The Big Issue Australia #622 – Archie Roach by The Big Issue Australia

Ed.

622 16 OCT 2020

ARCHIE ROACH

26.

MEL C

18.

GRANT DENYER

30.

JANE HARPER

40.

and HETTY MCKINNON

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Contents

EDITION

622 26 MUSIC

Solo Spice Sporty Spice Melanie C zoomed us from London lockdown to chat about her eighth solo album – a joyous, self-affirming affair that she can’t wait to perform outside her living room.

30 BOOKS

Harper in the South

12.

Jane Harper’s highly anticipated fourth novel The Survivors takes the action to a small town on the Tasmanian coast. We speak with the bestselling novelist about plot twists, the harsh Australian landscape and keeping the reader guessing.

Singing Them Home by Melissa Fulton

Archie Roach has lived many lives – storyteller, musician, survivor, elder statesman. Thirty years on from the release of his iconic debut Charcoal Lane, he reflects on his life and legacy, and shares what he’s looking forward to next.

TASTES LIKE HOME

cover photo by Phil Nitchie contents photo by @missfarmerjojo

Egg, Pea and Ginger Fried Rice

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 18 Letter to My Younger Self

20 The Big Picture 24 Ricky 25 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews

37 Book Reviews 39 Public Service Announcement 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click

CONTENT WARNING

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this magazine contains references to deceased people (p12-15).

Hetty McKinnon’s recipe for a simple vegetarian fried rice is a love letter to her Chinese heritage, and the ultimate comfort food. Best enjoyed for breakfast!

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

E FO RT NI GH T LE TT ER OF TH

Tour de Force

Your Say

ack in late February, before the realities of lockdown and physical distancing set in, we spoke to Archie Roach about his final national tour. Thirty years after releasing his landmark debut album Charcoal Lane, he was set to take his songs around the country. But then the world stopped. The tour and the story were put on hold. Now, eight months later, we’ve caught up with the legendary singersongwriter once again. Under the pall of coronavirus, Roach has continued to shine his light, finding connection and community from his kitchen table, at home on Gunditjmara country in southwest Victoria. From here, he tells us, he’s launched a YouTube channel that tells the stories behind his songs. It’s also where he’s recorded his new album, The Songs of Charcoal Lane, a reimagining of the award‑winning original. “I’ve grown as a person, spiritually and mentally, and the songs, they

mature, too,” he says. “But the stories, the message, is pretty much the same. It hasn’t changed. They are as relevant today as they were 30 years ago.” Here at The Big Issue we have some music news of our own. With this edition, we say a fond farewell (and a huge thanks) to music editor Sarah Smith after four years of expanding our ears. And we welcome Isabella Trimboli into the fold. This edition also marks the release of The Big Issue Calendar, on sale from Thursday 22 October from your local vendor. It celebrates The Big Issue community as we head into our milestone 25th year, featuring portraits of vendors, old and new, all around the country, as well as Andrew Weldon’s cartoons and humour. At $15, your vendor earns 60 per cent or $9 for every calendar sold. After a challenging year, it’s a much-welcomed boost. As for Archie Roach in 2021, his final tour is being rescheduled for mid-year – they’ll be dates you’ll want to mark on your shiny new calendar.

I have not purchased a copy of The Big Issue for a number of years as I no longer go into the city regularly. Yesterday I was at West End and walked past one of your vendors a couple of times. Things were quiet, so I stopped for a chat and purchased a copy from him. I sat down to read Ed#618 this morning over breakfast and was reminded of how much I love your publication. Not just for the financial independence it provides to those who sell it, but for its thought‑provoking, positive‑focused content. I particularly liked Lee Kofman’s piece on how language affects the way you tell a story. I had never heard the term exophonic, let alone understood its meaning in relation to writers. I was filled with admiration for Lee’s dedication to learning. We, as readers, are really fortunate to share in the awareness she has gained from her study of each language and her skill in describing the process. JENNIFER RUSHWORTH WYNNUM | QLD

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The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 24 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 19 locations around the country. • The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales. • The Big Issue Classroom educates school groups about homelessness. • And The Big Idea challenges university students to develop a new social enterprise. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT

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Jennifer wins a copy of Jane Harper’s new novel The Survivors. You can read all about it in our interview on p30. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

interview by Amy Hetherington photo by Sean Davey

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16 OCT 2020

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT KAMBAR VILLAGE, CANBERRA, ACT

Grace

I started selling The Big Issue at the start of the year, and I’m really enjoying it. I like the fact that I get to stand outside in the sun; I get to talk to people and occasionally people give me money. Best job ever! I’ve got vision impairment, autism, ADHD, depression and anxiety. I’ve had low vision since birth, so I kind of just got used to it growing up and it doesn’t really affect me. I only just got diagnosed with autism and that one’s a bit harder to deal with. I grew up in Canberra and enjoyed school. Years 11 and 12 were a bit hard because I started developing mental health stuff, but before that I enjoyed school. I participated in a lot of sport. I was a cheeky kid, good at being a smart-arse. I still do a tiny bit of sport. I started doing gymnastics only a month ago, learning trampoline skills, balancing – I find it really helps with the autism stuff, the sensory stuff. And I play footy on an all-abilities rugby league team, the Score Raiders. I’ve never really stopped studying. I’m doing my Certificate IV in Mental Health; I’m doing it online so it’s self-paced. My end goal is to be a youth worker. After school, I completed a qualification in learning support, so I am qualified to be a learning support assistant from Years K to 12. It’s essentially another adult in a school that works one-on-one with students who have additional needs. I was volunteering at a primary school for four years, and I did a traineeship in childcare. But my boss wasn’t the nicest person, and I was like I don’t need to put up with this, so I quit. Now I’m earning more money than I was then. And The Big Issue provides more flexibility, so if I am having a day where I am really anxious, I can text: “I’m not going on pitch today; I’m not feeling good.” I’m definitely starting to build up a community here in Kambar Village. I’ve had a few customers have talks with me, and tell me how they’ve had mental illness and other stuff, and that’s pretty good, getting to hear other people’s stories. I moved out of my parents’ house almost 10 months ago, and I’m in a share house. It was definitely time to move out. It’s good that I found a house where the rent’s really cheap, and they’re really nice people. My goal is to be able to save to get a deposit for a house, and I want to foster some kids. Through my work at the primary school and at the childcare, I’ve met a few kids that are foster kids. And I want to be that person who will be there, be present in children’s lives, so they can have a better future because they’ve had the experience of what love and support is.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

ROB

Great Geelong I love my customers. I hope they are all well and I hope they come back now that this lockdown is over, and I am out selling in Geelong again. I remember when I had my vendor profile in the magazine; I liked sharing my experience of being homeless when I was younger. I got a lot of customers talking to me about my profile – you’re a star, they said! During lockdown, I have been watching Home and Away, Neighbours, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. I have been enjoying cooking a lot – I find it relaxing, especially making spaghetti bolognese. My cat, Zoe, keeps me company too. WILLY PAKINGTON ST I GEELONG

Adrian’s Funnies Q: Did you hear about the mass evacuation of staff and patrons from an Adelaide Hungry Jack’s? A: Somebody dropped a Whopper!

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ROB BRIGHTENS UP PERTH

ADRIAN CARRIAGEWORKS I SYDNEY

Colour Me Happy H

i, I’m Rob and my favourite thing to do is colouring in. I colour in every day. One of the people that supports me on a weekend is Steve – he’s an artist. I tell him what I would like to do, and he draws it for me. I do all sorts of themes: Easter, Christmas, animals, clowns etc. If I would have to pick a favourite, I would say it’s one I did with animals from the zoo. I like to really concentrate on the colouring in and it’s really important to me that I can do it in my own space and time. I have a favourite table I draw on and about 50 textas in all different colours. I buy the textas with the money I make from selling the magazine, so a big thank you to all my customers. ROB CARILLON, MURRAY ST I PERTH

Summer’s Coming! I’m looking forward to when The Big Issue opens up again in Melbourne. I can’t wait until we can go see our friends and family. I can’t wait to go to the movies and have a meal at the pub with family. During lockdown, I’ve been using my computer a lot. I’ve been doing exercise. I’ve been cooking – I cooked a roast the other night, roast beef and vegetables. I like to cook a roast once a week. I also bought a computer during lockdown, just to keep busy. I’ve been chatting with my friends online and I’ve been playing computer games. I’ve also been working on a 1000-piece puzzle – so far, I’m about 50 per cent of the way through! It’s a street scene in Paris. I also go for walks around Ringwood Lake, just to keep healthy. It’s a

Flash Cash It’s been so positive to be back at work. All the people and customers have been very friendly, lots of smiles and hellos. I don’t have a tap-and-go payment yet, so I

KELVIN ARTISAN CAFE I ADELAIDE

Good Wishes Since I was last in The Big Issue, lots of things have happened to me and around me but I just get on with things, try my best to sell as many books as I can, and engage in my sports and other activities. I was meant to be in Brisbane for a bowling tournament in June this year but was unable to go because of the COVID-19. We in Perth are lucky to be working, selling our books, and I feel sorry and sad for the other states that are still suffering from the pandemic. I also sympathise with families that are losing their loved ones and their

GO OD GO SH , IT'S JOS H AN D SPI DE R-M AN

friends. I hope things will get better and you will be out selling again soon. Hope to see you guys out there soon while I am selling my books and I wish everyone the very best and good luck. RYAN ARTS BRIDGE I PERTH

Birthday Honours For my birthday I went out west to Inglewood to visit my cousin Maria. Because she’s so far away I don’t get to see her often. I took the bus to Warwick, where Maria picked me up. We had a nice counter lunch at an Inglewood pub and played pool. The next day we went to the Inglewood Golf Course and had a nice game of golf, where I tried to evade a dive-bombing magpie. I had to chase it away with my golf club. BRETT GOODWILL BRIDGE I BRISBANE

Spidey Senses I love art, drawing and Spider-man. The thing I love to draw the most is Spider-man. This is me holding a drawing of Spider-man. JOSH GINO’S CAFE I FREMANTLE

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

16 OCT 2020

JAMES CENTREWAY I MELBOURNE CBD

am pleased to see people are still carrying cash to buy magazines. Thanks to all my customers.

nice environment – lots of trees, possums and foxes. I like to go to the park to get out of the house after being stuck inside all day. I’ve been learning a lot from history and wildlife documentaries, and trying to get a few ideas about my future. Lately, the weather’s been really good – you can feel that summer’s coming. I feel a lot more relaxed when the sun’s out! Hopefully, by the time summer comes, we can be swimming at the beach, having a nice lemonade with our friends.

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

We as a community need to make sure we recognise we are taking charge of a very powerful technology. I hope this announcement galvanises that.

Jennifer A Doudna (right), joint winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Emmanuelle Charpentier. They won for their work on Crispr-Cas9, a method to edit DNA. While Crispr-Cas9 could benefit humankind greatly, by eliminating diseases, it could also do great harm, by accident, by design, or by unintended consequences.

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“PWR/UP” The message on a poster outside Ashfield Boys High School in Sydney, which provided a clue to the imminent release of a new album by AC/DC, called Power Up, a tribute in part to deceased member Malcolm Young, in the way Back in Black was to the band’s late singer Bon Scott. Guitarist Angus Young attended that high school half a century ago – and he’s still wearing a schoolboy uniform.

had a never-Trumper as a host, but that’s okay because I beat [Biden] in the second debate also.” US President Donald Trump claiming he won the second presidential debate, which hadn’t even taken place at that point and ended up being cancelled. What was that about reality being stranger than fiction?

TRIPLE M I AU

“I want to make music that helps. ’Cause that’s the way that I help. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t work in the government. I make music.” Singer Lizzo on making music that inspires you to vote.

“While researching my first novel, I became a suspect (for a short time) in a real-life case that had similarities to the story I was writing.” Crime novelist Ian Rankin on reality being stranger than fiction. THE GUARDIAN I UK

“I beat him [Joe Biden] in the first debate. At the second debate, we

ROLLING STONE I US

VOGUE I US

“A contest of ideas shouldn’t be used to legitimise disinformation. And I think it’s often taken advantage of. And I think at great

news organisations, the mission really should be to introduce fact to disperse doubt – not to sow doubt, to obscure fact, if you will.” James Murdoch on why he decided to “pull the rip cord” and resign from the board of News Corp in July. THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“We’re losing the race against time because species are disappearing faster than we can find and name them. Many of them could hold important clues for solving some of the most pressing challenges of medicine and even perhaps of the emerging and current pandemics we are seeing today.” Professor Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on a new UN report that estimates two-fifths of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction. BBC I UK

“[We’re] really grateful to the anonymous person who returned the book to us.” Librarian David Harrington, from Middlesbrough Central Library, on the return of a copy of Geoffrey Faber’s poetry anthology some 57 years late. They’ve agreed to suspend the £500 (AU$900) overdue fine. BBC I UK

“I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pyjamas with an acoustic guitar, and Wolfgang is probably just two‑and‑a-half-feet tall. I’ll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn’t wait for the day I’d be able to make music with my son. I don’t know what more I could ask for.” Guitarist Eddie Van Halen back in April 2008 on his son Wolfgang, who ended up playing bass in his dad’s band, whose drummer was Alex Van Halen, Eddie’s brother. Eddie has died, aged 65, from throat cancer. VHND.COM

20 Questions by Little Red

01 How old was Cathy Freeman during

the Sydney Olympics? 02 What is another name for someone’s

epidermis? 03 How many countries observe

Daylight Savings Time in at least part of the country: 70, 102 or 176? 04 Reality-TV show Keeping Up With

the Kardashians is ending in 2021 after how many seasons? 05 Who was Renate Blauel famously

married to? 06 What does the internet acronym

URL stand for? 07 Which country has the largest

population of Japanese people outside of Japan? 08 What type of dog was Lassie? 09 What is the symbol for silver on the

periodic table?

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD I AU

“I didn’t think I’d turn 40. I didn’t think I’d be released from prison. I am just so thankful to be able to grow old. A lot of people are denied that.” Convicted drug smuggler and realityTV contestant Schapelle Corby.

“Our work has placed an important piece in the largely incomplete puzzle that is the formation and growth of such extreme, yet relatively abundant, objects so quickly after the Big Bang.” Astronomer Roberto Gilli on work that he co-authored about supermassive black holes, explaining what others couldn’t: how they could exist very early in the history of the universe, by sucking the gas from surrounding galaxies via enormous web-like structures, that probably rely on dark matter. It almost gives you a black hole in the head just thinking about it.

HERALD SUN I AU

SCIENCEDAILY.COM

INDIA TODAY I IND

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

10 Which two NBA teams are

competing in this year’s finals? 11 In Australia, how many millilitres is

a single standard shot of alcohol? 12 What is Geoffrey Chaucer’s most

famous book? 13 True or false: Starfish can survive in

both salt and fresh water. 14 How many women had been elected

Justices of the US Supreme Court before Ruth Bader Ginsberg? 15 Could Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

play the drums? 16 What percentage of the world’s

population is left-handed? 17 Which TV series won the 2020

Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, Best Lead Actor in a Comedy, Best Lead Actress in a Comedy, Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy and Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy? 18 Which six nations were the founding

members of the European Economic Community, established in 1957? 19 Which elite sporting event did

Slovenian Tadej Pogačar recently win? 20 Which country overtook Qatar in

January this year to become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas?

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

16 OCT 2020

“If you’re Indigenous or a person of colour, you have that conversation really early. When I was about six, Mum and Dad sat me down: ‘There are going to be people in your life who just don’t like you, no matter what you do. That’s just the bare, basic fact.’” Actor and artist Meyne Wyatt on growing up Indigenous in Australia.

“We recycle about 90 per cent “I don’t care what of all water-based he says, I’m doing liquids on the it irregardless, with space station, a capital R.” including urine Overheard by Jan and sweat. What of Flemington, Vic. we try to do aboard the space station is mimic elements of Earth’s natural water cycle to reclaim water from the air. And when it comes to our urine on the space station, today’s coffee is tomorrow’s coffee!” US astronaut Jessica Meir on NASA’s new US$23 million toilet, which aims to achieve a recycling rate of 98 per cent. But how on earth do astronauts even successfully use a toilet, given the lack of gravity? EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Tamara Lazaroff @tamaralazaroff

wasn’t at all surprised when the other last Lazaroff in my city found me. A name is, after all, one of the ways we recognise kin – especially when that name is uncommon. A name is repository for our histories. It’s the story of who we are. And who we are not. And so, on the phone, we arranged to meet the next month – after COVID restrictions are over, or so we thought – for a coffee and cake with his wife. Before saying goodbye, my namesake sketched out quickly, almost in one breath, how his name had been carried from Russia to the US, to Great Britain and then Australia, through the First to after the Second World War. There was something important, too, about a fire and a great house, and later a bomb. But now he is older, retired. He has two grown daughters – married, and they’ve each hyphenated their surname with their husband’s – and so unfortunately, regrettably, sadly, he is the very last Lazaroff in his line. Of course, he would have loved to hear more about my line – and I knew he meant it – but his wife was unwell and he had to go. Which meant I didn’t have the chance to explain that I’m not a real Lazaroff. Not a real Lazaroff at all. When we meet, I tell myself, I’ll have to break the news. Tell him how when my paternal grandfather got off the ship in Sydney, as a refugee, the official scribe heard “ff” instead of “v”, and my grandfather, who was just happy to be there, didn’t correct or argue. As a guest, he probably didn’t feel he could. And that is how I came to be a Lazaroff, and not a Lazarov. Or, in fact, Lazarova: the daughter of Lazar. Back in the village, though, in North Macedonia, from what I’ve been told, the name Lazarov is only a few generations old. Who we were before that, I don’t know. But I do know, from my relatives, that colloquially we are known as the Vrleshtas – the Lentil-boilers – because as far back as anyone can remember, every time someone walks past our ancestral house, one of us is outside stirring a big pot of brown legumes, which honestly, I don’t doubt. Boiling brown lentils – this is what I do over my stove in suburban Brisbane all the time!

Tamara Lentil-boiler. I’ve had other names, too. I was christened Tammy Lazaroff, but after my mother married an Anglo-Saxon Australian man I changed my name, from Fourth to Sixth Grade, to Tammy Williamson. Not because, I admit, I was so bent on family unity – which is the story my mother told when my biological father took her to court – but because I didn’t want to be called a wog at my new school where everyone was blonde. But that was only until high school, when I went back to the old: Tammy Lazaroff. When I turned 18, however, my mother told me that she had originally wanted to call me Tamara – not Tammy – but hadn’t been allowed. In a patrilineal line a mother must not name a child in any way after herself, so Tammy was the compromise. My father’s father’s name was Tom – Tommy – Tammy. Close enough. It goes without saying, I changed my name not long after by deed poll. Tamara: daughter of Mara. But I didn’t start using the new name until a decade later, after she died. And when I did it was like putting on a coat or a pair of shoes, perfectly cut, perfectly sized, which I had been waiting to grow into all my life. And now I, too, am the last Lazaroff in my line. I will tell the other last Lazaroffs this when we finally meet. And also that I have no children – something I chose – and anyway, even if I changed my mind, I’m now perimenopausal, and my cat Lila – Lila Lazaroff – is desexed, too. On Lila’s birth certificate, which I keep, I find it curious that, unlike me but perhaps like other real Lazaroffs, it seems Lila has descended from czars and czarinas, feline kings and queens. Barishka Tomashevski – paternal grandfather. Prinz Kostenka – father. Mother – simply Freya, like some wild ring-in. Together, however, with our checkered genealogical histories, Lila and I will not stop at the end of the track. We will go on – as we all must. We’ll blast through and blaze trails into the what-next, into the what‑cannot-be-imagined-yet, into the new, the after, the soon, soon, soon. Tamara Lazaroff is a Macedonian-Australian writer who lives in Brisbane on Yuggera and Turrbal country. She is the author of In My Father’s Village & Other Freedom Stories.

What’s in a name? For Tamara Lazaroff, it promises history, identity, family…and lentils.

16 OCT 2020

The Last of the Lazaroffs

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SINGING THEM HOME

Thirty years on from his groundbreaking debut album Charcoal Lane, Archie Roach speaks to us about a legacy that burns brighter than ever. by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor

PHOTO BY PAUL GIGGLE

16 OCT 2020

hirty-odd years ago now, Archie Roach almost didn’t record Charcoal Lane. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the songs, or the talent, or the opportunity – it was just that for the first time in a long time, he felt grounded and content. He didn’t need the attention, or the fame. But his partner Ruby Hunter wasn’t having a bar of it. Roach had been offered his first big gig at what is now Melbourne’s Hamer Hall, playing a short opening set for Paul Kelly and the Messengers – a band Roach had never heard of, he writes in his 2019 award‑winning memoir Tell Me Why: “but they were paying and I was free, so I agreed”. That night, his candid performance of ‘Beautiful Child’ and ‘Took the Children Away’ stopped people in their tracks. They were silenced by this soft-spoken man, singing from the heart about Indigenous deaths in custody and the Stolen Generations. Paul Kelly remembers watching from the side of the stage in awe: “all the hairs on my body stood up”. When it was over the applause was rolling and thunderous, like the ocean. A few days later, Kelly and Messengers’ guitarist Steve Connolly showed up at Roach’s place, with an offer to record his songs. It was an afternoon of yarning and good music, of sweet tea and kids running through the kitchen. They jammed on country favourites and Roach’s tunes, but when Kelly and Connolly left, Roach said to Hunter that he didn’t think he had a record in him. After years of displacement, alcoholism and general strife, they were living comfortably in their own place with their boys and a couple of foster kids. He was a counsellor at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, and she was a houseparent at an Aboriginal group home. He was playing the occasional pub gig. They were happy enough, right? The way Roach tells it, Hunter rounded on him, shoulders proud, her hands on her hips as she said: “It’s not just about you, Archie Roach. How many Blackfellas you reckon get to record an album?” Fast forward to 2020 and a lot has changed. Hunter passed away – suddenly of a heart attack at just 54 – back in 2010. And Roach has had health problems of his own: he suffered a stroke soon after Hunter died, then lost half a lung to cancer. But when we talk on the phone, Roach chuckles as he remembers her

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I’ve grown as a person, spiritually and mentally, and the songs, they mature too. But the stories, the message, is pretty much the same.

message. “What Ruby meant was, you have to do it for other people. She had a favourite saying: when one of us shines, we all shine.” Charcoal Lane went on to become a major success, signalling Roach’s arrival as a storyteller and musician. It was nominated for three ARIAs, winning two. He went on to record several bestselling albums and toured extensively here and internationally. But the record’s legacy extends far beyond that. Thirty years on from its release, in the wake of a global pandemic, police brutality and racism, and general looming uncertainty, few records continue to feel so important to our nation’s reckoning as Charcoal Lane. “I’ve grown as a person, spiritually and mentally, and the songs, they mature too,” says Roach. “But the stories, the message, is pretty much the same. It hasn’t changed. They are as relevant today as they were 30 years ago.” Which is why Roach has chosen to re‑record the tracks and release them as a new album, The Songs of Charcoal Lane. It’s one of many projects that might not have otherwise happened: originally, the plan for 2020 was to celebrate Roach’s legacy with a national tour – his last – but then COVID struck and everything changed. The tour’s been rescheduled for next year. In the meantime, what was previously on the backburner while he was performing is now front and centre. “It’s just a different way of doing things now,” reflects Roach on connection and community in pandemic times. At 64 years old, he’s become a YouTuber, launching his own channel from his kitchen table earlier this year. “I’m usually a pretty quiet person, quite reserved, and I don’t really go out of my way to meet people, but when you’re on stage it’s a different dynamic, and the relationship I have with the audience – with the people who come to listen to me not just sing but also tell stories – there’s a great rapport that I have. It’s hard to do that in front of cameras, without people being there. It’s strange, but you can do it.” In May, he performed a set for the live-streamed Recharge music festival, accompanied by his new band: Sam Anning on bass and Stephen Magnusson on guitar. The two tracks from that pivotal Messengers support show were among those performed. “It’s become a bit of a healing song for me now,” Roach said with his head down as he introduced ‘Took the Children Away’. “Every time I sing it, I let a little bit of it go, and I’ve been singing it for a long time now.” You can hear the passing of time in Roach’s voice. It’s gravelly now – weathered – and catches at

the back of his throat. Still, from the song’s opening pledge – “This story’s right, this story’s true, I would not tell lies to you” – it’s clear that even on a computer screen, time has done nothing to dull its gentle force. Roach says when he sings the song, he thinks of his family – including his mother and father, whom he never knew – and of the place where he’s from. It’s a place he didn’t know about for a long time. Up until he was 14 or so, Roach thought his surname was Cox and that he was the son of Alex and Dulcie, his Scottish Christian foster parents. Like thousands of other Indigenous children of the Stolen Generations between 1910 and 1970, Roach was removed at age two from his family, who had been removed from ancestral lands to Rumbalara Mission then the Framlingham Mission near Warrnambool in coastal western Victoria. It wasn’t until he received a letter from a sister he never knew he had, that spoke of a life that he had no memory of, that Roach’s life imploded and his quest for identity and belonging began. The quest is well documented in Roach’s work, but none more so than Charcoal Lane. “Back in the day when I was a younger man,” he says, “I was travelling a lot, and drinking a lot of alcohol. I got into fights and into trouble with the police and all that sort of nonsense, and I really believe that I was reacting to the trauma of being removed from family.” The record chronicles the almost 20 years, right up until that pivotal gig at Hamer Hall, when Roach travelled the country, searching for his family and his people. He slept rough a lot of the time. He spent time in prison. He went “biting” – asking around on the street for money – with his mates and various family members with whom he had been reunited. He did a stint as a travelling boxer, like his father before him. He buried friends and family. And always, since he was a child living with the Coxes, he played music. Deeply empathic music, that puts a human face to systemic injustice. The other song performed by Roach at that pivotal Messengers show, recorded on Charcoal Lane and revisited at the Recharge festival, is ‘Beautiful Child’, written for Lloyd Boney, who died in police custody in 1987. Roach penned the song after something he heard Boney’s mother, clutching a photo of her dead son, say on the news: “He was such a beautiful child.” “These people aren’t just statistics – they’re actual people, living human beings that you could’ve passed in the street, or been in the same shop with,” he says. “It’s important that

WITH PAUL KELLY

THE SONGS OF CHARCOAL LANE IS OUT 13 NOVEMBER.

16 OCT 2020

PHOTOS BY BILL MCAULEY (MIDDLE) AND TONY MOTT (BOTTOM)

WITH GUITAR

we try to bring it back to a human perspective… because it’s about human lives. It’s about people; it’s about you and me.” Once wary of the spotlight, Roach is now a respected community Elder. In 2014, he established the Archie Roach Foundation, to nurture meaningful opportunities for First Nations artists. Last year, Roach was named Victorian of the Year for his lifetime contribution to Indigenous arts and culture. His next focus is on educating future generations. This month, a hardcover picture book version of Took the Children Away, illustrated by Hunter and including photos and archival material from both Roach and Hunter’s experiences, has been re-released. A Young Adult version of Roach’s Tell Me Why is slated for release next March. There’s also a suite of educational resources about the Stolen Generations, including a series of Zoom discussions with other Elders, such as Uncle Jack Charles, about their personal experiences of survival, hope and healing, made in collaboration with Culture Is Life and the ABC. Roach’s hope is that the picture book and the memoir end up on the school curriculum, so that Australia’s Black history becomes a national conversation. “When I first started singing, people would come up to me and say, ‘We didn’t know anything about this. We weren’t taught this in school, about kids being taken away from families,’” says Roach. “It’s important now that we try to introduce it into schools, and get teachers and children and younger people learning about the Stolen Generations – what that means and who that is – and just heal, and own it. What we must understand is it’s an Australian story.” He remains hopeful that things will change, particularly when he looks towards the next generation of Indigenous artists, people like Briggs who recorded ‘The Children Came Back’, which works as a follow-up to Roach’s most iconic song. “When I first did the album 30 years ago, the ink wasn’t dry on the paper I wrote them on – they were just that fresh and new,” he says. “What I love about Briggs’ version is that he talks about the heroes, the people we looked up to through the years – and that’s exactly what Ruby was talking about those years ago… The children coming back to this place where sports people and other people have achieved great things, and we can be proud of who we are and achieve great things in our own lives.”

WITH PARTNER RUBY HUNTER

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My Brother Calling Eighteen years have passed, and Richard Castles still thinks of his brother every day. Richard Castles is a Melbourne writer and frequent contributor to The Big Issue. He believes the secret to life is regular engagement with ducks.

f anyone in my family ever lost the plot when we were growing up, a mock telephone call was often made to what was collectively known as Funny Farm Southside, an imaginary asylum somewhere on the edge of town. Losing the plot might be something as simple as liking the wrong band, denying that you were putting too much peanut butter on your toast, or admitting to a minor phobia. “I like going to school,” I remember saying once on one of those glum days when I had to go back to school on Monday while the rest of my sibs didn’t have to go back until Tuesday. My little sister casually picked up the old mustard-yellow phone on the kitchen bench and went into the standard routine. “Hello, yes. Funny Farm Southside? Yes, it’s the Castles residence… I’m afraid he’s lapsed again. If you could send the white van over… About half an hour? Okay, thank you.” It was a guaranteed giggle. This was when we were young and our understanding of mental health extended to the disorders of The Goodies – Graeme’s megalomania, Bill’s somnambulism and Tim’s panic attacks (“I’m a teapot! I’m a teapot!”).

illustration by Benji Spence

I remember his pitch to me for a new invention: a helicopter that could take off in four directions at once. John was always on the lookout for such hijinks. “Here, check this out”, was a sort of unspoken announcement before each performance. And we were all happy to be part of his avant-garde. Thus, he was able to convince me that “Masochism Squash” was a fun game, even though it simply involved me walking back and forth, like a duck, along the front wall of a squash court, while he belted balls at me with detached amusement. Yes, there was a sadistic streak, but the welts were a small price to pay to be part of his universe. John was also progressive in the visual arts, famous many streets away for his photo portrait of my older sister reading the self-help book I’m OK, You’re OK, while holding a banana dressed in GI Joe clothes. And the one of my little sister in her communion dress playing dead beneath the monkey bars at the playground. In the late 70s, John formed our family rock band, named Costa Brava for reasons known only to him. As lead singer, he played with Jimi Hendrix’s style and a cockatoo perched on his shoulder, but we were never very good and our tennis racquets were rarely tuned. Our biggest hit, ‘Shot the Gun’, was about a cowboy being shot in the bum. In the 80s, he established our own Guinness Book of

“Here, check this out,” he seemed to be saying in his ghostly repose at the viewing of his body. The resemblance to Lenin in his tomb was commented upon. I kept expecting him to burst out laughing: a performance piece too tempting to pass up. Of course, I know he had been in a lot of pain. Eighteen years have passed and I still think about him every day. He visits often in my dreams, the joke still on me as I have to embarrassingly tell all my friends I had it wrong: he didn’t die. I wake up and think perhaps he hasn’t… Perhaps it was a prank… Perhaps he’ll burst through the door any minute with some idea involving a doll, a tape recorder and a bag of lemons… Then I hear my little sister quietly picking up the phone. IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW NEEDS HELP, PLEASE CALL LIFELINE 13 11 14 OR BEYOND BLUE 1300 224 636.

16 OCT 2020

John was a PhD in Cultural Studies and an encyclopaedia. He knew about films and music and books and philosophy. He won games of Trivial Pursuit from the first roll of the dice. He was also a bit loony. Not in the completely disconnected from reality kind of way, just…nutty. As a child, he once walked up and down our street in goggles and flippers announcing through a megaphone that it was Telly Savalas’ birthday. To him, nuttiness was something to be embraced, perhaps the highest form of human endeavour. Like Peter Sellers turning up at Spike Milligan’s place at 3am, wearing only a bowler hat and asking if he knew a good tailor. It’s not that funny other than that he actually did it.

House Records. His records included most clothes pegs attached to your face (53), longest time wearing only black school shoes and Y-fronts (14 hours), and most times reciting the words “Cracklin’ toenail Oodnadatta” (1401). At university he excelled – without losing his enthusiasm for nuttiness. He wore his mortar board as if it were a clown’s hat. One popular routine involved slowly, thoughtfully choosing flavours of ice cream for his cone, changing his mind a few times, then finally, happy with his order, inverting the cone and smooshing it all over his head. It’s not that funny other than that he actually did it. But unfortunately, John’s performances required an audience, and numbers diminished as he got older, with each friend moving away or marrying and taking up a life of normality, something he seemed to envy, as if it were a life he wasn’t allowed. He moved to Japan, where he found stimulation for a few years, immersing himself in Tokyo’s frenetic pull. But also alcohol, which grabbed him and fuelled his race to the edge of things. The first time he rang threatening suicide, I tried to pull him back. “Hello, Funny Farm Southside?” But he didn’t laugh. “Fuck off, Richie!” he told me and hung up, leaving me to lie awake frozen all night. We managed to get him home, but he found a fading tolerance for his art, and fewer willing participants in what was clearly becoming self-punishment. At times we would fall back into familiar Pete and Dud‑style ad‑libs, some of the happiest times of my life. I remember his pitch to me for a new invention: a helicopter that could take off in four directions at once. Spike Milligan would have been proud. But, oh, how I disappointed him two bottles later when I declined to play a game called “Ask John to Do Anything”, the more self-abasing the better. “Go on, ask me to lick the dog’s arse.” But I had learned enough about masochism to understand its deeper purpose, to create anxiety in others. It can be an attack, like art, like comedy. I’m so sorry; I love you John, but in a slight variation on the Meat Loaf song, I won’t do that.

The only mental diagnosis that really existed for us back then was being a bit loony. But many years later, when my elder brother was threatening to kill himself, I’d try to disarm him with the same tactics, hoping to break the grip of whatever possessed him. “Hello, Funny Farm Southside?” It sometimes worked. But never for long.

Letter to My Younger Self THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

I Always Said Yes TV host Grant Denyer on growing up a farm kid, his road to television and the decision that changed his life. by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor

ixteen-year-old Grant was hungry. He had the drive, if no direction. It was tricky because he felt the pressure of having to decide his future career at too young an age. Really, that pressure shouldn’t be heaped on anybody that young. I did part of my growing up on a family farm. We’ve been a farming family for 110 years, out in the Riverina of New South Wales. There, you’re driving utes at seven years of age; you’re on the tractor at 12. I developed a love of machinery very early and that translated into wanting to do it at 300km an hour – and I did. I wasn’t a great student and I was never going to have the university entry score to get me into anything that I wanted to do, so I was stuck. I had to find a back door into the [television] industry. I dedicated all my school holidays for three years to working for free and washing the news cars and carrying tripods, just to learn some skills, and then hope that I could get a job that way, which I did. I always said yes to every opportunity knowing that it could lead to something more amazing. I suppose for most of my life, my mantra was “bite off more than you can chew and chew like hell”. I love the escapism of television. No matter your financial situation, if you’re doing it tough or whatever. I had a single mum and things were pretty tight, but TV was a great way to brighten your life, take you to another place. And then once I got myself into a TV studio [Prime TV, Wagga Wagga] and learned about the craft, I just thoroughly enjoyed it. I wasn’t a great news journalist. I wasn’t a political animal and I wasn’t an ambulance chaser, but I liked making people smile. So my stories had a lot of joy in them, a sense of humour. And that started my point of difference.

GRANT DE ER LOVES MAKING PENY OPLE SMILE

GRANT DENYER WILL HOST NETWORK 10’S BROADCAST OF THE BATHURST SUPERCHEAP AUTO 1000, 16-18 OCTOBER.

TOP: WITH ALEX DAVISON IN GRANT’S V8 DAYS, 2006 BOTTOM: THE 2018 GOLD LOGIE WINNER WITH WIFE CHEZZI

16 OCT 2020

families come up to me and saying, “Thank you for making a show that we can all watch together. There’s not many of those anymore.” The biggest challenge I’ve had in my life is when I broke my back. It was hard because I pulled the handbrake on a fast-paced life. Laying flat in a hospital bed for four months was tough on me, emotionally and mentally. I knew that if I could get back in a race car and win a race again, I could close the book and let that bad period go. But what actually happened was once I got better again and started winning races, I went even harder. I was like, Look how invincible I am. Look, I can break my back and come back and be better than I have ever been. So I pushed the pedal even further down when I should have been backing off. I think I broke my back because my body was trying to slow me down. I didn’t listen to that. I just ran myself into the wall – I got a level of chronic fatigue in which I couldn’t get my body back up again. I just ran out of gas. I found the medication harder than the actual injury itself, and the injury was awful and incredibly painful and difficult to manage. I just don’t feel that you’re ever given the heads-up or the information on how to handle what happens to you when you’re on that level of pain medication. It can be pretty harrowing. It’s hard on you mentally, and it’s hard on the people around you – you can really take it out on them because it’s just not your normal frame of mind. Everything is distorted and it’s very difficult to tell the difference between reality and fiction. I had an incredible partner who’s now my wife, but I threw a lot of curve balls at her. The things I called my wife, I’m still deeply embarrassed about it now. When you get older, you still have the same amount of fear, but it’s fear of different things. I was fearful then that I wouldn’t become something. I’m fearful now that I am no longer something. I’m more patient than I used to be. I think I’m kinder than I used to be. Not that I wasn’t kind, but I was just in my own lane and if I ran into a roadblock then I’d just go around the road block, whereas now, I’d help someone up – it takes as much energy to help someone up as to hold someone else down.

INSET PHOTOS BY GETTY

My mum was really good at creating a really happy, loving household environment. It was full of music and she kept an immaculate house. And she had a great sense of humour. Even in the worst of situations, she would find a really inappropriate joke to break the ice. And Dad, I’ve got a lot of my work ethic from my dad, the way he conducts himself with others. Anyone who works with him has a great deal of respect for him because he’s patient, kind and funny. If I wasn’t a TV presenter, I would be a racing car driver. Dick Johnson and Peter Brock were two of my idols when I was really little. If I’m absolutely honest, the only reason I got into television was to try and find sponsors to go motor-racing, because I wasn’t from a wealthy family, and how do you get into motorsport without a family fortune? And I thought, Well, if I’m on television, that’d be a good way to find sponsors – it was really as simple as that. And it paid off – I got all the way to V8 Supercars and I was asked by Dick Johnson whether I wanted to go full-time as a professional driver in the main series, but he told me I’d have to give up television. And I was stuck with making the most painful decision of my life: which of my two careers do I do? Which do I love more? My heart said motor sport, but my head said go with television for long-term security, which is what I did. I didn’t think there was a great value to being on television. I didn’t think you had much of an effect, until I broke my back [during a monster truck promotional event in 2008] and the flood of love and supportive messages far and wide – letters in the thousands that I received while I was rehabilitating – just floored me. That really took me by surprise. It was powerful and a big reason that I was able to heal as well as I did. Winning the Gold Logie a couple of years back was powerful in a sense that I felt like I’d finally arrived. I’d always felt like I was a kid among adults and I was trying to fake it till I made it. And the Logie allowed me to finally feel that I’d made it, I guess, like I’d earned my stripes and paid my dues and I hadn’t stuffed up too much. And I must’ve been okay at what I spent my life trying to achieve because, you know, I’d won something. It was pretty emotional. I cried a fair bit after that. I’m really proud of making Family Feud. I really liked the idea, particularly while the news was on and the world was dark and scary and an angry place, that you could put on Family Feud and it would breathe some light and love back into your lounge room. I loved having a lot of

series by Warren Kirk

The Big Picture

True North From Brunswick to Carlton, Abbotsford to Coburg North, photographer Warren Kirk captures the atmosphere of Melbourne’s northern suburbs. by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

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Lorin Clarke pens The Big Issue’s PSA column and the ABC radio series The Fitzroy Diaries. She lives in Melbourne’s north.

BRUNSWICK

WARREN KIRK’S BOOK NORTHSIDE: A TIME AND PLACE IS OUT NOW.

16 OCT 2020

here’s an otherwise unremarkable front door in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton that the local kids call “the crazy door”. It’s absolutely stuffed with plastic toys and exploding fake plants and is occasionally redesigned around a theme at the whim of whoever’s in charge (a “good witch” if you believe the six-year-olds standing out the front of it a few weeks back). The inner north of Melbourne, like most neighbourhoods, is spotted with glorious little landmarks like this – the Fountain House, the Garden Gnome House, the Newsagent That Time Forgot – but they’re harder to find than they once were. As apartment blocks creep out from inner Melbourne to suburbs such as Preston and Coburg, neighbourhoods that were once working class, ethnically diverse and inexpensive are now real-estate destinations, the milk bars getting made over into cafes. Where I live, in Carlton, I regularly chat to a man who has lived in his house for eight decades. When the house next door to him was up for auction I found him out the front watching the punters disperse afterwards. “I used to play in there when I was a little boy,” he told me. I realised how much history he had witnessed from his front gate. I felt sad, watching with him as the SOLD sticker went up, knowing there would probably be a big yellow building permit replacing it in the next few months. The speed of all this urban development in Melbourne’s north lends an urgency to photographer Warren Kirk’s project of bearing witness to the characters – both human and aesthetic – that make up its unique culture. The photographs seem, somehow, already nostalgic. Is it because of the age of Kirk’s subjects – their gentle smiles, the things you imagine they’ve seen? Not just that. Scanning the domestic everyday things in the backgrounds of these photographs is to glimpse another time. They’re not organised the way we’re taught to organise things now. There seems to be either too many things, or not enough. It’s too messy, or too neat. A line of matching plastic canisters decreasing in size in a kitchen. An overstuffed newsagent full of colour and mess, angles in all directions. This is pre-IKEA, pre-Marie Kondo, as though functionality trumps self-consciousness. The first time I looked at these images I realised I was holding my breath. Until I wasn’t. For there, in a beanie, in the front room of the house he has lived in for eight decades, is my neighbour. The morning light streams in from the street where apartments are being built all around him. I laughed, when I saw him, hand to mouth, and studied the image again. He looks right down the camera, right at you, defiant perhaps, perhaps amused. The faces and places that make Melbourne’s inner north what it is might be harder to find these days, but Warren Kirk, bless his cotton socks, has taken the trouble to find them.

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CARLTON NORTH

CARLTON

ABBOTSFORD

16 OCT 2020

COBURG

Ricky

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Maybe just imagine a new life as the village scribe, writing a weekly column about birdwatching or where to find the best Cornish pastie.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

A Bit Moorish

feel bad because I’ve just cruelly cut into my son’s very important Minecraft screen-time allocation (no more than 27 hours in any 24-hour period, from memory) to make him sit down and write a letter to distant relatives in England. I don’t know why I’m such a tyrant. Maybe I’m taking my writerly frustrations out on him. I’ve always agreed with the adage – if there is one – that the worst thing about being a writer is the constant need to write something. But really, if I had the choice I would happily scribble letters to distant relatives all day, the way I used to. I don’t expect my son to have inherited his father’s ego when it comes to written correspondence. I’m not expecting him to replicate the epic, 20 pages plus of gibberish I used to spin out, but I think it would be nice for him to partake in this ancient tradition. Also, I’m worried he’s beginning to forget the places we took him to two years ago on a very expensive European jaunt. This might jog his memory. We stayed with my father’s cousin Mike and his family in the small village of Ashburton in the county of Devon. If you were to close your eyes and picture a cliched, perfect English country village, you’d picture Ashburton. We visited Ashburton in 2018 but it would have looked the same in 1818, and even back then the local pub, the Old Exeter Inn, would have been nearly 700 years old. We walked along cobblestone streets wet with melting snow. Inside the pub the ceiling hung as low as the clouds over the moors. Dogs warmed themselves by the fire or under stools. We drank cask ales, ate hot chips and got introduced to the whole village. Mike was the local plumber, and I expect the town also had a resident butcher, baker and candlestick maker. I don’t think I’ve ever met a happier family, living – as they say – their best life, in the village of your dreams. Shame about the weather, though. But that’s England isn’t it?

On our designated moor-hiking day, Mike drove us in his plumbing van up into Dartmoor National Park and pointed out the distant landmarks that we would have seen had we been able to see more than 10 metres in front of us through the mist. It was cold enough to freeze every part of your body but not quite cold enough to turn the rain into snow. The “Beast from the East” weather system had passed through a few weeks before we arrived, and astounding snowdrifts were still piled up against the stone fences, but this rain didn’t quite have the same charm. Mike led us over those comely hills, from one unperceived landmark to the next, and we had a good laugh once we were back in the plumbing van with the heater turned up full. The windows steamed up so much it was like being back on the moors, and we chatted about distant family history. Funny to think of my grandfather growing up around here, in a stone cottage on the edge of paradise, with Dartmoor ponies clomping through the wet grass and ruined castles growing out of the summits of granite hills. It would have been nice to visit in summer, to ride bikes along those ancient, narrow roads lined with hedgerows and wave our caps to the local milkman or postie. Or to launch a kayak into the River Dart, or just launch myself onto a bar stool at those pubs built for hobbits, or maybe just imagine a new life as the village scribe, writing a weekly column about birdwatching or where to find the best Cornish pastie. It all seems so far away now. My son has just finished his letter. He remembers Mike’s plumbing van the most. I almost cried reading his sign-off. “Hope to see you all again one day.”

Ricky is a writer, musician and traveller, COVID permitting.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

oday I write in honour of books, a mini-break for the soul. Waiting for the American election, after all, feels increasingly like a Gravitron ride where you’ve been strapped in with a wall of serial spewers. Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to stop being flung around, your brain about to explode, while you’re spattered with vom? Huddle round. Books are the quiet achieving, good news story you’ve been looking for. Firstly, unlike COVID-19, late-stage capitalism and climate catastrophe, books have been humankind’s companion and consolation, since, essentially, forever. What a peaceful thought. The first books, arguably – although who wants to argue, surely we’re shouted out – were Mesopotamian clay tablets from 3400BC, used by Sumerians for recording stuff they’d bought, such as grain, slaves or Star Wars figurines. Soon enough they were knocking out epic poems in cuneiform, and by 3000BC the Egyptians were making the first “pages” out of papyrus. In Ancient Greece and England they were inking on parchment, which is animal skin and a gross fact I had entirely chosen to forget. The inventor of the winning book technology, aka paper, was an imperial Chinese court dignitary in 105AD, Cai Lun, who weaved some magic with old rags, tree bark and fishing nets. That was one productive crafternoon. My point, and I do have one, is that the human urge to record stories has been with us from the get-go. Boooooks. Mate. We are into them big time. To put words in our Prime Minister’s mouth: “How good are books?” But it’s necessary for book lovers – and I count myself in your shy but multitudinous throng – to take the long view occasionally and remember that books are in human DNA. Because we’re never allowed to relax, are we? Every time anything happens, a cultural shift or a technological advance, someone screams “BOOKS ARE DYING”, and we’re plunged into a cold bath of doom. It happened when hyperlinks were invented. When e-readers

were invented. In 1835 poet Théophile Gautier wrote that the novel was being killed by the newspaper. It was prophesied in 1927 that listening to radio would destroy our ability to read. The one thing we like more than books, it transpires, is a zero-sum game and panic. They always weather the storm, though, books, and as civilisation collapses, loons consolidate their power, and our wild areas shrink like chip packets in a hot oven, books have been doing rather well. When COVID hit, it was presumed, as per, that libraries, bookshops and publishing would suffer a catastrophic blow. But it’s books’ time to shine. Events have converged. Black Lives Matter coincided with lockdown and peeps hungry to learn – sales of titles about racism (such as White Fragility, Talking Up to the White Woman, Me and White Supremacy), have gone gangbusters. Sales of books by BIPOC writers, like Claire G Coleman’s Terra Nullius and Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, are up by as much as 600 per cent. A nation of parents have been homeschooling – and according to Neilsen Bookscan, children’s books have surged. Fiction is up. I’m not the only noob taking COVID as permission to buy the crap out of her local bookshop. And online sales have soared by 400 per cent. Libraries have pivoted to cement their position as a critical service, and emerged as intrepid community heroes. Yarra Plenty libraries rang every member over the age of 70 to check they were okay; others are holding story time on Zoom. Librarians are delivering books on skateboard, on bike and, notably in Kyneton in regional Victoria, on horseback. There is nothing more powerful than a cocktail of kindness, can-do and intelligence. So, isn’t this nice? Because so long as there are books, there’s hope. And there will always be books.

Fiona is a writer and comedian who bought the book.

16 OCT 2020

Thank You, Sumerians

Because so long as there are books, there’s hope. And there will always be books.

Fiona

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Music Melanie C

E MELANIE C: AT EAS WITH HERSELF

by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor @anast

PHOTO BY CONOR CLINCH

he most frustrating thing is not being able to perform to people,” laments Melanie C over Zoom. “Performing in your living room isn’t quite the same.” Surrounded by tasteful throw cushions, she’s reclining on a couch in her London home, while I’m in my cluttered makeshift office praying no-one from my household barges in to try and say hello to a Spice Girl. Mel C has spent the past week promoting her new album from her living room. Necessity being the mother of invention during a pandemic, it’s just one of many adjustments the Spice Girl has had to make for her eighth solo album. There have been live TV performances beamed from her “home studio”, countless virtual Q&As with fans and now an international promo “tour”, all undertaken with her three children doing their remote learning nearby. A forthcoming virtual concert will include a backstage tour, an afterparty DJ set by Mel C herself and a meet-and‑greet video call with the promise of a digital autograph. Sporty Spice remains unflappable in the wake of these new arrangements, cementing her reputation as the down-to-earth northern girl. So chatty and warm is she, you forget she’s a member of the biggest girl group of all time, who was busy performing to packed stadiums just last year. “[It] was one of the most incredible years of my life,” she declares of the much-hyped UK comeback tour, which included three mammoth nights at Wembley Stadium and caused a ticketing meltdown. “To get back on stage with The Spice Girls was incredible. The timing was so poignant; it feels like there’s a real nostalgia for the 90s. So many of our fans are now of an age where they want to look back to simpler times, when they were kids without the responsibilities.” A testament to her unwavering work ethic, three days after the final Spice Girls shows, Mel C flew to Brazil

I’m at this point where I’m really proud of myself. I actually like myself. I accept all of me, even the flaws. “I had flown to Sydney and started the promotional tour for the record. Even then, there were lots of people wearing masks and gloves and it started to feel a bit surreal,” she says. “All my work was fine, then my very last interview was cancelled because earlier that day somebody at the station had been diagnosed with COVID. I moved on to LA but by the time we got there it had shut down – it was like a ghost town. Very, very surreal. Then Trump announced he was closing the borders so I had to get home as quick as I could. I think everyone was a little bit shellshocked.” With the new album mostly complete, Mel C used her time back home to reflect on her career with The Spice Girls as well as her own place as a solo artist. It made sense for the album to be self-titled.

16 OCT 2020

Melanie C is a Spice Girl empowered. With her eighth solo album, she’s finally comfortable in her own skin.

Solo Spice

to preview her new album for fans at São Paolo’s Gay Pride Parade. A long-time LGBTIQ+ ally, she teamed up with performance act Sink the Pink – a queer collective responsible for some of the biggest club nights in London – to appear before a staggering three million people. “We performed on a float going down Paulista Avenue – the same loop Carnivale takes. The energy, the sights and the sounds…it was ridiculous. I had five drag queens as my security,” Mel C laughs. “I’ve decided, moving forward I only want drag queens as security! “[Sink the Pink] are a really positive environment for people to express themselves, whatever community you are part of. As a white heterosexual female, I feel very much at home. I’ve done pride shows as a solo artist but to work closely with members of the community was a true education. It made me understand the community a lot more. I’m very proud to be an ally.” A performance in New York’s Times Square for WorldPride followed. As did an appearance at Brisbane’s own Big Gay Day. That was in early March, a time she refers to as her “last taste of normality”. Things turned weird soon after.

PHOTOS BY GETTY

BACK IN THE DAY, 1997

“That felt very appropriate because I’d been on a voyage of self-discovery,” she says. “It came to a crescendo last year when I was on stage with The Spice Girls. We were really blown away with the realisation of the impact we’ve had on this generation of people. That made me feel really reflective. When I was in the studio [recording the new album], I realised I was writing a lot of songs about feeling empowered and finally feeling comfortable in my own skin. ‘Who I Am’ [the first single] is a perfect introduction to this album because it really is completely inspired by this. “I’m at this point where I’m really proud of myself. I actually like myself. I accept all of me, even the flaws. I’ve made peace with the difficulties I’ve had or the times that I have felt shame or sadness or regret.” Motherhood, she says, has also helped her reckon with these issues, which have included an eating

MELANIE C , THE ALBUM, IS OUT NOW.

16 OCT 2020

SPICE GIRLS IN PARIS, 1996 , WITHT MEL C ON THE LEF

disorder and battles with depression. Together with the rampant sexism Mel and her fellow Spice Girls encountered in the music industry, it’s provided much grist for her musical mill. “We [The Spice Girls] all wanted the same thing – to make music, to perform, to travel, to be famous. We didn’t think about much else. But when we were starting to speak to labels and getting our music together, we were told that girl bands don’t sell records; we couldn’t be on the front cover of the popular magazines because girls bought records by boys. This completely floored us… That’s when we started to talk about girl power. The five of us together were pretty formidable and we would not be told no.” Despite these new-found reserves of strength, however, Mel C is quick to admit that lockdown has had its challenges, especially when it comes to her mental health. The uncertainty of the pandemic has left her feeling flat. At times, without motivation. Yet she’s found plenty of comfort in her livestream chats with fans. “I was trying to be really honest [in the Q&As] because the incredible thing about this nightmare we’re living through is that we are all experiencing something really similar at the same time. Even though we’re isolated, it’s brought us closer together because we’re having this shared experience,” she says. “It gave me an opportunity, like everybody, to realise what I take for granted and to reprioritise. We don’t know what the future holds, but I like to think that coming out of [the pandemic] I can take away some positives. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with the kids as well…managing two 11-year-old girls and a 14-year‑old son while trying to manage their fears and feelings and needs and conflict has been hard.” The new album is an antidote of sorts to these challenging times. A joyous self-affirming affair filled with dance-floor bangers like ‘Blame It on Me’, with its deep house beat, and catchy disco tracks ‘In and Out of Love’ and ‘Overload’. It’s Mel C’s most assured solo album to date. A tour of Europe for 2021 has been – some might say optimistically – announced, to give fans the chance to celebrate the music as it should be, by dancing up a storm. While nothing much has come from Mel B’s cheeky announcement during The Spice Girls’ final Wembley show that the supergroup will tour Australia, there are hopes Mel C will visit our shores late next year. “I cherish my Australian memories. I just love it there,” she enthuses, leaning back on one of her throw cushions. “I love being there. I love working there. I love partying there. And I look forward to coming back. I’d love to do Mardi Gras!”

SPICE GIRLS REUNITE, SANS , POSH, DUBLIN 2019 WITH MEL C ON THE RIGHT

Jane Harper

PHOTO BY KATSNAP PHOTOGRAPHY

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Books

I always know the true ending, and work backwards in my planning phase to figure out the bestÂ place to start.

by Craig Buchanan @craigbuchananwa

Craig Buchanan is a freelance researcher and reviewer, based in Perth.

ane Harper has taken her readers to some of Australia’s most evocative landscapes, from drought-stricken rural Victoria in The Dry, to the cattle stations of outback Queensland in The Lost Man. Now, her fourth novel, The Survivors, leaves the heat behind in favour of the harsh and unforgiving coastline of Tasmania. “Tasmania was somewhere I was really drawn to,” says Harper, who was impelled to write her latest book while on a road trip around the island state with a friend a few years ago. “I was blown away by how beautiful it is. I was really drawn to the coastal setting, partly because of the community I wanted to write about. I had in mind a small community with an ebb and flow throughout the year, where the tourists come and go, but there’s a core group of locals who are always there. The Tasmanian coastline is dotted with those sorts of communities, and the landscape was so beautiful that I decided there and then, went home and developed the plot, and then went back again on a research visit to really try to get that genuine, recognisable feel to the landscape.” Like each of Harper’s previous novels, The Survivors is packed with twists and turns, as new parents Kieran and Mia return from the mainland and big city life to confront demons of their small-town past, while Kieran unpacks residual guilt from a reckless adolescent mistake. They’re back in Evelyn Bay for just one night when a body is found at the beach, and the town’s secrets and tensions start to surface amid layers of intrigue that keep the reader guessing – and guessing again. “I spend a really long time planning the red herrings,” Harper says of her writing process. “I always know the

THE SURVIVORS IS OUT NOW.

16 OCT 2020

Bestselling crime novelist Jane Harper continues her winning ways, this time moving the mystery to a small coastal town in Tasmania.

Harper in the South

true ending, and work backwards in my planning phase to figure out the best place to start, so I can bring the reader to the point I’ve had in mind all along. Beneath that though, I’m thinking really hard about how many layers I can put in to obscure the truth. By the closing pages, I want the truth to feel authentic and believable. I think my ideal is that, when people reach the end, it not only feels satisfying, but they can look back and see the signposts that they might have missed, or misinterpreted the first time around.” In Harper’s proven style – which has seen her make The New York Times bestseller list – she not only brings the Australian landscape to life, she also understands the way it defines those who live here. “A lot of the Australian and Tasmanian elements of the book are brought out in the kinds of characters you might expect to find in a rural town, their upbringing there, and the relationships they have. Add the pull towards the mainland for some of them, balanced against the work opportunities they have if they stay, and you have the basis for what I hope is an authentic setting that celebrates the landscape in which it sits,” she says. The strong thread of homecoming that runs through The Survivors (as it did in The Dry) resonates with the Manchester-born author, who spent part of her childhood in Melbourne before returning to the UK at 14 – later returning to Australia as a newspaper journalist. “I’ve called a few places home… I guess you could say I’ve had a foot in both camps. As a result, I’ve always been aware of that feeling when you do return to somewhere after a long time away, how things are at once familiar, yet also changed, and how you are too. That’s always been quite interesting to me,” she says. “From a purely writing point of view, I like that a character has a background already established and in place, and can lead the reader with some inside knowledge, while at the same time as an outsider [they can] see things with fresh eyes.” The Survivors isn’t Harper’s only impending release; the big screen adaptation of The Dry is also due out in April, with Eric Bana set to play detective Aaron Falk. “The film was due to come out in late August this year, but that’s obviously been postponed due to the pandemic. But it’s ready to go once cinemas are back up and running at full capacity again. I was lucky enough to be involved in the filming, which was really exciting. I got to be an extra in the funeral scene, which was fun. I play a grieving townsperson – you have to look pretty closely and pretty fast to see me, but I’m there!” she laughs. “I saw the finished film earlier this year, and it’s really superb. They’ve done a beautiful job with it. It’s a clever, thoughtful adaptation, that I feel really captures the spirit of the characters from the books. Readers are going to love it, and hopefully the wait won’t be too long.”

Chances are you know Clancy Brown as the quintessential bad guy – the Highlander warrior, The Shawshank Redemption prison guard – so you might be surprised to hear that he’s actually really very nice, thank you. by Aimee Knight @siraimeeknight

Aimee Knight is The Big Issue’s Small Screens Editor, and co-host of the podcast Critical Mess.

lancy Brown seems uncomfortable with compliments. In fact, he doesn’t seem keen to talk about himself at all. And he’s not being combative or petulant – far from it. The actor with almost 300 credits to his name takes every question as a chance to praise a colleague, to platform someone working behind the scenes, or to ask me plainly what I think. Is this deference inherited from his father and grandfather, both of whom were politicians? Perhaps it’s run-of-the-mill Hollywood schmooze, refined over several decades in the biz. Either way, earnest reserve is not what I expected from the 191cm bloke best known for playing villains and creepos. Life is full of surprises. From his break-out role as Highlander’s immortal warrior The Kurgan (1986) to his persuasive preacher Brother Justin Crowe on HBO’s Carnivàle (2003-05), imposing baddies are Brown’s speciality. Landing just in time for Halloween, he stars as morbid mortician Montgomery Dark in the horror anthology film The Mortuary Collection, now streaming on spooktacular VOD service Shudder. When Brown asks me if I’ve seen the “silly” film, I ask him why he thinks it’s silly. “Oh, because it’s so much fun,” he says. “It’s all tongue-in-cheek. It’s not real. It’s not heavy. It’s just a good time. A good yarn, you know?” In the vein of Creepshow (1982) and Tales from the Crypt (in its many incarnations), The Mortuary Collection features a slew of stories detailing the horrid history of Raven’s End, Smalltown USA. Stuffed with Lovecraftian monsters and Cronenbergian body horror, the shorts splinter off a narrative spine that playfully pits Montgomery against mysterious Sam (Caitlin Custer, Teen Wolf), a young woman with her heart set on

inheriting the undertaker’s ghoulish gig. It’s directed by horror buff Ryan Spindell, who Brown predicts will be the next JJ Abrams or Steven Spielberg. “I’m very glad I met him ’cause I think he’s a super talent,” says Brown of the director with “stories coming out of his ears”. Despite this being the director’s first feature (and Brown’s 59th), the actor says Spindell was not inexperienced. Having already directed nine short films, he knew his way around the set, surrounding himself with an enthusiastic crew. Brown name-checks the cinematographer and production design team, taking pains to commend Mo Meinhart, the special effects artist in charge of his make-up and prosthetics. She helped transform the fit 61-year-old into a wizened old codger, straight outta Salem. Over the phone from Brown’s LA home, the click‑clacking of a keyboard suggests he’s on the internet. He wants to find the exact name of the effects house responsible for his make-up designs. To his understandable chagrin, Meinhart’s credit isn’t appearing on IMDb. I promise to check it against the credits in the film itself. “Yeah, you make sure that Mo’s in there,” says Brown, fatherly. He spells out Mo’s name. “She was a champion. She was one of the heroes of that show,” he says. “I’ve got to pound the table about that.” What draws Brown to roles like Montgomery Dark, or Sergeant Zim in Starship Troopers (1997), or US Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat on Billions? All these titan antagonists: authoritative, intimidating, intense. “I get to hide behind the make-up and be a little over the top, and that’s kind of fun,” says Brown. He thinks the real question is: why do people cast him? “Why do people trust me to do stuff like that? Why aren’t I just playing the same character over and over, some prison guard or something?” This is an oblique reference to his most iconic role, the brutal Captain Byron Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). “I don’t know why people cast me,” he says. “It always baffles me why I work. I have no idea, no idea.” But work he does. So much. In addition to his live-action roles, Brown has carved a robust career in voice acting for animated series and video games. His mighty pipes have breathed evil into Lex Luthor, Hades, a Mandalorian bounty hunter and myriad other ne’er-do-wells, though the role that gives his vocal cords a real workout is salty old Mr Krabs on SpongeBob SquarePants. That said, Brown doesn’t go overboard looking after his voice, nor does he think it’s that unique. “It’s the same voice my dad has, the same voice my brother has, so it’s never felt distinctive,” he explains. “It’s felt very familiar – too familiar.”

PHOTO BY GETTY

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Small Screens

Clancy Brown

The Nice Bad Guy

THE MORTUARY COLLECTION IS STREAMING ON SHUDDER.

16 OCT 2020

BE NO THERE WILL REATING TRICK- OR-TCY THIS AN FOR CL HALLOWEEN

Brown grew up in Urbana, Ohio and Washington, DC, where his father – like his father before him – was a member of Congress. While his brother Roy went into the family newspaper business, young Clarence John Brown III developed a taste for Saturday matinees and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. A fan of Japanese kaiju movies and England’s Hammer Horror films, he recounts for me the plot of Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) with gusto. We get to talking about ghosts, possession, Hereditary and Midsommar, the pros and cons of conducting a seance versus snooping through a haunted house. ’Tis the season, after all. “That’s what scares me,” he says, contemplating how far I might go to see a ghost. “You would go down that path just to have the experience, saying, ‘I’ll just go a little bit further,’ and you would doom yourself. “There’s a point of no return,” he warns. “Just be careful.” I ask Brown what the horror genre offers audiences, not just at Halloween but all year round – particularly in this cultural climate. Does it provide a catharsis that real life can’t muster? Can we still learn a thing or two from its cautionary tales? “I’ve been around since Nixon,” he says, “and I don’t know anybody ever learns anything. “I think The Mortuary Collection has a theme through it where you get what you deserve. If you boff without protection, you could get in trouble. If you put your nose where it doesn’t belong, you could get eaten by a Lovecraftian monster. If you transgress, there’ll be a price to pay.” In the US, penance for the unchecked pandemic means trick-or-treating is nixed this year. “I don’t think anybody’s going to any strangers’ houses, asking for handouts,” says Brown. “That shit is scary.” He asks how Australia is handling COVID-19; whether it’s flood or fire season here. On the topic of ecological horror, we set each other some Halloween homework. Brown will watch The Dark Crystal (1982) and I’ll revisit The Shape of Water (2017), which he considers a sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). But it’s dinner time in LA, and Brown’s friend needs to teach him a few lines in Russian. I say, “I’ll leave that with you,” and he chuckles, “Thanks so much!” Again, he says, “Be careful!” A few days later, when I write this up, I check to see whether Mo Meinhart’s credit has been added to IMDb. There she is, “Key Special Effects Make-up”. Call them “tricks”, call them “treats” – life is full of surprises.

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

s we in Melbourne dig into the bajillionth week of lockdown, I’ve found myself hankering for the giddy movie magic that sweeps you into another reality. There’s the Catherine Deneuve-powered, pastel-hued musicals of French director Jacques Demy, like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) – truly celestial experiences (streaming at Stan). Or the aspirational fantasies of Nancy Meyers, from the Meryl Streep vehicle It’s Complicated (2009) to Robert De Niro as a sweet widower in The Intern (2015) – available at Netflix. Meanwhile, Apple+ is hosting On the Rocks, Sofia Coppola’s delightfully silly newbie, which sees the Lost in Translation director team up again with Bill Murray. He plays Felix, the rascally father to Rashida Jones’ troubled Laura. Coppola’s films have always inhabited an elite bubble, and here again privilege comes under scrutiny with a deliciously light touch. When Laura suspects her husband is cheating on her, Felix – an old-world womaniser with his own dubious history – steps in to play detective, sending the duo on a martini-fuelled dash through a world of romantically lit, pre-pandemic New York hotels and cosy bars. The film’s hidden depths, playing to Murray’s suave persona, and to Coppola’s relationship with her own uber-famous dad, make this caper more poignant than it might first appear. An old-fashioned comic mystery firmly rooted in the present, On the Rocks goes down smooth. ABB

SHAKEN

BABY DONE 

“Bundle of joy” describes both babies and Baby Done, a comedy blending cringe with commentary on late-onset maturity. It’s inspired by Kiwi director Curtis Vowell and writer Sophie Henderson’s experiences of pregnancy, which imbue a story that could’ve reverted to cliché – FOMO, a bucket list, a threesome – with authenticity. Indeed, the film’s greatest concern isn’t the surprise that kickstarts it, but the fear that parenthood – and adulthood generally – is a one-way ticket to boring town. For Zoe (Rose Matafeo), the solution is simple: foolhardy denial. This puts overly supportive Tim (Matthew Lewis) in a bind; he’s slowly drawn to the idea of settling down. Their dynamic drives the film, which itself collides the dread of life-changing responsibility with the levity of avoidance, an approach that at times trivialises the stakes facing our parents-to-be. Even so, Baby Done charms with its message that – as with our protagonists’ hobby, tree-climbing – one just needs courage, and to see the forest for the trees. ADOLFO ARANJUEZ THE LEADERSHIP

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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This Aussie doco follows the inaugural Homeward Bound expedition, a 20-day Antarctic voyage and leadership course created specifically for female scientists. Director Ili Baré covers a lot of ground: the film navigates topics from climate change to institutional sexism to conflicts within the expedition itself. It’s in these on-board disagreements that the film finds its footing, exploring an interesting tension between corporate conceptions of leadership focused on the individual, and forms of activism focused on the collective. Indeed, while the program’s formidable founder Fabian Dattner often takes centre stage, it is the scientists themselves who shine – demonstrating a deep passion for their respective fields, while sharing personal, sometimes heartbreaking stories of the challenges they’ve faced in a male-dominated industry. The sublime yet fragile landscape provides a fitting backdrop for their stories, reinforcing the need for greater equality in STEMM fields. The unfolding climate emergency will require all hands on deck. ANNIKA MORLING

CORPUS CHRISTI 

One of the first things you see in director Jan Komasa’s Oscar-nominated film is the gaunt, skeletal face of Bartosz Bielenia: the Polish actor’s guarded and disquieting body language elevates every scene of this often hacky crime drama. Bielenia plays Daniel, a young man whose criminal record precludes him from achieving his dream of joining the seminary – at least by official means. An impulsive lie early in the film leads Daniel to become a small-town priest and starts the ticking clock that is any con job. In many ways, this is an old story of assumed identity, and the priest angle isn’t even that novel (Whoopi Goldberg’s adorable video-store standby Sister Act is just one example). Despite its many clichés and easy moral conundrums, Corpus Christi is genuinely worth watching for Bielenia’s performance. His feline presence suggests a queasier moral awakening than the one the surrounding film tries to neatly impose upon his character – can the rules of redemption be defined so easily? KAI PERRIGNON

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD  | VOD

TIME

AUSTRALIA COME FLY WITH ME

 | PRIME VIDEO

 | SBS + SBS ON DEMAND

Weaving intimate home video diaries and present-day observational footage across 21 years, Time captures the precious moments of Fox Rich and her family as they fight for the release of her husband, sentenced to 60 years’ jail for armed robbery. A document of resilience shaped by the effects of memory and time, the film is seen through Fox’s eyes as she matures from a young mother into a businesswoman and activist, while raising her sons, who grow up to be equally strong and passionate individuals. Her undeniable presence and charm are not without pain and weariness: battling the racial inequality of the US prisonindustrial complex takes its toll. Director Garrett Bradley (Below Dreams) expertly crafts a timeless film through a classically black-and-white aesthetic and lyrical piano score, grounded by voices of the Rich family themselves. A subject that could easily feel overly sentimental is, instead, deservedly emotional. The family’s testament of perseverance through time only brings love, acceptance and hope. ALLISON CHHORN

This year, Australia marks a century of civil aviation, and host Justine Clarke guides us through this history with a delightful warmth and curiosity. Though the highs and lows of Australian aviation may sound like a dry subject, Clarke’s inviting presence encourages us to share her interest – and viewers are rewarded with a surprisingly fascinating journey. Featuring interviews with a range of pilots, stewards and flight attendants, the documentary offers an inside look at this mysterious, formerly glamourised workplace. But rather than functioning as a glorified airline advertisement, Australia Come Fly With Me covers the good, the bad and the ugly of our time in the sky. Across its three-episode run, the series reveals a range of complicated histories within the industry – touching on everything from racism, sexism and homophobia to terrorism and war – but balances these negatives with an equal dose of adoration for the thrills, innovation and adventure that flying has brought us. A hundred years on, humans’ fixation with flight remains undeniable. IVANA BREHAS

psychiatrist father asks his filmmaker daughter why she prefers the documentary discipline to Hollywood blockbusters, where the big bucks are. She says that real life is far more interesting, and – having made it this far into an experimental doco in which director Kirsten Johnson keeps staging her dad’s death in ever more creative ways – I must agree. Since we’re in the midst of spooky season, I should clarify that Dick Johnson Is Dead (now on Netflix) is not a horror film. Rather, it’s a mesmeric memory-book about love, loss and (im)mortality, filmed over several years as the titular Dick – also known as Richard – retires from his practice, moves in with Kirsten, and incrementally loses himself to dementia. The film was apparently inspired by an image of Richard in a coffin, which came to Kirsten in a dream. The follow-up to her 2016 collage memoir Cameraperson (DocPlay), Dick Johnson… takes a more conventional narrative approach but retains her fluid, free-associative visuals. And, sure, there are Freudian implications wrought by a daughter killing her psychoanalyst father in surprisingly violent ways, even in (especially in) the name of “art”. But the affable dad is up for anything his daughter pitches, as they try to bat away the hand of fate. Growing up, the Johnsons were Seventh‑day Adventists who abstained from film and television. While the story touches on the role religion plays in our attitudes towards morality and mortality, now, as adult Kirsten sees it, cinema has the edge on wish-fulfilment. AK

16 OCT 2020

GOODALL

DICK JOHNSON IS LEI TO REST MANY TIMES OVER

Armando Iannucci, creator of bitter black comedies like The Death of Stalin (2017) and In the Loop (2009), has produced a film surprisingly heartfelt in comparison – but no less hilarious. His unlikely source material is Charles Dickens’ coming-of-age novel about David Copperfield (Dev Patel), a brilliant young man trying to make it in 1800s England, beset by misfortune and the cruelty of others. Unlike Iannucci’s usually monstrous protagonists, David is thoroughly likeable. You desperately want him to succeed. This is partly thanks to the vibrant and utterly charming performance of Patel, who makes the Dickens hero his own. The ensemble cast is stuffed with impeccable comic actors – Tilda Swinton and Peter Capaldi are standouts. The film’s only flaw is that it suffers from what plagues many adaptations: with 600 pages’ worth of plot crammed into two hours, some of the action feels breathlessly rushed. Despite this, David’s struggle is genuinely poignant and, as usual with Iannucci’s work, you’ll laugh until your face hurts. ZOË ALMEIDA

Music Reviews

Isabella Trimboli Music Editor

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

hat a privilege to be taking over from Sarah Smith as The Big Issue’s new Music Editor. I hope I can steer you towards exciting music in this peculiar and perilous present. As we approach summer, the absence of live music feels more pronounced. This void has left me in a state of lamentation: what I wouldn’t do to be in one of those dark, dank venues, surrounded by sweaty bodies, accidentally spilling beer on myself. But Marie Davidson is here to pierce my rosy nostalgia. Over the past six years, the French-Canadian electronic musician and producer has become known for her cutting critique of the club scene, delivered in the form of sharp-tongued spoken word and pulsating industrial beats. Her album Adieux au Dancefloor (2016) rendered the club as a vacuous cesspit. Her Polaris Prize-nominated follow-up Working Class Woman (2018), was a bleakly comic chronicle of working yourself to the bone. Last year, she announced her retirement from the dance music circuit. Instead she wanted to write “chansons”. The result is Marie Davidson & L’Œil Nu’s Renegade Breakdown, made with longtime collaborators Pierre Guerineau and Asaël Robitaille. A move towards pop, Davidson’s disaffected vocals are paired with soft rock skeeze, brooding lounge music, disco, funk and, yes, plenty of syrupy chansons. But she doesn’t stray too far from her signature savagery. “There are no money makers on this record/This time I’m exploring the loser’s point of view” she deadpans on the album’s doomy and dramatic opener. Failure never sounded so good. IT

DS ON IS MA RI E DAVIR CH AN SO NS TA KI NG HE

@itrimboli

SERPENTINE PRISON MATT BERNINGER 

After leading Brooklyn indie rock fixtures The National for two decades, Matt Berninger has finally stepped out with a solo debut. If his downy baritone and famously oblique lyrics weren’t drawcards enough, he has enlisted top-shelf backing players and has found a dream producer in Booker T Jones. Intimate as these arrangements are, they initially sound a bit plain compared to The National’s bravura textures and rich rhythm section. But Berninger’s presence is undeniable. His wordplay may be simpler than usual, but he inhabits the purgatory of lonesome romancing with devotion. In fact, songs like ‘Collar of Your Shirt’ and ‘Oh Dearie’ practically reimagine him as an armchair crooner. This soothing uniformity is happily punctuated by ‘Silver Springs’, a duet with solo artist and former David Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey (who appeared on the last National album), and the closing title track. With its mellow mantra of vague anxieties (“Total frustration, deterioration/ nationalism, another moon mission”), the song fully taps into the rumpled, late-night brooding that Berninger does best. DOUG WALLEN

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The band name Friendships is something of a misnomer – abrasive, industrial electronica doesn’t exactly scream friends. But with their second album, FISHTANK, the Melbourne duo – visual artist Misha Grace and composer Nic Brown – lean on each other in a cold environment of their own personal horrors (health issues, loss, isolation). Sometimes it’s hard to keep up. FISHTANK’s 11 tracks swing between overbearing metallic beats and eerie ambience, complete with piano riffs à la Resident Evil films and ASMR whispers. Traumas are submerged in the excess, but poke through, inviting repeat listens. But Friendships also make fun of their own indulgences, as amusingly odd samples pepper FISHTANK. The song ‘Smokers Area 19’ is the standout, where Brown asks an imagined crowd for the “yewing” calls usually reserved for schoolies parties. It shouldn’t work, but it does. With FISHTANK, Friendships thrash through overwhelming feelings and find peace in tiring each other out – before starting all over again. JARED RICHARDS

Members of Melbourne bands Tropical Fuck Storm, Mod Con, Super Wild Horses, High Tension and more unite for this sprawling lo-fi demo, recorded on an iPhone over the course of one night during the city’s first lockdown in April. They’ve been self-deprecating about the whole thing – an accompanying description on Bandcamp explains that their “greatest fans” describe it as “mostly unlistenable”. Nevertheless, there’s something thrilling about this scrappy, rollicking collection, which meditates on the boredom and frustration of iso life while rich in sonic experimentation. The shared musical backgrounds make for some abstract post-punk gems throughout, in particular the rhythmic and heaving ‘Karma Suture’. The fact that it’s just meant to be a bit of fun means that, well, it is fun – the tape captures the energy and galvanism that emerges out of spontaneous creation. It’s unclear whether these recordings will turn into something more substantial once restrictions have eased, but here’s hoping. ALEX GALLAGHER

Book Reviews

Thuy On Books Editor @thuy_on

CADAVER DOG LUKE BEST

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This memoir is a source of encouragement to misfits and underdogs, an instruction manual (and warning) for aspiring chefs, an apology to the victims of David Chang’s misdeeds, a chance for him to set the record straight, an ode to food and an angry love letter to life. A charming and self-aware storyteller, Chang does not mince his words. The book dives head-first into mental illness, toxic religion and family dysfunction, before taking off on a journey pulsing with unbridled ambition, passion and rage. With its conversational tone, Eat a Peach is a fast-paced, easy read. What it lacks in imaginative prose, it recompenses through Chang’s refreshing transparency and humour. Like his Momofuku brand itself, this book simultaneously gives the finger to the dining establishment and its inherent hierarchies, while emanating a deep respect for its stalwarts and present-day pioneers. Its unifying message: “We humans are more alike in our tastes than we think.” On that note, it’s not hard to imagine that most people would enjoy this book. RUHI LEE

Luke Best’s debut is a short verse novel that won the 2019 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and it’s well deserved. Based on the 2011 Queensland floods in which 33 people lost their lives, the book focuses on an unnamed woman who’s alone, at home, marooned as the storm rages around her, “thunder spouting off like a brag”. Best’s pacing is superbly controlled. As his tale unspools with ever increasing dread, the suspense is taut. Where are the woman’s husband and children in this grim picture? We worry for her state of mind, and her eventual meeting with the cadaver dog, whose job is to search for missing people, is electrifying. The story goes back to explore “drier times” as well as the sodden present. Best’s poetic wrangling is precise and impressive: “The yard filled like a theatre – congregation of dirty water. The show would begin: uprising and orchestral.” It’s evocative staging indeed.

SHOW ME WHERE IT HURTS KYLIE MASLEN 

Kylie Maslen’s debut essay collection is a reckoning between complex bodies and the systems that fail them. Her narrative invites understanding – a stark contrast to the medical and technical jargon used to dismiss and exclude disabled people and their experiences. Maslen finds a language of the body and its pain in art – memes, tattoos, sitcoms and song lyrics – that current social, economic and medical systems are unable (or unwilling) to provide. Show Me Where It Hurts exposes the way bodies are made to feel small, their hurts amplified by frameworks and individuals too rigid to accommodate and understand them – “what hurts the most: being told this pain is a lie”. Her own experience coupled with her breadth of knowledge allows her to speak as comfortably about cartoons as aged care and the economy. She is generous in her reflections on the art and activists who have informed her thinking, and her own writing will no doubt become an integral part of this constellation of work in the future. BEC KAVANAGH

THUY ON

EAT A PEACH DAVID CHANG

16 OCT 2020

pring is here and hopefully (with the loosening of restrictions for those of us in extended lockdown) we’ll be able to partake in some more of the great outdoors. There’s some new releases about the natural world, including Wild Nature by historian and philosopher John Blay, who goes bush in his book, exploring Australia’s southeast forests from Canberra to Wilsons Promontory, and muses on a number of topics along the way, like the importance of harmony between forest and civilisation. Then there’s the intriguing Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake. Among the fascinating facts within: there are at least two million types of fungi, and they can be found in all manner of organisms, below soil, in air, water and rock. And just because we’re in the middle of a pandemic, it doesn’t mean environmental issues have gone away. Tim Flannery’s latest effort, The Climate Cure, of which the optimistic subtitle is “Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of COVID-19” seeks to offer a roadmap for effective government policies. TO

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

One: the number of people in my local park yesterday walking around with a table-tennis paddle out in front of their face, methodically hitting a ball back and forth against their forehead, due to the ball being attached to a headband via elastic. This one bloke was, in other words, bouncing the ball against his own head as he paced through the park. That individual humans make these kinds of choices every day and surprise each other with such things (“Did you see that guy?” could be heard across the park) is an under-appreciated feature of humanity that is, frankly, not reported enough in national news bulletins. Five or six: the number of peas you’re likely to find in a pod. Peas in a pod are so completely adorable, so ordered and pretty, so symmetrical and identical that they have become a synonym. Like peas in a pod. But look at those little guys! All lined up like that! Amazing. Twenty-three and 69: no this isn’t a maths question, it’s the two ages at which people report to be the happiest. Generally speaking, 70 and beyond are the years people report being the most content. This isn’t a rule, by the way. It’s possible to buck the trend and start early. Seven: the number of ludicrously fluffy ducklings that had to be fished out of a pond in the local park by a burly bloke in a hi-vis vest on the weekend using a rake with a bucket on the end of it. “They go a little bit hard,” he said casually when interviewed about this by an eight-year‑old of my acquaintance. “Sometimes I have to bail them out. Mum Duck gets very cross with me if I don’t.” So that bloke exists, which is excellent, and means we have some real-life maths: one (bloke) plus seven (ludicrously fluffy ducks) = quite lovely really, let’s be honest.

Four: the age of the child who lives down the street and who calls her favourite dessert “sticky-tape pudding”. (Shout out to Mae, whose work in this area has done much to recommend it, and whose dates are always sticky.) Two to three: the number of hours that can elapse when you “just read one more chapter”. Infinity: the quantity of clouds, whirring past you overhead, constantly shifting. No matter what you’re doing, or saying, or thinking, or what you’re dealing with. All the way up there, clouds canter by. Zero: the number of mistakes you’ve made in your future. You’re going to make some, but you haven’t yet, so it’s a clean slate. Sometimes I look back on the things I’ve done and I think: Who lets me out of the house? Why do I allow myself to wander about optimistically as though I’m not about to completely mortify myself by saying something utterly horrifying? The reason is: the future hasn’t happened yet. You can be a new you. Learn from your mistakes. How convenient, that time organises itself like this. How wonderful to be able to put it all behind you and head into the future with no idea. There are numbers all around us, not one of them newsworthy, but they make up all the little stories taking place around us while we’re paying attention to the important numbers. Public Service Announcement: there are, in this life, some very unimportant numbers and sometimes it’s okay to pay attention to those. To forget, for a moment, the numbers that wake us up each morning and send us slinking off to bed. I was recently talking to a childhood friend about the age we both were when we feel (retrospectively) we first became the versions of ourselves we are now. We were a couple of years shy of each other, but it felt like an important number. Like a coming‑of‑age moment. Much more important to celebrate than an 18th birthday or a 21st. We’ve decided to celebrate our “us” anniversaries. There are little uncelebrated numbers all around you. Give them some love.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The second season of her radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

e’re obsessed with numbers. Every day they announce a list of numbers we all think we’re experts in. The news is built around them: the temperature, the COVID numbers, stock reports, the deficit, median house prices, the sports results. No use litigating how important these numbers are. They’re important. Fine. But we do tend to be obsessed with them – don’t we? – and forgetful about the other ones. Public Service Announcement: here is the news, featuring some Very Important Numbers.

16 OCT 2020

You Do the Numbers

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

PORTRAIT BY MARIA MIDOES, FOOD PHOTO BY HETTY MCKINNON

Tastes Like Home Hetty McKinnon

Egg, Pea and Ginger Fried Rice Ingredients

Method Season the egg with a good pinch of sea salt. In a hot wok or large frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of oil for just a few seconds, then pour in the beaten egg. Cook over medium-high heat for 10-15 seconds, allowing the bottom to set slightly, then turn the egg with a stainless-steel spatula until just set. Break up the egg slightly, then remove from the wok or pan and set aside. Heat another big drizzle of oil in the wok or pan, add the ginger and fry for 20 seconds to flavour the pan. Add the rice, breaking it up with the spatula, and fry for about 2 minutes. Next, add the tamari or soy sauce, peas and a few big pinches of sea salt and toss well. Continue to stir-fry for 4-5 minutes until the peas are cooked, then add the egg and mix well. Cook for another minute or so until everything is heated through. Add a few turns of white pepper. Taste and season with a little more salt if needed. Take the pan off the heat and stir through the sliced shallots. Serve immediately.

grew up in a very traditional Cantonese household and food was the tether that kept my mother, an immigrant from Guangdong province in China, connected to her homeland. I woke up every morning to the aroma of food wafting from the kitchen – my mother started every day with conviction, determined to serve up a nurturing savoury breakfast to her three children before school. Some of our favourite breakfast dishes were soy sauce noodles, macaroni soup, char siu (barbecue roast pork) and scallion cheese toasties, pan-fried rice noodle rolls and my favourite, fried rice. As a Chinese kid growing up in suburban Sydney, my mother’s fried rice was a source of pride. While I would never have admitted to my friends that my nightly dinner included Cantonese classics such as pig’s intestines soup, black bean tripe or steamed “porkcake”, I was always happy to share my mother’s fried rice. It was the dish I always requested my mother make for my primary school’s annual Carnivale, a day dedicated to appreciating food from other cultures. My mother’s fried rice was always well-liked, not as popular as the lamingtons or toffee, but it was not spurned and for me, that was a win. Once a year, on Carnivale day, with an ice-cream tub full of my mother’s fried rice in hand, I felt seen, accepted. Fried rice is a humble dish but it affords me immeasurable comfort. While I was at university, my mother’s ginger fried rice was the perfect remedy for a hangover. It was also the first dish I ate after childbirth. My mother made a range of simple fried rice dishes, always with eggs, often with peas and sometimes using frozen “mixed vegetables” (the frozen packets with carrots, corn and peas). This recipe, from my new book To Asia, With Love, combines all the elements that I love best in fried rice – eggs, which I consider a fried rice essential, along with humble frozen peas and ginger, for a kick. While it can be enjoyed at any time of the day, fried rice will always be my ultimate breakfast dish, and a great reason to have leftover rice in the fridge. TO ASIA, WITH LOVE BY HETTY MCKINNON IS OUT NOW.

16 OCT 2020

4 large eggs, beaten vegetable oil or other neutral oil 2.5cm piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped 740g (4 cups) cooked brown or white rice (or a combination), preferably chilled in the fridge overnight 1 tablespoon tamari or gluten-free soy sauce 310g (2 cups) frozen peas 2 shallots, finely sliced sea salt and white pepper

Hetty says…

Serves 4

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45

By Lingo! by Lauren Gawne lingthusiasm.com RED

CLUES 5 letters Huge person Middleman Occupy the throne Shade of colour Start, commence 6 letters Coat hook Eye membrane Joshing talk Red gemstone Win back 7 letters Domestic warmth Gatecrash (2 words) Judicial trial Rollers cover Very hard rock 8 letters Cheer up

B H T

N E

A R G

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

1 5 3

2 5 7 1 3 4 2 1

6 3 8 2 3 6 1 8 6 5 2

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 7 Beard 8 Heatwaves 10 Seance 11 Travesty

12 Magnolia 13 Hand 15 Already 17 Advance 20 Duel 22 Gradient 25 Festival 26 Swarms 27 Tenderise 28 Blasé

DOWN 1 Generally 2 Ordnance 3 Central 4 Attached 5 Tavern 6 Keats 9 Cell 14 Economist 16 Delivers 18 Amicable 19 Ageless 21 Untidy 23 Also 24 Seven

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 27 2 Their skin 3 70 4 20 5 Elton John 6 Uniform Resource Locator 7 Brazil 8 A Rough Collie 9 Ag 10 Miami Heat and LA Lakers 11 30ml 12 The Canterbury Tales 13 False, they cannot survive in fresh water 14 One (Sandra Day O’Connor) 15 Yes 16 10 per cent 17 Schitt’s Creek 18 Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany 19 The Tour de France 20 Australia

16 OCT 2020

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

Word Builder

Colours can be easy to identify, but hard to explain. We all know what red is when we see it, but how to describe and define it? We might point to things like a ripe strawberry or a sparkling ruby. We have a narrower idea of what constitutes red than earlier speakers of English, who included shades of what we now think of as purple, pink and orange as red. This is why we use the word redhead for people with hair that we might otherwise think of as orange. English didn’t have the word orange until the 1550s. Red is one of a small number of words we can reliably trace back as far as human language will allow.

Crossword

by Chris Black

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

Quick Clues ACROSS

8 9

13 14

7 Facial hair (5) 8 Extreme weather (9) 10 Meeting with the dead (6) 11 Sham (8) 12 Large flowering plant (8) 13 Full house, eg (4) 15 By now (7) 17 Proceed (7) 20 Face-off (4) 22 Incline (8) 25 Carnival (8) 26 Groups of bees (6) 27 Soften (9) 28 Indifferent to (5) DOWN

19 22

24 25

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

DOWN

7 Poet took pill for growth (5) 8 Save wheat damaged by natural disasters (9) 10 Seneca translated spirited discussion? (6) 11 Try adopting a garment for burlesque (8) 12 Lion ran amok during MAGA film (8) 13 Full House had new opening for remake? (4) 15 A concerning lady appeared outside before (7) 17 Vacuous leader interrupts a ball for progress (7) 20 Fight outstanding beginner (4) 22 Treading slippery slope (8) 25 Styles left visa in Glastonbury? (8) 26 Text about conflict and floods (6) 27 I resented new cooking instruction (9) 28 Unimpressed with Pascal losing one (5)

1 Customarily Kelly Rowland’s first partner (9) 2 Dance with Ron, swaying arms (8) 3 Fundamental Christian finally caught by

criminal cartel (7)

4 Cat hated being groomed and bolted (8) 5 Servants peeled bananas in pub (6) 6 Poet might parrot another? (5) 9 Excellent coverage for phone in the Rockies (4) 14 Perhaps Hayek remade one sitcom (9) 16 Hand out slivered nuts (8) 18 Friendly guy’s existential question? (8) 19 Unaffected by time, Eagles played first song (7) 21 Casual nudity is out of order (6) 23 Further members of Royal Society (4) 24 Figure seen in convenience store with

Stranger Things character? (5)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

3 6 7 1 8 2 5 4 9

2 8 1 9 4 5 7 3 6

9 4 5 6 3 7 1 8 2

5 1 2 8 9 6 3 7 4

8 9 4 5 7 3 2 6 1

7 3 6 4 2 1 9 5 8

4 2 3 7 6 9 8 1 5

1 7 8 2 5 4 6 9 3

6 5 9 3 1 8 4 2 7

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Giant Agent Reign Tinge Begin 6 Hanger Retina Banter Garnet Regain 7 Heating Barge in Hearing Hairnet Granite 8 Brighten 9 Breathing

16 OCT 2020

1 In the main (9) 2 Artillery (8) 3 Core (7) 4 Joined (8) 5 Alehouse (6) 6 Romantic poet (5) 9 Building block of life (4) 14 Scholar of wealth (9) 16 Conveys (8) 18 Friendly (8) 19 Eternal (7) 21 Messy (6) 23 In addition (4) 24 Australian network (5)

Click 1969

Jimi Hendrix

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

hen Jimi Hendrix sat in a Toronto courtroom in December 1969, he had reason to worry – he was facing the possibility of 20 years’ jail. He was charged with possession of drugs, namely heroin and hashish. Three packets of heroin were found in a bottle, and traces of hashish in an aluminium tube, in his bag upon arrival at Toronto airport on 3 May that year. Hendrix and co had flown in from Detroit, where they had performed the night before. Bandmates Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell were to write years later that they had been warned that a drug bust was imminent, and to be sure not to have any drugs about when landing in Canada. They believed the drugs were planted. Hendrix admitted to the court he was a drug user – but denied using heroin, claiming he was afraid of needles. He admitted he had used marijuana and hashish, but no longer, saying he had “outgrown” them. The court heard that Hendrix was examined at the airport, and no track marks, which indicate heroin use, were found on his body. The defence was simple – the drugs did not belong to Hendrix. He told the court how fans would often give him presents: shirts, scarves, jewellery, clothes, teddy

bears, paintings, anything at all really, including drugs. His former manager, Chas Chandler (who played in The Animals), gave evidence that this was indeed common. Hendrix’s lawyer then called journalist Sharon Lawrence, who had interviewed the guitarist on 1 May, in the presence of others, including fans. She recalled that Hendrix had been unwell, whereupon a female fan had handed him a bottle, saying it might make him feel better. Hendrix put the bottle in his bag, she said. The prosecution marvelled at Lawrence’s detailed recall; she explained that as a journalist interviewing people without a notebook, she had trained her mind to observe closely and remember well. Hendrix’s lawyer, John O’Driscoll, had done his job: he had introduced doubt. After three days of hearings, the jury retired. When they re-entered the court, they declared the defendant not guilty. Within a year – 18 September 1970, half a century ago – Hendrix was dead, declared by the coroner in London to have choked on his vomit in a drug-induced sleep. Inevitably, other theories have abounded, including that he was murdered on orders of his then UK manager. RIP Jimi.

17 APR 2020