions. (8) 14. Don't be so acquiescent towards som eone so implacable. (10 ) 16. On the ever-changing silent sea a compass point is cardinal. (9) 18. A blonde policewoman made an arrest considered to be reasonable. (1,4,3 ) 20. A number with ability in a team that can be m aintained. (7) 2 1. Rather slow producing article for poet. (7) 23 . Wasted away at stylish school, it seems. (5) 25 . Favour archbishop with your address. (5) 26. Cheese invented in the Netherlands. (4) ------~ ------This subscriptio n is: Your Contact Details: Gift to: (Please also.fi'll i11 your ou•n COil/act details, lefi) D New D Renewal D Gift IMrs/MJss/Ms/Mi- F~rst Name II MrsiMJSs/Ms/Mr F1rst Name Le ngth of subscriptio n: ~Su~rn~a=me~======~~Su~rn~a=me~======~ D O ne yea r ( 10 issues fo r $63, $54 concessio n for !Street No. Street Name Street Name pe nsio ners, stude nts and unemployed. Inc. GST .l D Two yea rs (20 issues for $11 5, 98 concession. lnc. GST .) ICltyfTown/Suburb State Postcode State Postcode 0/'(!I'S('C/S I'CIIi!S 0 11 app/ical iOII: ti!l +61:) 9427 7.) II e111a il: su bs@je.,jJu bjesui/.ol:l{. C/11 ~ (~·~~·m~•~)~le~ph~o~ne~N~o~.------~F~ax~le~m~aii ____~ILI (~•~~'m~e~)~ele~ph~o~ne~N~o~·------~F~ax~le~m~a• ~l ---~ Send to: Payment Details D Visa D Bankcard D Mastercard Eureka Street Subscription 0 o l$enclose a y :~~:~~y:~e ;:~: sf~ : I I I I II I I I II I I I II I I I I ReP6' Paid 553 1 ~-----'· Publicati ons ,--- --ICardholder's name I POBox553 D Please debit my credit card fo r I$ I Richmond VIC 3121. .L (No postage stamp required ifposted in D Pl ease st· nd me di rect debit form------~Ls~s . ~ gn~•'~"'~e ------~Ex~p~r~y~da~te--~1~ Austmlia.) 0 Mailing list: I would like to remove my name from the mailing list when it is used for outside advertising. The Jerilderie Letter by Ned Kelly Edited and introduced by Alex McDermott The ferilderie Letter is one of the great documents of Australian history, and is central to the continued and passionate debate about N ed Kelly's legacy. Ned tried to publish the letter in February 1879, immediately after the Kelly Gang had held up the Bank of New South Wales in Jerilderie. He failed in his attempt it was never read by the public in his lifetime- but the letter survived. In 2000 the manuscript was donated to the State Library of Victoria. It is Kelly's astonishing manifesto and an amazing record of his voice. This illustrated paperback edition includes a fascinating new introduction by Kelly historian (and Eureka Street writer) Alex McDermott. Thanks to Text Publishing, Eureka Street has 15 copies of The ferilderie Letter to give away, each worth $16.95. Just put your name and address on the back of an envelope and send it to: Emeka Street July/August 2001 Book Offer, PO Box 553, Richmond, VIC, 3121. (S ee page 7 for winners of the May 2001 Baal< Offer) The United Faculty ofTheology (.1/clbourne .. I 11 ~ 1 raha) seeks applications for the position of DEAN This fu ll-time position inw lves strateg ic and day-to -d ay leade r ship of the UFT, wo rking closely with its fa culty and stude nt bo d y to m anage both unde rg raduate and post -g raduate studies. The successful a pplicant wi ll be committe d to C hrist ian theo logical educatio n in an ecume ni cal em ·ironme nt, ha,·e strong administrative skills and e njoy good pe rsonal re lationships . He o r she wil l hold a research d egree in a theo log ica l discipline , and h a q~ expe rie nce in theolog ical teaching. The LIFT is a fed e ratio n of th ree coll eges pre paring m e n and Ha\>vkstonc Hall is .111 i nt c rn ~1 t io n a l pa:-. toral ce ntre ~e r v in g th e " ·om en fu r C hristian ministry in gene ral, and som e specillcall y uni n -rsa l Church as ,, pl ace o f spiritual rene wal. Staffed I" the fo r ordinati o n : the JcsuitTheological College ( Ro m an Catho lic), Rcdcm pto ri sts of th e I on do n Provin ce, " ith a co llahorati,·c LC'J I11, tlw Trinity C o llegcTheolugical Scho ol (Ang li can) and theTilC' ological 3-Month Hene\val Course is th r first choice for many re li gious, Hall of the Uniting Church o f Australia (Victo rian Synod). It is pr i ('~ t s, ~1n d lay pcopl l' o n sa bhati ca ll c~lH'. The ho use is set in cxtrnsivc an arfiliated teaching institutio n o f the M e lbo urne College o f pa rkl and in Shropshire, England; it is a pcace-llll cd place. Oivinitv. The purpo!oic o f" t he IIJ." k:,tonc R l· newal Course is to pro' ide a The positio n comme nces o n lkcembe r I st , 200 I . sympathetic ~ p an• for peopl e to rcdiscOH'r an d re new th eir lo\'ing attachm ent to J c ~;us of N.Yt.a rcth. Course dates for 2001 &.. 2002: Appli cati o ns ( whic h should include a d etailed CV and the nam es o f three re fe rees) close on Jul;' 27th , 2001 . 10 September- 6 December 200 1 22 April- 18 July 2002 7 January- 21 March 2002 9 September - 5 December 2002 The;· sho uld he m a rked 'conl"id c ntia l' , a nd addressed to Forjurther details contact: l'r<'si dcnt, LIFT, Tlw ~l'( rclarv ( 1 ·- ~). !Ia" btolll' l l.1ll, :\\archamlcY Shrc~\\ .;b urv SY4 51 (; I ng land . c: l- T rinity Co ll l'gl' Tlwologica l Sc hoo l, 1<·1: ++4+ 1610 6SS2+2 l·ax : ++4+ 1630 685565 Roya l Par,H k , !·ma il: llawklMII ({t aol.nun I'ARKVII I E 10 52. visit this pcacc-ri ll cd place today at www.hawkstonc-hall. com l'or further inlim 11at ion ca ll (03) 93+9 0 127. 9 771