Bidda Jones and Julian Davies, Backlash: Australia’s conflict of values over live exports

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Bidda Jones and Julian Davies, BacklashWhen co-author and publisher Julian Davies sent me Backlash to review, he described it as “our latest and perhaps most ambitious book so far – non-fiction”. Hmm, I thought, that’s quite something from the publisher of some very interesting and, it seems to me, ambitious books. But now, having read Backlash, I understand what he meant. For a start, Backlash comes straight from the heart of its writers, but more than this, it is ambitious in that its goals and messages reach beyond the specific issue of live exports and animal welfare, as important as those are.

It’s unlikely, if you’re Australian, that you didn’t see or hear about the 2011 Four Corners television episode on the live export of animals to Indonesia, A Bloody Business*. While the actual audience on the night was, Jones and Davies say, comparatively small, the impact – in the short-term in particular – was huge. This book tells the wider story – how the program came about and what happened afterwards. In doing so, it explores the ramifications of the trade, weighs economic expediency against ethical considerations, exposes the democratic processes by which decisions are made, and asks us to think about what it all says about us as a people. As the subtitle says, it’s about “conflict of values”. Live export might be the subject of this particular story but, for Jones and Davies, it exemplifies something bigger, something to do with the sort of society we wish to be and how we might get there. For this reason, as for any, Backlash is a valuable read.

What I didn’t know, or didn’t remember, when I started reading the book is that co-author and zoologist Bidda Jones, head of science and policy at RSPCA Australia, along with Lyn White, animal activist and now campaign director for Animals Australia, were the people who took the issue to Four Corners. It was Jones’ research and White’s video footage which convinced Four Corners to do the story. After the broadcast, politician Barnaby Joyce asked Jones and White why they hadn’t taken the story to him and his Opposition colleagues. The reason was simple, they had tried approaching politicians but had failed to garner any interest. So, to the media it was.

There is no fancy writing here. The book uses plain, direct language as befits its aims. There is little use of flashy rhetorical devices to sway opinion. The authors focus instead on fact and logic to present their case. The book is carefully structured. It starts with an introduction which sets out the book’s aims and explains that although both authors contributed to the book it has been written in Bidda’s first person voice. Chapter 2 briefly recounts their experience of watching the Four Corners program. The book then moves back in time and, over several chapters, chronicles how the program came about: the research (which included Lyn White’s filming trip to Indonesia), the lobbying, and the strategic planning. We then return, at Chapter 16, to the screening of the program and a description of its content. The rest of the book discusses the show’s aftermath. They detail the main cases for and against live export of animals, the initial widespread strong reaction which resulted in the government imposing a short-term ban on live export to Indonesia, and the backlash against this decision which resulted in live export being restored. Since then, they argue (though others argue differently), no real progress has been achieved in improving the welfare of animals. It’s a distressing and depressing story about the failure of our duty of care to animals.

The book is not, as they admit in the Introduction, “an unbiased examination of the different sides of the live export debate”, that is, they decisively argue the animal welfare case, just as Bill McKibben in Oil and honey starts from the basis that he is a climate change activist. However, they also argue that they don’t take “an inflexible ideological position”. They recognise that ours is a “pluralistic society” with many different stakeholders. I understand this to mean that they are vegetarians** who would prefer no animals be killed for food, but they recognise that there are many people who do wish to eat meat. Their position, then, is not to stop animal farming altogether, but to ensure that the welfare of the animals involved is given the priority it should in a civilised society.

Achieving better animal welfare, though, is easier said than done. In chapter after chapter, they demonstrate how “money speaks and is heard”, how bureaucratic processes are manipulated, how changes in political personnel subvert plans, how public policy is too often formed under the influence of power-plays and egos rather than logic and reason. And so, despite a huge public outcry and clear public concern, in the end economic arguments outweighed ethical considerations. The few recommendations made to improve animal welfare conditions were either watered down (such as mandatory stunning pre-slaughter made “a recommendation” not “mandatory”), were not given a proper regulatory framework, and/or got lost in the bureaucracy.

By now, you are probably wondering if the book is all about nay-saying, but it’s not. Jones and Davies propose a range of options, starting with improving the welfare of animals involved in live export. This means improving the selection of animals to be exported, improving the transport conditions under which they are exported, and then improving their treatment and slaughter at the other end. Better, though, they argue, would be to stop live export altogether and focus on the meat trade. This is what New Zealand decided to do in 2007 when it ceased live export out of concern for animal welfare and for its reputation as a country which cared about animal welfare. The problem is that ceasing live export requires longterm planning (including the rebuilding of abattoirs in northern Australia) but contemporary Australian politics is epitomised by “short-termism” underpinned by “a built-in avoidance of complex issues”. I don’t think many of us would argue with their statement that:

Altering the land management practices of pastoralists over millions of hectares requires a long-term outlook and courageous decision-making – rare qualities in today’s political climate.

And so, issues like animal welfare concerns, environmental degradation and insecure export markets are ignored in favour of short-term economic gains.

At the beginning of the book, Jones and Davies state that

a central premise of this book is that a well-governed society develops ways to reconcile economics and welfare so that both suffer as little as possible.

They stay true to this throughout demonstrating that it is possible to balance economic considerations with ethical concerns. (Just look at New Zealand for a start!) Australians, Jones and Davies believe, have shown that they (we) do not condone “entrenched cruelty” to animals, but so far people power has not won out. This story has a way to go yet …

awwchallenge2016

* You can watch the program online (in Australia at least) but warning, it it VERY unpleasant viewing.
** Please see Bidda’s comment below clarifying that they are not vegetarians, as I thought I’d read.

Bidda Jones and Julian Davies
Backlash: Australia’s conflict of values over live exports
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd Publishers, 2016
207pp.
ISBN: 9780994516503

(Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd Publishers)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Explorer’s journals (1, Edward John Eyre)

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I have delved before into Australian explorer’s journals when researching posts, but I must admit that I’ve never read one right through. However, I don’t think that prevents my sharing some of the things they have to offer …

Project Gutenberg Australia (PGA), which I’ve described before, is a rich resource of a wide variety of copyright-free works, including, not surprisingly, Australiana. And a special subset of this Australiana area is its Journals of Australian Land and Sea Explorers and Discoverers collection. This is, they say, “one of the most comprehensive collections [in e-book form] in the world of the journals of Australian explorers”. The earliest journal is from Abel Tasman in 1642, and the latest seems to be from David Carnegie who “led one of the last great expeditions in the exploration of Australia” at the end of the nineteenth century.

Most of you know that Australia was first settled (invaded, as indigenous people with valid reason call it) in 1788, but sightings and brief landings had been occurring for well over a century before that. PGA writes:

In March 1606 Willem Janszoon, on board the Duyfken, charted about 300 km of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. He is the first authenticated discoverer of Australia.

White discoverer, that is, as indigenous Australians had found it long before that. But, here’s the thing, all this European exploration really only touched the coast, so when the first settlers landed they knew nothing about the interior – and they wanted, needed, to find out what was here. Was it arable, was there water, and could we build tracks, telegraph lines etc through it? Did they also want to know, with any seriousness, “who” beyond the idea that there were “natives” who might help or hinder what they wanted to achieve?

I will probably write a few posts (not sequentially or chronologically) on these journals over time, but in this post I want to share some of explorer Edward John Eyre’s (1815-1901) comments on indigenous Australians. (For an overview of his expeditions, you can check out his entry in the Australian dictionary of biography.)

The invasion of those ancient rights …

Edward John Eyre, c. 1870

Edward John Eyre, c. 1870, by Henry Hering, (The Caribbean Photo Archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I was inspired to write this post when I was looking at Eyre’s journal for last week’s Lake Eyre post, and noticed references to “natives” in the chapter summaries, such as “Plundered by the natives” for Chapter 8. The journal was published in 2 volumes in 1845, with the second volume comprising “an account of the manners and customs of the Aborigines and the state of their relations with Europeans”. This was partly based on his experience, from 1841 to 1844, as a resident magistrate and protector of Aborigines, at Moorundie, on the Murray River.

He summarises his views regarding indigenous people in the preface which he addresses to Lieut.-Colonel George Gawler “under whose auspices, as Governor of South Australia, the expeditions… were undertaken”:

For the account given of the Aborigines the author deems it unnecessary to offer any apology; a long experience among them, and an intimate knowledge of their character, habits, and position with regard to Europeans, have induced in him a deep interest on behalf of a people, who are fast fading away before the progress of a civilization, which ought only to have added to their improvement and prosperity. Gladly would the author wish to see attention awakened on their behalf, and an effort at least made to stay the torrent which is overwhelming them.

It is most lamentable to think that the progress and prosperity of one race should conduce to the downfall and decay of another (my emph); it is still more so to observe the apathy and indifference with which this result is contemplated by mankind in general, and which either leads to no investigation being made as to the cause of this desolating influence, or if it is, terminates, to use the language of the Count Strzelecki, “in the inquiry, like an inquest of the one race upon the corpse of the other, ending for the most part with the verdict of ‘died by the visitation of God.'”

He supports his views and experience, he says, with “the testimony of others … those who are, or who have been resident in the Colonies, and who might therefore be supposed from a practical acquaintance with the subject, to be most competent to arrive at just conclusions”. He believes that “the interests of two classes”, that is, the “Settlers”, and the “Aborigines”, need to be provided for, and argues that

it is thought that these interests cannot with advantage be separated, and it is hoped that it may be found practicable to blend them together.

That sounds not only humane but pretty enlightened to me. He proposes “blending” interests which seems a long way from later ideas of “assimilation”, though I don’t know exactly what he means by “blending”.

Concluding his own experience, he writes, that:

During the whole of the three years I was Resident at Moorundie, not a single case of serious injury or aggression ever took place on the part of the natives against the Europeans; and a district, once considered the wildest and most dangerous, was, when I left it in November 1844, looked upon as one of the most peaceable and orderly in the province.

Then we get to Volume 2 where he writes that the “character of the Australian native has been so constantly misrepresented and traduced, that by the world at large he is looked upon as the lowest and most degraded of the human species”. He supports his opposing view to this with Lord Stanley’s statement that the “fault [re different experiences] lies with the colonists rather than with the natives”. A little later he quotes a Mr. Threlkeld, who, in a speech to the Auxiliary Aborigines’ Protection Society in New South Wales, stated that “the whites were generally the aggressors”.

He continues in this vein throughout, picking up arguments that are negative to indigenous people and beating them down. Here is another quote he includes to support his view, this one from Gawler, himself, responding to a man “who objected to sections of land being appropriated for the natives, before the public were allowed to select”:

The invasion of those ancient rights (of the natives) by survey and land appropriations of any kind, is justifiable only on the ground, that we should at the same time reserve for the natives an AMPLE SUFFICIENCY for THEIR PRESENT and future use and comfort, under the new style of things into which they are thrown; a state in which we hope they will be led to live in greater comfort, on a small space, than they enjoyed before it occurred, on their extensive original possessions.

Not perfect, and paternalistic, but some recognition at least of entitlement! These quotes – or testimonies of others – are included as “notes” and all are cited as to who said them and where.

This is getting long, but I do want to share his thoughtful comment on the application of law:

In addition to the many other inconsistencies in our conduct towards the Aborigines, not the least extraordinary is that of placing them, on the plea of protection, under the influence of our laws, and of making them British subjects. Strange anomaly, which by the former makes amenable to penalties they are ignorant of, for crimes which they do not consider as such, or which they may even have been driven to commit by our own injustice …

These are all from Volume 2, Chapter 1. In the succeeding chapters, he documents the “appearance, habits, mode of life, means of subsistance [sic], social relations, government, ceremonies, superstitions, numbers, languages, etc” of indigenous Australians, noting the impact of Europeans on them. Records like these must surely be useful to indigenous people looking for lost histories not to mention proof of attachment to land.

As for Eyre, after leaving Australia, he had various roles in the colonies, including governor-in-chief of Jamaica where things went rather pear-shaped when he declared martial law in response to a rebellion. He was criticised, back in England, for his harshness back in England, with a Royal Commission, writes ADB historian Geoffrey Dutton, finding “that Eyre had acted with commendable promptitude but unnecessary rigour”. Dutton suggests mitigating circumstances but concludes that “the poignant contrast remains between the … humane protector of the Aboriginals in Australia, and ‘the monster of Jamaica’.”

My literary week (1), in a sense

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I say “in a sense” because my reading has been slow this week as Mr Gums and I have been getting back up to speed after our Lake Eyre trip. However, in terms of the literary world, much has been happening and I thought I’d share some with you, documenting it at the same time for my own future benefit.

Gillian  Mears

I’ll start with the sad news, the death of the wonderful Australian writer, Gillian Mears, who had suffered from multiple sclerosis for over 20 years. Her disease was so debilitating that she appeared in 2011 before state (NSW) hearing on the Rights of the Terminally Ill. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted from her submission in 2013. Here is part of that submission:

Not a day goes by that I don’t wish that I were dead. It would be so much easier than living in a body beleaguered now by advanced multiple sclerosis. I’m in my 17th year of living with this disease [she was diagnosed at the age of 30] and I’ve very nearly had enough.

Gillian Mears' Foal's bread
Foals’ bread cover (Courtesy: Allen & Unwin)

I had not been aware of her condition until she won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2012 for Foal’s Bread and was unable to take part in the post-announcement panel, which I attended, because she needed to conserve her energy for other commitments. I first read her (The Mint Lawn) with my reading group, and we loved it, but that was way before blogging. However, I did review Foal’s bread, which also won the Miles Franklin award, here. She was a fine writer, and this book, in particular, is one you don’t easily forget.

Her death represents a tragic sad loss for Australian literature, because it was too early – she was only 51. But, given the situation she found herself in, it was clearly for her, in the end, a release. Vale Gillian Mears.

NSW Premier’s Literary Awards

The annual NSW Premier’s Literary Awards were announced earlier this week, as it usually is, to coincide with the Sydney Writers Festival Week. You can read all the winners on the State Library of NSW’s site, so I’ll just share the few that are particularly relevant to my blog’s interests:

  • Christina Stead Prize for Fiction: Melinda Bobis’ Locust girl: A love song (I have reviewed her Fish-hair woman, which I loved, but for a review of this novel you can check out Lisa’s of ANZLitLovers)
  • UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing (Adams being another of our writers who died too young): Sonja Dechian’s An astronaut’s life (also longlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award)
  • Indigenous Writer’s (biennial) Prize: Bruce Pascoe’s Dark emu (which is on my radar, but has also been read by that voracious reader, Lisa! as well as by Michelle at Adventures in Biography)
  • Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction: Magda Szubanski’s Reckoning (which I really MUST read). (Interesting that poet Douglas Stewart’s name is used for the non-fiction prize. He did write some criticism and autobiography too but they’re not what he’s known for.)

There are also awards for Poetry, Scriptwriting, Multicultural writing, among others, but I’ll just leave it at these for today.

Sydney Writers Festival

I’d love one day to get to the Sydney Writers Festival, but its timing in May is always tricky for me, so I end up relying on ABC RN and bloggers for my fix. I’ll share just two examples for you to check out if you are interested:

  • Jonathan Shaw of Me fail, I fly has written multiple posts, one for each day, of his experience of the Festival. Start at Day 1, and work your way through from there. I have quickly scanned his posts but will be adding my comments later. Thanks as always, Jonathan, for helping me enjoy this festival vicariously.
  • ABC RN’s Books and Arts Daily program usually broadcasts – live or later on – several events from the Festival, but I’ll just share the link for their live panel session which I listened to live. The topic was to discuss the “pleasure and challenges of writing and reading in a globalised world”. The panelists were Australian comedian Magda Szubanski (author of Reckoning), Dutch author Herman Koch (whose upcoming novel is Dear Mr M), and French writer Marie Darrieussecq (whose latest novel is Men: A novel of cinema and desire). It was a fascinating discussion in which the writers teased out a range of issues. To give one example: they discussed Herman Koch’s The dinner and the idea that even where a book’s themes may seem universal – such as parental love for children – reactions/responses can vary greatly depending on the culture of the reader.

The scandalous Lady W

Joshua Reynolds painting of Lady Worsley
Joshua Reynolds [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

To end on something completely different and not entirely literary is the story of Lady Worsley (born Seymour Dorothy Fleming, 1758-1818) as told in the BBC telemovie The scandalous Lady W, which my local Jane Austen group viewed this weekend. She was apparently the inspiration for Sheridan’s play School for Scandal and was painted by Joshua Reynolds.

Lady Worsley was involved in a high profile adultery (“criminal conversation”) trial brought by her husband against her lover. However, the story was far from straightforward, her adultery being “commanded” by this very husband who turned out to be a voyeur who preferred to watch his wife have sex with others than do so himself. The inevitable happened and she eloped with one of these lovers. This is a story of women-as-property, of women-not-having-access-to-their-own-propety, and of a woman who was brave enough to stand up for herself. She didn’t win, entirely, but my, did she make her point, as the film shows. The story reminded me that although women – western ones anyhow – have more legal rights now, this idea of “you are mine” is surely behind much of the domestic violence that still occurs.

The main reason my group watched this movie was because Lady Worsley lived during Austen’s time (Austen’s dates being 1775-1817) and lived part of her life near Austen’s home. What, we wondered, did our Jane, a keen reader, know of Lady Worsley? It was the talk of the town.

Francis Keany, Follow the leaders: How to survive a modern-day election campaign (Review)

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Francis Keany, Follow the leadersI had a little laugh when I picked up Francis Keany’s book, Follow the leaders, about his experience as a journalist on the 2013 election campaign, because that very day our current leader Malcolm Turnbull formally announced the 2016 election. It’s all a game of course because we already knew when it was to be – the budget had been brought forward a week to accommodate the chosen date, after all – but the formalities had been held off until after said budget had been delivered. The fact that elections and electioneering are largely a game is one of the themes of Keany’s book.

Now, before I tell you more about this book, a little disclosure. Francis (or Frank) Keany is known to me. He has been my son’s friend since they met in high school in the mid-late 1990s. I’ve taken a particular interest, therefore, in following his journalistic career which has included stints in country New South Wales, Sydney and back in Canberra where we now hear his reports on ABC Radio. He’s a radio journalist, and during the 2013 election he was working for the Macquarie Radio Network.

Mr Gums and I went to the launch of the book and were interested to hear in the introductory comments by journalist James Massola that for all the books out there about politics, there are not very many about a journalist’s experience of an election campaign. He did mention one Australian book, Margo Kingston’s Off the rails about Pauline Hanson’s 1998 campaign, but this is not he said about the main campaign, the leaders. Keany’s book is particularly interesting, he continued, because it’s about modern campaigning in which social media is a significant component. As Keany writes:

the so-called 24-hour media cycle has added to the pace and tone of modern election campaigns. The mistakes that are made are amplified and exaggerated in a bid to meet the appetites of media consumers …

In this world, gaffes like Tony Abbott’s “suppository of all wisdom”, he writes, start trending immediately on Twitter. And then there are the interminable attempts by people to get selfies with the leaders, a “ridiculous aspect” of the campaign the journalists agree.

Keany’s book is not an analysis of or treatise about the process, he doesn’t have a theory to push, he simply shares the dogged day-to-day experience of being part of the press pack that accompanies the two leaders over the last 30-odd days of the campaign. Keany spent the first two weeks of the campaign following the Abbott (Leader of the Opposition) camp, and the last two weeks or so with the then Prime Minister Rudd’s camp.

I found it rather eye-opening. Of course, I’ve seen and read and heard the journalists reporting on campaign trails and I’ve comprehended that they travel in a bunch, but just how intense, not to mention exhausting, it all is, I hadn’t fully realised. Keany describes the experience of being herded onto military planes with their crude toilet facilities, of travelling on coaches, of visiting three states in a day, and of plans being changed suddenly. He describes donning hi-vis vests to traipse after a politician in a factory, sharing late night drinks with colleagues, and missing his partner Tess.

He is painfully honest about his personal experience of being a rookie campaign journalist, of the emotional toll of being separated from a partner when a little bit of support is just what you need, and of the physical toll wrought by the sheer exhaustion of the hours, not to mention by the poor nutrition as you eat on the run.  Here he is at Day 16:

The tiredness has set in like a staph infection – it has become incurable. No number of power naps or snoozes can shake off the dull feeling that’s filling my head.

I can’t think clearly – I’m starting to make too many mistakes.

While his prime focus is his experience, he does provide some insights into the campaign itself. He explains – though perhaps we all know this one – that “campaigns have never been just about policy. They are about public relations”. He watches the politicians interact with the public, hears them discuss strategies, and concludes that “I don’t think politicians give the average punter enough credit for their knowledge of the outside world.” He talks of the journalists’ awareness of panic in the Rudd camp with last minute schedule changes, press conference delays, and sudden policy announcements. We glimpse the machinery behind the leaders – how political minders try to control the message by, for example, withholding press releases until the last minute. How tricky it is, we see, for journalists to keep it all together. They have to physically keep up with the leaders, tease out the key issues from the spin and try to get their questions answered, and then find time to prepare and file their stories according to the needs of their bosses.

Next time I start to rail at a journalist’s gaffe, I’ll think first about the difficulties that can be involved in “filing” one’s reports while you are on the run, and risking missing the bus to the next venue!

Keany’s writing is clear and, appropriate to his aim, is informal and chatty in style. He has a sense of humour too, which is conveyed in frequent asides, such as his description of a hotel room which “looks like it was nice back when the Raiders last won a premiership”. Even if you don’t know when that last one was, which I don’t, you get his point. But, I can’t help commenting, pedant that I am, on a recurring and irritating grammar peccadillo. It’s to do with “who” versus “whom”, as in, for example, “a mysterious pilot who we hardly ever see”. Or, is this just another grammar nicety that’s going to bite the dust?

For all the stresses and challenges, Keany is clearly passionate about his career. He writes in his Introduction that he’s aware of debates about the value of the press gallery, but says:

I firmly believe that our political system is grounded in the participation of all Australians, and that the media has a significant role to play in ensuring as much transparency as possible in that system.

I think he’s right – and I also think he has done journalism a service by providing some behind-the-scenes insight into why the media may not always be perfect, while also demonstrating that in this age of spin and control journalists are needed more than ever.

Francis Keany
Follow the leaders: How to survive a modern-day election campaign
Braddon: Editia, 2016
153pp.
ISBN: 9781942189404

Monday musings on Australian literature: Let’s get physical – Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre

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Last week I wrote my fifth “Let’s get physical” post, and chose Adelaide because visiting there was bookending our trip last week to Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre. You’ll understand, therefore, why I’ve chosen the subject I have for this week!

Lake Eyre was named for explorer Edward John Eyre, the first European to see it in 1840, but in 2012 its official name was changed to combine its English name with its indigenous one, Kati Thanda. This recognition of indigenous place names is happening around Australia and is so important – not only to help reconciliation, but because these names mean something to the land we live in. 

Lake Eyre aerial view

Lake Eyre Basin aerial view, 2016

Lake Eyre, for my non-Australian readers, is a large shallow lake in remote and very dry South Australia, approximately 700 km north of Adelaide. It contains Australia’s lowest natural point, around 15 m (49 ft) below sea level. When it fills, albeit this is a rare event, it is also Australia’s largest lake.

There are many stories associated with the lake – indigenous ones, of course, and settler ones. It was the subject of intense exploration in Australia’s early colonial days – by those looking for an inland sea – and was where major land speed record attempts were made in the mid 1960s. Importantly, native title over it was granted to the local Arabana people in 2012. There are some tensions, particularly regarding water activities, between the indigenous desire to respect its sacredness and its role as a tourist destination.

Early reports

The first person to write about the lake was Eyre. His writings, Journals of expeditions of discovery into Central Australia and overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound in the years 1840-1, were published in England in 1845. They can now be read at Project Gutenberg Australia. Here he is writing about the region – very dry one day and then rain the next:

Lake Eyre, aerial viewyre Ba

Lake Eyre Basin aerial view, after 2016 rains

In passing through the plains, which were yesterday so arid and dry, I found immense pools, nay almost large reaches of water lodged in the hollows, and in which boats might have floated. Such was the result of only an hour or two’s rain, whilst the ground itself, formerly so hard, was soft and boggy in the extreme, rendering progress much slower and more fatiguing to the horses than it otherwise would have been. (August 31, 1840)

Crossing many little stony ridges, and passing the channel of several watercourses, I discovered a new and still more disheartening feature in the country, the existence of brine springs. Hitherto we had found brackish and occasionally salt water in some of the watercourses, but by tracing them up among the hills, we had usually found the quality to improve as we advanced, but now the springs were out in the open plains, and the water poisoned at its very source.

Occasionally round the springs were a few coarse rushes, but the soil in other respects was quite bare, destitute of vegetation, and thickly coated over with salt, presenting the most miserable and melancholy aspect imaginable. (September 2, 1840)

Warburton River aerial view

Warburton River aerial view

This is desert, an area, that is, of very low and very erratic rainfall. The problem was that in the early days of settlement, explorers sometimes happened to visit areas like Lake Eyre at a rare wet time and drew conclusions that later, of course, proved false. In 1858 explorer Peter Egerton Warburton thought that “the abundant and sure supply of water” would make the region easy to occupy. The fact that the biggest towns here – Birdsville and Marree, for example – have permanent populations of 100 people or less rather puts paid to that forecast.

In 1887, a bore was sunk at the Coward Springs railway siding. A contemporary magazine, Pictorial Australian, reported that:

Acres of nearly level table-land were turned in a few hours to a swamp … it is only a matter of weeks before miles of country will be covered with water. (from an interpretive panel at Coward Springs)

Wetlands were created – and breeding grounds for birds and other wildlife ensued. Indeed Lake Eyre is  famous for its birdlife and its breeding grounds. Ornithologist Captain SA White undertook “an ornithological trip” to the area in 1914 to collect bird specimens. He wrote about the artesian bore at Coward Springs where the pipes had corroded, so that the water

now flows out at the surface and finds its way across the the plain, where for many acres it forms a swamp, mostly covered in green rushes trimmed down by the stock. Amidst this short vegetation many water-loving birds find a home and feeding ground. (from an interpretive panel at Coward Springs)

I don’t pretend to understand how water works here. We saw some water courses/ponds/springs that are permanent, and others that are caused by recent rains and will evaporate or otherwise dissipate very quickly. The critical point is that there is not enough – in quantity and quality – to support regular, intensive farming, though there are cattle stations in the area.

More recent writing

Lake Eyre South

Lake Eyre South (viewed from the ground)

Not surprisingly for such a fascinating place, many non-fiction books have been published over the years about it – by scientists, journalists, and travellers – but not much fiction. Given its remoteness you’d think it would provide excellent inspiration for novelists, but not so it seems. Arthur Upfield who, in the mid twentieth century, wrote crime fiction set in Central Australia did set one in the Lake Eyre region, Bony buys a woman, and another of his, Death of a lake, is about a fictitious lake that could be based on Lake Eyre.

As for non-fiction, I found a useful list of recommendations, including a trilogy by Roma Dalhunty who travelled in the region with her geologist husband. The books are The spell of Lake Eyre (1975), When the dead heart beats Lake Eyre lives (date?), and The rumbling silence of Lake Eyre (1986).

My own favourite work about the area is, however, a movie, the 1954 Shell-sponsored docudrama The back of beyond. It chronicles the trip made between Marree and Birdsville every fortnight, from 1936 to the late 1950s, by mailman Tom Kruse. Scripted mainly by its director John Heyer, the final narration was co-written by Australian poet Douglas Stewart. Marree is described as a “corrugated iron town shimmering in the corrugated air” and Birdsville as “seven iron houses burning in the sun between two deserts”. The drama of life in the region is described through lines like “Who passes or perishes, only the dingo knows”.

I’m sorry I don’t have anything more exciting for you, but at least you now know where I was last week!

Meanwhile if you know of any fiction set in Lake Eyre, please to tell.

Edition de luxe: A collection of short stories

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Edition de luxe: A collection of short stories inspired by our hotelsLast October, I wrote a Monday Musings post on writers-in-residence programs. The first one I listed, because I listed them alphabetically, was Accor Hotels MGallery Literary Collection. This is (or was?) a collaborative program with Melbourne’s The Wheeler Centre. Quoting what I wrote then, ‘it involved providing eight award-winning Australian writers with a short residence in one of Accor’s boutique MGallery hotels and commissioning those authors to write a short story which will be published in a book which will be “presented exclusively to guests at MGallery Hotels”.’ Well, it just so happens that this weekend we are staying in one of these hotels, and what did I find but the book of short stories titled Edition de luxe: A collection of short stories inspired by our hotels. Woo hoo!

It’s a nicely presented little book, with, for each writer, a brief bio, their short story, a brief history of the hotel plus that hotel’s special appeal, photographs, and a “memorable moment” describing something you might be able to enjoy if you stayed at the hotel. This is marketing after all, in addition to offering the treat of a bit of support to writers. The marketing bit comes to the fore when you look at the table of contents. It lists the title of the story, and the name of the hotel at (or about) which it was written, but NOT the name of the writer! Harumph. I’m always irritated when names of authors are not given due recognition in listings.

So, without further ado, I’m going to name the writers, 6 women and 2 men, who appear in the book. They are:

  • Favel Parrett (“Gold”)
  • Graeme Simsion (“Slideshow”)
  • Chris Flynn (“The prophecy, 1931”)
  • Robyn Annear (“Batman’s Hill lives”)
  • Toni Jordan (“Like a kindness”)
  • Debra Oswald (“Dog grooming”)
  • Alison Croggon (“Hello”)
  • Hannie Rayson (“Pip”)

I’ve read the stories – of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this! They are all 2-3 pages, some fiction, some not. They probably, the fiction ones anyhow, qualify as flash fiction, depending on your definition.

The first story, Favel Parrett’s “Gold”, is a little mood piece about what she sees from the balcony of her room at Mount Lofty House, “her” hotel, naturally. It’s non-fiction, and I enjoyed her description of the end of the day:

Time is measured in light. Evening shadows begin to stretch over the valley. The gold moves further and further away towards the horizon, chased by the sun going down.

Nice, peaceful.

The fiction pieces vary in tone from the poignant or sad, like Graeme Simsion’s “Slideshow”, with its little surprise ending, and Alison Croggon’s more worrying “Hello”, to the more lightly humorous, like Chris Flynn’s “The prophecy, 1931” about Walter Lindrum (set in Melbourne’s Hotel Lindrum) and Hannie Rayson’s sperm-donor-inspired final story in the collection, “Pip”. Historian Robyn Annear explores Melbourne’s Batman’s Hill, razed in the 1860s to make way for the railway, in her story “Batman’s Hill lives”, and Toni Jordan, in the Blue Mountains, recounts a chance encounter, which may or may not be real but which makes a sweet story, in “Like a kindness”. But, perhaps, though it’s hard to choose, I most liked Debra Oswald’s “Dog grooming” with its tale of subversion and catharsis.

I won’t say more. These are little pieces, perfect for reading in a hotel at the end of a busy working or travelling day. Quality writers, thoughtful stories. I wonder what, if any, feedback Sofitel/Accor and the Wheeler Centre have had, how the writers found the experience, and whether the project will be repeated.

Delicious descriptions: Chinua Achebe’s people and places

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Chinua Achebe, Things fall apart

First edition, from Heinemann (via Wikipedia)

In my recent post on Chinua Achebe’s classic, Things fall apart, I focused mostly on its themes and ideas, which drove the quotes I chose to share. Here I want to show more of his writing, including his wit and use of imagery.

I’ll start with this early description of the protagonist, Okonkwo, who is determined not to be like his failure of a father:

When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with his father.

At first the phrases “heels hardly touched the ground” and “walk on springs” conjured for me (anyhow) Jesus Christ walking on water, but they’re immediately followed by the very un-Christlike idea of pouncing on people, confirming that the reference is instead to powerful, predatory cats. The “slight stammer” could garner some sympathy from us. We can understand the frustration of not being able to speak fluently, but resolving it with his fists again undercuts the possibility of our sympathy. And the last two sentences! Love them. The economy – and wit – with which he makes the point. And to not respect his father? Unfortunately, for all his determination to not be like his father, to be an admirable man respected by all, he ends up with a son who doesn’t respect him. This is the sort of writing I love, writing that gives with one hand and takes away with another, that requires me to fully engage my brain as I read.

Oh, and the rhythm of this paragraph is lovely too – long sentence, short sentence, then long, followed by short, short. It just reads well.

There’s a lot of lovely imagery – mostly earth and nature related which you’d expect given the book’s setting – but I’ll just share one. It describes Okonkwo’s son Nwoye being tempted by the new (that is, Christian) religion:

But there was a young lad who had been captivated. His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo’s first son. It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul – the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry plate of the panting earth. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled.

For an agricultural society, the image of rain on a “panting earth” provides a perfect description of Nwoye’s desperation for comfort.

Other imagery relates to aggression, violence, strength – wrestling, fire, knives – which is reflects the novel’s themes and the character of its protagonist. Again, I’ll just choose one example. It’s short and comes from Part 3 after Okonkwo has returned to his village to find the white man’s arrival has caused a breakdown in village relationships. Obierika says of the white man that:

He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

And with that, Achebe unites the novel’s title, its narrative arc, and the epigraph:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
(from “The second coming”, WB Yeats)

Such a beautifully conceived novel.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Let’s get physical – Adelaide

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This will be the fifth in my occasional “Let’s get physical” series, and I’ve chosen Adelaide because this week I’m spending a few days in this city, the state capital of South Australia, bookending a trip to Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.

Adelaide, which was proclaimed as a British colony in 1836, is located in the country of the Kaurna Aboriginal nation. Unlike Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Hobart, it was established as a place of free settlers. That didn’t mean, unfortunately, that indigenous people fared any better. Their culture and language was, apparently, destroyed within years of white settlement there, but it’s a particular story that I don’t know enough about to go into here.

St Peters Anglican Church, 1880s

St Peters Anglican Church, 1880s

Adelaide has many reputations, including being the city of churches, the home of one of Australia’s best-loved arts festivals, one of the world’s most liveable cities and, oh dear, the city of corpses. Stephen Orr, whose rural novel The hands I reviewed recently, has written a non-fiction book called The cruel city. He apparently reports that author Salman Rushdie once suggested Adelaide was “the perfect setting for a Stephen King novel or horror film”. Poor Adelaide. This is not based on the number of murders, but on the fact that for two or three decades in the mid to late twentieth century it had more than its share of “gruesome or distressing murders”, starting with the still unsolved disappearance of the Beaumont children in 1966. They have never been found and their story was used as a cautionary tale for all Australian children growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Stephen Orr’s Time’s Long Ruin, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2011, was inspired by the case.

South Australian Museum roofs

Roofs, 1850s, in the old Police Barracks and Armoury courtyard

But, my main point of this series of posts is meant to be “the physical” – and I’ll start by saying that I like Adelaide, and the reasons are partly physical. It’s a small city, and I like small cities, and it has my favourite style of climate, a Mediterranean style featuring warm to hot dry summers and mild damp winters. It can get hot there, very hot occasionally, but that would be a small price to pay to my mind.

Jane Jose writes about Adelaide in her book, Places women make, which I recently reviewed. She describes the city as follows:

Adelaide, in settled south Australia, has its circle of green hills around the city, its expansive pale-blue desert skies and an inheritance of parklands and colonial architecture.

That was then

But now, let’s flash back to those early colonial days, to 1859, and the first novel by a woman to be published in South Australia, Marian by Maud Jeanne Franc (pen-name of Matilda Jane Evans). Early in the book, Marian’s future employer comes to Adelaide to interview her. Here he is arriving at the house:

He reached it, and a moment after was shown into a little parlour, half-dark it appeared to him, for the blinds were let down to exclude the sun, and everything appeared bleak as he entered.

It was typical of those days that people would draw curtains or blinds against the sun. Wise of course in high heat, but my understanding is that it was done against most sun. And the result? Bleakness!

Jumping to the mid-late twentieth century, we have Adelaide-born authors Barbara Hanrahan (b. 1939) and Murray Bail (b. 1941). Hanrahan, who wrote the gorgeous autobiographical novel The scent of eucalyptus (1973) (my review), worked hard to find her Australia. As a child, she writes in her novel, she struggled to find “the sunburned land” of her reading and history in the town where she lived, and only really found her “place” after she left:

l feel it’s of value to divide my life between England and Australia . . . Two places, so different that one illuminates the other. London so large that I may lose myself, which means find myself because I can be anonymous. Adelaide – smaller, strange, this place where I began from, the place of childhood, of legend. (personal papers, n.d. 1978?)

Murray Bail found it a provincial place – “overwhelmingly reactionary, Protestant, and fiercely defensive of time-honoured standards” – and he, too, escaped, first to India in 1968, and then to London in 1970. This, presumably primarily inspired by Adelaide, comes from his Notebooks 1970-2003:

When I think of ‘Australia’ I first see its shape. It is quickly followed by scenes of slow-moving dryness, muted colours, and some of the great white trees. Of people in general, it is often the young, flushed mothers in sleeveless cotton dresses yanking or carrying children on the hot city asphalt.

Homesickness: habits of a landscape acquired over time. (London June 1970 – November 1974)

His first novel, Homesickness, was published in 1980. It is on my TBR.

This is now

Born ten years after Bail, and in the tiny South Australian town of Minlaton, novelist-poet-librettist Peter Goldsworthy set his  2003 novel Three dog night partly in Adelaide and partly in central Australia. In it, Martin brings his English wife back to Adelaide. Here they are driving into the Adelaide hills:

The day has taken its name to heart: a Sunday from the glory box of Sundays, a luminous morning saturated with sun-light and parrots. Happiness rises in my throat, thick as cud; the world outside the car, wholly blue and gold seems almost too much for my senses, too tight a squeeze.

‘Paradise’, Lucy murmurs, smitten.

At last, the “real” Adelaide – blue sky, gold sun and birds! Of course, this is a novel, and “paradise” is not that easily attained. Indeed, the novel (which I read long before blogging) is really rather dark.

I will end here, but I must first defend Adelaide against those charges of provincialism, because in 1970, after Hanrahan and Bail had left, reformist politician Don Dunstan became Premier of South Australia, and things changed. Pretty soon Adelaide (and the state) became one of Australia’s most socially progressive places. Just goes to show what a visionary leader can do!

PS I haven’t read it, but JM Coetzee’s Slow man is set in Adelaide.

Jane Jose, Places women make (Review)

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Jane Jose, Places women make“Places”, Jane Jose writes in her book Places women make, “can lift our spirits and be inclusive, and add surprise, excitement, wonder or some beauty to day-to-day life in the city.” These sorts of places, which are essential to making our cities liveable, rarely just happen. They take planning, and who does this planning? Men. At least, it’s men, says Jose, who have been the “hero architects of most of Australia’s city buildings, leading the design, even if women were invisibly designing the detail behind the scenes.” So, in Places women make, she aims to right this imbalance, to bring to the fore the work women have done in making cities better. This is not, however, a feminist rant. She does not undermine the work done by men. She simply wants women to receive their share of recognition, not just because they deserve it but because it is important for other women – particularly young women – to know.

I had not heard of Jane Jose before reading this book, which proves her point rather because, in fact, she, a self-described urbanist, has been involved in urban planning for well over two decades. She has done this through many roles, including, at one point, Deputy Lord Mayor of Adelaide, her home town. Indeed, one of the fascinating aspects of the book is just how many ways people can contribute to urban planning and improvement. She tells of the obvious people – the architects and town planners – but there are others too, such as the civic leaders and politicians, the landscape designers and gardeners,  the heritage and environmental activists, and the philanthropists. Women – many of them – have performed all these roles, and she shares some of their stories. It’s inspiring reading.

The book is structured thematically, starting with her overall thesis about what women can offer to urban design. This is probably a good place to mention two – hmmm – mantras, I’ll call them, which pervade the book. One is straightforward, and that is, to (mis)use EF Schumacher’s phrase, “small is beautiful”. Although women have been, and are, involved in big projects, it is often in the “small” projects that they make their biggest impacts. Early on, she repeats a leading architect’s criticism of Sydney’s Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore. Jose writes that he

once criticised her to me for having paid too much attention to the small public places and parks in the city rather than driving major projects. He described the small projects she is promoting in the city as being “like tatting”. To my mind this shows a lack of understanding of how women see the small things adding up to a greater whole.

Jose goes on to discuss the projects and ideas Clover Moore has driven, arguing that Moore “understands that community places and activities are the glue in the community” and further, that beautiful, liveable cities “bear the fruit of a strong economy”. I’m not an economist, but there must be some truth to this argument I think. Anyhow, throughout the book, Jose describes many, many small community-focused projects initiated by women, from Wendy Whiteley’s magical Lavender Bay garden to Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Foundation, from Jane Lomax-Smith’s work on protecting Adelaide’s parklands to Tess Brady’s involvement in the creation of Australia’s first booktown at Clunes. Some of these, as you can tell, started small but ended much bigger, which is what happens to good ideas. From little things, big things grow (as Australia’s Paul Kelly sings).

The other mantra or thread is perhaps a little more problematic. It relates to what Jose calls a “feminine sensibility”. She defines this in terms of “creativity … intuition … lateral approach”, as having “a special relationship with community and village life”, and as taking the “long view”. She writes that “we know a female perspective is different from that of a man”. Intuitively – ha! – I understand what she is saying, but from a gender studies or feminist point of view this feels like dangerous ground. However, I’m going with her because her stories are powerful enough to argue her case. Women’s contributions have in general been overlooked or underplayed. Take for example Marion Mahony Griffin, wife of Walter Burley Griffin, credited as Canberra’s designer. It took decades for her part in what was clearly a partnership to be recognised.

What I enjoyed most about the book are the stories about projects, big and small, that women have initiated, some known to me, but many not. I enjoyed reading about Australia’s cities and what local women have fought for in them. This coming week I’ll be in Adelaide, the city where Jose cut her urban planning teeth. She writes about her involvement in the re-visioning of North Terrace and more specifically in activism to save Adelaide’s heritage architecture. I have visited Adelaide several times over the years, but on my visit last year, I was thrilled by how beautiful – and welcoming – it is, particularly North Terrace. We have Jane Jose, forensic pathologist Jane Lomax-Smith, architect Jackie Shannon Gillen, among others, to thank for that.

While her main focus is contemporary Australia, Jose also tells stories from the past. She describes how wives of Australia’s early administrators strongly affected the design of the cities they were in, women like Mrs Macquarie, wife of governor Lachlan Macquarie, and the energetic Lady Jane Franklin, wife of explorer and lieutenant governor of Van Dieman’s land, John Franklin. It is this Jane, in fact, who graces the book’s cover. (I have written about her before on this blog). These women are just two examples of women who, married to influential men, used their influence to affect city planning and design.

In addition to casting her net historically, Jose also crosses the seas. She ends her book with a special tribute to the influential American urbanist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), who inspired her belief that cities can be villages or communities. But she also refers to other international women, such as American landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson, Chilean landscape architect Teresa Moller, and London-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid.

What more can I say? Places women make is a fascinating book written by a woman passionate and clearly knowledgeable about her subject. If I have any complaints they are minor, and yet I do need to say them. One is that while she provides a wonderful list, at the end, of the women whose stories she tells, there is no index. I’d love an index. The other is that there are no foot-notes or end-notes documenting her sources, just a brief reading list. These don’t affect the book’s worth as a popular introduction to her subject, but they’d be much appreciated by those of us interested in a little more!

And now, since you can’t really “spoil” a book like this, I’ll end with Jose’s conclusion because it says it all:

Cities matter. They are alive and they change, they are the places we live our lives and make our memories. It takes commitment, imagination and passion to make even the smallest idea for change blossom from an idea into a park, a playground, a library or a shaded street. With the influence of women, cities can be better places. Tomorrow’s children need the places women make.

Lisa at ANZLitLovers also enjoyed the book.

awwchallenge2016Jane Jose
Places women make: Unearthing the contribution of women to our cities
Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2016
213pp
ISBN: 9781743053942

(Review copy courtesy Wakefield Press)

The Griffyns are mummified

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Those Griffyns, if you haven’t realised it from my previous posts, are a brave and versatile bunch. Their latest outing, the Ear of the Cat, was inspired by musical director Michael Sollis’ residency in Egypt last year. Performed last weekend, it was the ensemble’s first real concert of the year and was included – a first for them I think – in this year’s Canberra International Music Festival.

Holly Downes

Brown cat Holly Downes playing her double bass

Another first, sort of, is that it was designed to appeal to children or, as the Ensemble’s promo describes it, it’s “a staged production for the young and young at heart:  a show all about cats, magical keys, video games, and a green soup eaten by ancient kings”. (I say “sort of” because the Griffyns did create and perform a school version of last year’s ANZAC Dirty Red Digger program.)

So, a staged production featuring cats. Here is how the Griffyns explained it:

Come on an adventure of discovery as deep within an underground Egyptian tomb, four mummified cats are woken by a mysterious sound. Join these inquisitive cats and be led by your ears, as you journey through an unfamiliar new world of haunted mazes, video games, and the streets of contemporary Cairo to help the cats find a way to belong in the land of the living.

Chris Stone

Mummified cat, aka violinist Chris Stone

It was a 45-minute (or thereabouts) program that took us from a mummy’s tomb to the streets of Cairo. As we walked into the performance space we were confronted with four colour-coded mummified “cats” (Holly Downes, Susan Ellis, Chris Stone and Michael Sollis) lying on pallets down the length of the hall (in the Ainslie Arts Centre). Gradually, to the call of sophisticated cat Kiri Sollis’ gorgeous piccolo – acting like a Pied Piper, perhaps? – the cats awoke and shed their mummy bindings, and started looking for a way out. A key was found but were they brave enough to venture out? Perhaps not – or not quite yet. This was, though, a multi-media performance, so while the cats crept about, uncertain of what to do, we were entertained by video interviews with young Egyptians about life and cats in Cairo. They were engaging as young people can be and added a dose of reality to the fantasy being enacted in front of us – but finally we discovered that the “ear of the cat” is the shape into which you tear and then fold pita bread to eat green Mulukhiyah soup. You can always be sure to learn something new from the Griffyns!

Now, what else to say? Michael Sollis’ clever music, which supported the narrative, varied from cattish-wailing to foot-stomping, from discordant sounds reflecting anxiety and uncertainty to lyrical jig-like and sometimes jazzy ensemble pieces conveying confidence. Laura Tanata’s harp played a gentle encouraging role throughout. Soprano Susan Ellis, reminding me of a spunky (less tatty) Grizabella from Cats*, prowled the room looking for answers, and at one point carried on an evocative and entertaining squeaky “conversation” with Kiri Sollis’ piccolo (if I’ve remembered correctly). The whole ended with a “miao chorus” inviting audience participation.

While the “story” was about mummified cats, it called up, for me, a broader archetype – sophisticated town cat versus nervous country cousins – and, as in all good stories, they all got together in the end.

I must admit that I’m not sure I fully comprehended all the connections being made as the story progressed, perhaps because coming from an older generation I’m not so good at quickly absorbing multiple inputs, but I always enjoy seeing what these skilled performers come up with. They make music meaningful and fun, and present it with a great deal of warmth towards their audience. I look forward to their next concert.

Griffyn Ensemble: Michael Sollis (Musical Director and Mandolin), Susan Ellis (Soprano), Kiri Sollis (Piccolo), Chris Stone (Violin), Laura Tanata (Harp) and Holly Downes (Double Bass).

* Ian McLean who reviewed the performance for City News was also reminded of Grizabella! I think it was the long fur coat.