tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/melbourne-1372/articles
Melbourne – The Conversation
2023-09-01T01:40:12Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211208
2023-09-01T01:40:12Z
2023-09-01T01:40:12Z
How do we get urban density ‘just right’? The Goldilocks quest for the ‘missing middle’
<p>What would Goldilocks do if given the chance to pick the “just right” density for our cities? Depends who you ask.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/minns-government-on-cusp-of-rewriting-sydney-housing-density-reforms-20230801-p5dt0h.html">Debates</a> over <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-s-most-liveable-city-status-at-stake-as-andrews-gears-up-for-planning-overhaul-20230727-p5drr2.html">densities</a> in our <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/the-suburbs-being-asked-to-rise-to-the-challenge-of-population-growth-20230530-p5dcey.html">cities</a> divide between advocates of low-rise detached housing and supporters of higher-density towers. Both offer little diversity. In Australian cities, but also in North America, we see a clear contrast between ground-scraping suburbs and clusters of CBD skyscrapers.</p>
<p>The combination of these two patterns of development has produced largely car-dependent cities. Commute times are long and carbon emissions high. Options are limited for those who wish to live in a neighbourhood with corner shops, short walking distances to a local centre, communal green space and public parks.</p>
<p>Neighbourhoods like this are enabled by mid-rise (three to seven storeys), mid-density housing. This form of building has been dubbed the “<a href="https://twitter.com/zachklein/status/1488285651237683202">missing middle</a>”. Decades of planning for urban consolidation has made little difference – medium density is still missing in many of our cities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544706/original/file-20230825-23-tmxawo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/zachklein/status/1488285651237683202">Source: X – read more</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/houses-and-high-rises-and-nothing-in-between-why-land-zoning-hasnt-been-effective-for-improving-urban-density-204185">Houses and high-rises (and nothing in between): why land zoning hasn't been effective for improving urban density</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Lack of clarity bedevils density debates</h2>
<p>In debates about urban density, there’s often a confused mix of different <a href="https://theconversation.com/urban-density-matters-but-what-does-it-mean-58977">conceptions and measures</a> of density. For example, the widely used measure of <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/59860">dwellings per hectare</a> conflates building and population densities, capturing neither with precision. Often such debates don’t consider basic distinctions such as those between building and population densities, residential and job densities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-coronavirus-forces-us-to-keep-our-distance-city-density-matters-less-than-internal-density-137790">internal and external densities</a> (inside and outside buildings), measured and perceived densities. </p>
<p>A census can easily capture residential night-time population densities. However, fluctuating daytime densities cannot be measured accurately. Building densities can be accurately measured as floor area ratio (FAR, the total floor area of buildings divided by the total site area) but this is rarely applied.</p>
<p>Metrics are often heavily biased by inconsistent reference areas. What <a href="https://rdcu.be/dhDKh">spatial scales</a> matter for which desired outcome is seldom questioned. </p>
<p>For example, a reference area of about 1 square kilometre is relevant for a walkable neighbourhood. Our perceptions of densities depend on the spatial reach of our senses, mostly up to 100 metres. These include the visual sense of enclosure, the diversity and quality of the public-private interfaces, street layouts, trees and other vegetation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542049/original/file-20230810-21-lcpgo0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gross residential densities (people per hectare) in Melbourne at 1x1km walkable neighbourhood scale and 100x100m experiential scale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://rdcu.be/dhDKh">Pafka 2022</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If experts are unable to accurately measure urban densities, how can we expect everyone else to understand?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/urban-density-matters-but-what-does-it-mean-58977">Urban density matters – but what does it mean?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Buzzwords don’t solve the problem</h2>
<p>With confusions persisting, the stigmatisation of urban density, meaning for many “too dense”, persists. This tendency has been often countered through linguistic attempts to reframe the term. </p>
<p>For example, in Vancouver, Canada, the urbanist Brent Toderian has been calling for “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/6/20/15815490/toderian-nimbys">density done well</a>”. This term has been adopted in Melbourne too. Other terms include “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/16/cities-need-goldilocks-housing-density-not-too-high-low-just-right">Goldilocks density</a>” – “not too high, not too low, but just right” – “<a href="https://futurecitiesenviro.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40984-016-0021-3">optimal-quality density</a>” and “<a href="https://www.urbantaskforce.com.au/sydney-needs-urban-housing-to-compliment-suburban-housing/">EcoDenCity</a>”. </p>
<p>But these are vaguely defined terms that can mean many things to different people. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08111146.2023.2198550">Our research</a> shows that planning professionals in Melbourne associate “density done well” with neighbourhoods as different as North Perth, Western Australia, and Friedrichshain in Berlin. Their gross floor area ratios range from 0.7 to 4.3. </p>
<p>Put simply, “good” density is not limited to ratio of buildings to space. And it’s prone to change over time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three neighbourhood examples of 'density done well' provided by planning professionals in Melbourne." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543920/original/file-20230822-25-8i4v63.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three neighbourhood examples of ‘density done well’ provided by planning professionals in Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Merrick Morley, based on GoogleEarth and StreetView</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-love-the-idea-of-20-minute-neighbourhoods-so-why-isnt-it-top-of-the-agenda-131193">People love the idea of 20-minute neighbourhoods. So why isn't it top of the agenda?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Getting density right depends on local contexts</h2>
<p>The “missing middle” is sometimes exemplified by the three-to-seven-storey perimeter block. The block is formed by attached buildings aligned with the streets with a large communal courtyard in the middle. It’s common and well understood in Europe (Friedrichshain is an example above), but less so in Australia and North America. </p>
<p>David Sim describes this building type in detail in his book <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347943346_Book_Review_Soft_City_by_David_Sim_2019_Island_Press">Soft City</a>. He links it to nine quality criteria, including the diversity of buildings and open spaces. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373096737_Finding_good_densities_An_urban_morphological_search_for_Goldilocks_density_in_Melbourne_MSD_Minor_Thesis">Research</a> testing these criteria for Melbourne shows only five larger pockets come close to meeting them, with floor area ratios of 0.6-0.7. These are inner-city suburbs built along tram lines and with diverse building types. Their buildings include two-storey terrace housing, three-storey walk-ups and occasionally taller apartments. None of these are perimeter blocks, which are largely absent in Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Examples of larger pockets of 'soft density' in Melbourne" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543922/original/file-20230822-19-1crsil.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Examples of larger pockets of ‘soft density’ in Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Ben Thorp and Merrick Morley, based on GoogleEarth and StreetView</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-city-tick-designing-the-urban-dma-67227">What makes a city tick? Designing the 'urban DMA'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We argue that well-meaning discourses about “good” densities risk masking divergent desires through linguistic tactics. Rather, we need a better understanding of the different conceptions and metrics of densities and how they relate to people’s everyday experiences. This will require increased urban density literacy, through formal and informal education, as well as public deliberation, so we can build cities as diverse as our societies. </p>
<p>Goldilocks confronted very simple challenges with very simple means. But cities are made of diverse people with different tastebuds. None would have to burn their tongue if they were more aware of the knowledge and tools we have at hand.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1680596368237428736"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211208/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>We thank Ben Thorp for his contributions to this article. Elek Pafka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Merrick Morley receives a stipend from the City of Melbourne for his PhD candidature</span></em></p>
Despite adopting the goal of creating medium-density neighbourhoods to end urban sprawl, our cities have struggled to achieve it. Confused debates about ‘good density’ are part of the problem.
Elek Pafka, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning and Urban Design, The University of Melbourne
Merrick Morley, PhD Candidate, Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211184
2023-08-08T00:38:18Z
2023-08-08T00:38:18Z
A spectacular fireball just streaked across Melbourne – but astronomers didn’t see it coming
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541597/original/file-20230808-27645-48m1o0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C1985%2C1616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/markjdavidson/status/1688662681467998211">Mark Davidson / Twitter</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first hours after a fireball sighting are like a detective mystery. Last night around midnight, people across Melbourne took to social media to report sightings of a bright light slowly streaking across the sky.</p>
<p>Video footage clearly shows the fireball break apart, with these fragments in turn burning up, meaning this object was big.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688553695842349057"}"></div></p>
<h2>An unexpected piece of space junk</h2>
<p>There <a href="https://twitter.com/10NewsFirstMelb/status/1688671656284401664">have been reports</a> across Victoria of a loud explosion. Known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/sonic-boom">sonic booms</a>, such sounds imply the pieces survived long enough to enter the lower atmosphere – otherwise they wouldn’t be audible from the ground. In turn, this tells us at least a part of this fireball was dense.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688556188043206656"}"></div></p>
<p>Additionally, the glow of the fireball had clearly discernible colours, particularly orange, in some videos. This tells us the object isn’t a space rock, but is human-made, with a significant amount of plastics or metals burning up (familiar to anyone in high school chemistry class burning materials in the Bunsen burner).</p>
<p>So, it’s likely we just witnessed several tonnes of space junk – anything humans have put into orbit that isn’t under our control any longer – re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. However, nothing was predicted for reentry on the global space debris tracking site <a href="https://www.satview.org/">SatView</a>.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1688701218086952962">an early analysis</a> by US-based astronomer Jonathan McDowell, the fireball may have been the third stage of a Soyuz 2 rocket <a href="https://everydayastronaut.com/glonass-k2-no-13-kosmos-2569-soyuz-2-1b-fregat/">carrying the navigation satellite GLONASS-K2</a>. This was launched by Roscosmos (the Russian space agency) on August 7 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome about 800km north of Moscow. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688701218086952962"}"></div></p>
<p>The incredible brightness of the fireball is thanks to the tremendous speed at which objects re-enter Earth’s thin upper atmosphere, 25,000 kilometres per hour or more. </p>
<p>When you rub your hands together, they get warm from the friction between them. Do that a thousand times faster and you can start to imagine them glowing white hot from the heat. If the friction is between the metal of the space junk and Earth’s thin atmosphere at an altitude of 100km, we can get a very bright glow. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/satellites-and-space-junk-may-make-dark-night-skies-brighter-hindering-astronomy-and-hiding-stars-from-our-view-202047">Satellites and space junk may make dark night skies brighter, hindering astronomy and hiding stars from our view</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>You can help astronomers with the details</h2>
<p>To help us confirm what the fireball was and where it came from, we need witnesses to download the <a href="http://fireballsinthesky.com.au/download-app/">Fireballs in the Sky App</a> and recreate the passage of that trail as best they can.</p>
<p>From all those sightings we can triangulate the trajectory and determine where any surviving pieces might have landed and try to collect them. Reports so far are conflicting and we need more data. It appears it came into the atmosphere from the north-west across Victoria to Tasmania in the south-east, but it’s too soon to tell what its exact path was.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688560558373851136"}"></div></p>
<p>Most space junk doesn’t make it to Earth. The incredible heat of 5,000 Kelvin or greater generated by the re-entry burns up almost all such pieces. </p>
<p>Some hardier engine blocks can make it to the ground, however, which is why alerts about space junk re-entering the atmosphere are sent out to aircraft in particular.</p>
<p>However, space junk travels so fast, even a very small mistake in the calculation of the re-entry will have it show up hundreds of kilometres away instead. For most purposes, such warnings are not as helpful as they could be.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/airplanes-face-a-growing-risk-of-being-hit-by-uncontrolled-re-entries-of-rockets-used-to-launch-satellites-202400">Airplanes face a growing risk of being hit by uncontrolled re-entries of rockets used to launch satellites</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>To improve this system, we need better tracking stations on the ground and advances in the modelling of the interaction between space junk and the upper atmosphere to improve our forecasts.</p>
<p>Thankfully buildings, let alone people, are <em>tiny</em> targets relative to the vast unpopulated reaches of land and sea. While there <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_fall_incidents">have been reported hits</a>, these are thankfully incredibly rare, making space junk hardly a danger for us on Earth. </p>
<p>As astronomers now rush to work out the details of this beautiful fireball, it also marks a spectacular opening for Australia’s <a href="https://www.scienceweek.net.au">National Science Week</a>, with thousands of live talks explaining science as widely as possible, just like this event.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Duffy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed at Swinburne University of Technology </span></em></p>
A mysterious hunk of space junk buzzed through Australian skies last night. It may have been the third stage of a Soyuz 2 rocket just launched by Russia.
Alan Duffy, Director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute, Swinburne University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205399
2023-07-04T02:59:57Z
2023-07-04T02:59:57Z
60% of women and non-binary punters and artists feel unsafe in Melbourne’s music spaces
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525827/original/file-20230512-19-50hj2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C2912%2C4346&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Markus Spiske/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new <a href="https://figshare.com/s/62519f8c95bab5ca4c32">survey</a> of 126 women and non-binary punters and artists working the music industry in Melbourne has found 60% of respondents feel unsafe in music spaces. </p>
<p>The survey found sexual violence disempowers female music workers, deters non-binary communities from working in the industry, and discourages punters from going to gigs.</p>
<p>This is a marked increase on previous surveys. In the <a href="https://www.musicvictoria.com.au/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/2019/07/MLMC-2017-Report-compressed.pdf">2018 Victorian Live Music census</a>, only 8% of respondents did not believe “most Victorian venues provide a safe and inclusive environment”.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.musicvictoria.com.au/initiatives/victorian-live-music-census/">2022 census</a> didn’t even ask about safety or sexual violence.</p>
<p>As Melbourne beats Sydney to became the nation’s most <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/17/melbourne-overtakes-sydney-as-australias-most-populous-city">populated city</a> in 2023, the epidemic of sexual violence may intensify in its urban music spaces. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-sexual-abuse-and-exploitation-rife-in-the-music-industry-167852">Is sexual abuse and exploitation rife in the music industry?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The #meNoMore awakening</h2>
<p>In 2017, <a href="https://themusicnetwork.com/me-no-more/">an open letter</a> was signed by over 1,000 women who work or participate in the Australian music industry, calling out abuse and harassment in the industry under the hashtag #MeNoMore. </p>
<p>This is a global problem. Studies have found <a href="https://iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/article/view/991">grassroots venues</a> and promoters in the United Kingdom need to implement changes to tackle sexual violence and work towards gender equality. Music festivals <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gendered-Violence-at-International-Festivals-An-Interdisciplinary-Perspective/Platt-Finkel/p/book/9781032336695">are rife</a> with structural sexism, inequalities and gendered power dynamics. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/tempo/article/abs/teaching-tertiary-music-in-the-metoo-era/9A4E6871975D51BEC51711E23BE44B3F">music education</a> women “face disadvantages in terms of income, inclusion and professional opportunities”. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512786.2019.1674683">music media</a>, women deal with discrimination, harassment and sexist abuse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman plays guitar" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525828/original/file-20230512-17-4cs0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2022 report found unacceptably high rates of sexual harassment in the Australian music industry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anton Mislawsky/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In late 2022, the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RCH10ICOZUX9T7LWpb-Dx9pTKlA9fISn/view">Raising Their Voices</a> industry report about the contemporary Australian music scene found unacceptably high rates of sexual harassment, sexual harm, bullying and systemic discrimination. </p>
<p>The report called for an industry-wide approach to respond to the findings. </p>
<p>In January, it was announced the federal government’s new Revive cultural policy would <a href="https://theconversation.com/pay-safety-and-welfare-how-the-new-centre-for-arts-and-entertainment-workplaces-can-strengthen-the-arts-sector-198859">establish a centre</a> to address sexual harassment in the arts and entertainment industry. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pay-safety-and-welfare-how-the-new-centre-for-arts-and-entertainment-workplaces-can-strengthen-the-arts-sector-198859">Pay, safety and welfare: how the new Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces can strengthen the arts sector</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A frequent violence</h2>
<p>In our survey, we found groping and harassment were normalised in clubs and venues.</p>
<p>Respondents reported street harassment to and from venues, or were assaulted in commercially shared vehicles.</p>
<p>The majority of perpetrators were men. </p>
<p>One third of the music punters reported an incident to venue staff or festival management. </p>
<p>“In the last incident of assault I reacted by punching the guy, and I was thrown out by security after I explained what happened […] ” one punter said. “I want to call it out now […] I am sick of this shit”.</p>
<p>Music workers were less likely to report these incidents than punters: 80% of music workers told us they had not reported these incidents to venue staff, festival authorities, music management or to police. </p>
<p>Fearing unemployment in a highly competitive industry, they remain stoic victim-survivors in the boy’s club. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Punters at a gig" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525829/original/file-20230512-19-o251am.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some punters are now reluctant to go to gigs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lindsey Bahia/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“As someone who has worked in the music industry for 40 years, I feel I have a thicker skin when it comes to sexual harassment… [but] I feel that it really is time for change,” one music worker told us.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>More than one-third of the music workers we spoke to had considered leaving the industry due to sexual harassment. Some punters told us they were reluctant to go to gigs.</p>
<p>If Melbourne wants to be considered a global music city, then the music talent and audience drain related to the epidemic of sexual violence requires critical attention.</p>
<p>The 2018 Melbourne Music Census found <a href="https://www.musicvictoria.com.au/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/2019/07/MLMC-2017-Report-compressed.pdf">only 49%</a> of staff in venues were trained in-house to deal with sexual harassment or assault.</p>
<p>Our study suggests all security staff should be provided with bystander training to prevent, detect and address perpetrators’ behaviour, and to refer victim-survivors to relevant authorities. Too often, security staff have a reluctance to change routine practices, and many venues have a lack of female security staff. There is poor collaboration between security companies and music staff, and limited funding for grassroots venues to conduct this training. </p>
<p>Less than 10% of the women and non-binary people we spoke to had reached out for counselling support following an experience of sexual violence. More needs to be done to spread the awareness of phone counselling hotlines, such as The Support Act <a href="https://supportact.org.au/get-help/wellbeing-helpline/">Wellbeing Helpline</a> for people working in music or the arts.</p>
<p>There are international models we can look towards. The not-for-profit <a href="https://www.goodnightoutcampaign.org/info/">Good Night Out</a> began in Leeds, UK, in 2014. The organisation runs accredited sexual violence response training programs for licensed venues and live music events. Its workers put up campaign posters in venues and encourage trained staff to wear badges to alert people that help is available. The program was <a href="https://fullstop.org.au/training/for-licensed-premises/good-night-out">established in Melbourne</a> in 2021, and an evaluation of the program will be conducted in August this year. </p>
<p>Our report also suggested music venues and organisations should be achieving gender and ethnic diversity among their leadership and staff to be eligible for government funding.</p>
<p>Changes also need to happen beyond the music industry.</p>
<p>Changes in the school curriculum and how we talk about consent more broadly in society will also impact on music spaces. Movements like <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/hundreds-of-sydney-students-claim-they-were-sexually-assaulted-and-call-for-better-consent-education-20210219-p57449.html">Teach Us Consent</a> advocate for sex education in schools to include an understanding sexual violence is an unacceptable behaviour, and what it means to have consent.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/affirmative-consent-model-now-law-victoria">2022 bill</a> in the Victorian parliament adopted an affirmative consent model to provide better protections for victim-survivors of sexual offences, shifting the scrutiny onto their perpetrators.</p>
<p>This bill will help break the code of silence and encourage women and non-binary people to speak out about their experiences of sexual violence. </p>
<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/camp-cope-leaves-the-australian-music-industry-forever-changed-by-their-fearless-feminist-activism-199518">Camp Cope leaves the Australian music industry forever changed by their fearless feminist activism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Jean Baker received funding from the Victorian State government and the City of Melbourne. </span></em></p>
A new survey found sexual violence disempowers female music workers, deters non-binary communities from working in the industry, and discourages punters from going to gigs.
Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204736
2023-06-26T02:42:20Z
2023-06-26T02:42:20Z
‘Madness stripped away the niceties’: Tara Calaby imagines herself into a 19th-century asylum
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530851/original/file-20230608-21-5zn4i2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C124%2C2647%2C2177&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">claudia soraya m w sirVs unsplash</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Kew Asylum, when it opened in 1872, was the larger of two public institutions in wider Melbourne that housed people with mental illness. <a href="https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00797b.htm">Grand and imposing</a>, it opened a few years after the overcrowded Yarra Bend Asylum. </p>
<p>A new historical novel, set at Kew Asylum in 1890s Melbourne, prises open this world – inviting contemporary readers into the taboo subjects of women’s mental breakdown and institutional confinement, through a same-sex romantic love story. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: House of Longing – Tara Calaby (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>As a researcher of psychiatric institutions, I’ve often wondered about the potential and power of fiction to bring this hidden history of hospitalisation to life. People in the historical record have often struck me as remarkable, full of personality. </p>
<p>We can hear their words – scribbled in the margins of the clinical case notes, or in patient and family letters – as if they were spoken aloud. Far from being invisible or forgotten, decades of historical research using patient records has brought these experiences to light, but mostly inside academic studies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530836/original/file-20230608-19-tpxww2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new novel set at Kew Asylum prises open the hidden world of women’s mental breakdown and confinement in 1890s Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charles Rudd/State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tara Calaby, whose novel is based on research, draws on these voices and writes in between the gaps, or at the interstices, of historical evidence. Her imagination fleshes out experiences that are hard for historians to access; she enters the interior lives of people from the past.</p>
<p>Her protagonist, Charlotte, becomes a cipher for the reader.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Charlotte had once read a newspaper report that had compared madwomen to wild animals. She knew, now, that lunatics were no more bestial than the men and women who gathered in Melbourne tea rooms to gossip and be seen. Madness stripped away the niceties, that was all: the base drives of fear and hunger and wrath and lust were simply more visible here.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/girl-interrupted-interrogates-how-women-are-mad-when-they-refuse-to-conform-30-years-on-this-memoir-is-still-important-199211">Girl, Interrupted interrogates how women are 'mad' when they refuse to conform – 30 years on, this memoir is still important</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Women’s secrets</h2>
<p>Charlotte Ross lives with her father George. Together they supply Melbourne’s professional middle class and elites with stationery: inks, paper, pens and ledgers. George is a widower who has grown a respectable and specialist business that allows Charlotte to maintain her role as an unmarried daughter in gainful employment, thus encountering people and the public world through the shop. The book opens with reference to the “noise and bustle of Elizabeth Street”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530756/original/file-20230608-16-c17hwb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While she possibly considers herself “plain” when judged alongside Melbourne’s society women and their fashionable dresses, Charlotte is a strong character with considerable presence. Her capacity for deep thought and ability to attune to the emotional states of other people are both strengths and weaknesses as the events of her life unfold; some tragic, others with vibrant potential and possibility.</p>
<p>When Charlotte encounters Flora Dalton, a doctor’s daughter, an instant attraction sparks something in her. The book’s title, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/house-of-longing">House of Longing</a>, refers to a hidden desire both women slowly begin to acknowledge openly – but also to the many lives and desires of the women Charlotte later meets in the psychiatric institution.</p>
<p>Nineteenth-century Melbourne, with its much-rehearsed preoccupations with class, gender and social reputation, proves the perfect setting for Calaby to explore women’s secret emotional and sexual experiences in a world constrained by gender conventions. Calaby centres questions of women’s independence from men in this society.</p>
<p>Alert to the narrative of psychiatric illness and the language used in this book, I was interested in the way Charlotte and Flora use the word “mad” early in their friendship. As two women who possess a keen and wry sense of the world around them, they initially make light of the notion of losing reason, of the way “losing one’s senses” might be a “a freedom”.</p>
<p>Charlotte and Flora experience freedom by spending time together dressed as young men, camping in the bush east of Melbourne.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As soon as they thought it safe to do so, Charlotte and Flora ventured into the trees – deep enough to ensure privacy but not so far from the road as to risk getting lost – and exchanged their dresses for shirts and trousers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first Charlotte finds the trousers “strangely confining compared to skirts” but later, when she changes back into her dress, she finds that clothing newly “constraining”, suggesting a gentle shift in her identity has taken place.</p>
<p>Here, too, Calaby seems to draw on the historical record: it wasn’t unheard of for women to escape their stifling lives by dressing as men in the 1890s. Accounts of <a href="https://theconversation.com/trans-people-arent-new-and-neither-is-their-oppression-a-history-of-gender-crossing-in-19th-century-australia-201663">women “passing” as men in the colonial era</a> were reported in newspapers and documented in medical and institutional records, as recorded by historians <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/78679">Lucy Chesser</a>, <a href="https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00848b.htm">Ruth Ford</a> and <a href="https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2021/policing-gender-nonconformity-victoria-1900">Robin Eames</a>.</p>
<p>Charlotte and Flora’s time in the bush gifts them a sense of physical freedom, where they can express bodily difference and sexual desire away from the scrutiny of men. They are literally clothed as gender-neutral, unfettered by the terrible stiffness of women’s dress fabrics and cuts. Flora neither resembles a “boy” nor a “woman”, but is “vulnerable, waiflike” in this experiment with her gender.</p>
<p>On her return to the city, Charlotte experiences a personal tragedy – and chooses a more dramatic escape from her oppressive clothing, stifling social expectations and somewhat lonely life as a solo woman. </p>
<p>Yet instead of liberation, she finds herself in an institutional setting purposefully designed to constrain, confine and sequester women: the lunatic asylum at Kew. Here, the novel’s action begins to revolve around the worlds of women and their keepers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trans-people-arent-new-and-neither-is-their-oppression-a-history-of-gender-crossing-in-19th-century-australia-201663">Trans people aren’t new, and neither is their oppression: a history of gender crossing in 19th-century Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Darkest moments and recovery</h2>
<p>In the late 19th century, police were the “first responders” to trauma and mental distress, responsible for taking individuals to the institutions. Physicians were then required to certify a person as needing hospitalisation. Charlotte is arrested by police, then hospitalised, where she is observed by doctors.</p>
<p>Readers less well-acquainted than I am with the processes of 19th-century asylum admissions will likely be horrified by Charlotte’s experience: stripped of clothing, talked about (rather than to); made subject to the medical men.
Notes are taken about her body, clothes, deportment and speech. She is noted as “stubborn”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530753/original/file-20230608-27-6y4gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women patients exercising at Kew Asylum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Library, London https://wellcomecollection.org/search/works</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charlotte becomes increasingly aware of the dynamics of the wards and the personalities of doctors and attendant nursing staff. She forms friendships and alliances with other women who represent the range of “types” of patients in the period: the elderly and feeble women; the very young and vulnerable; the tough and scrappy women like Mary, whose life outside was marked by policing and arrests, rape and violence, and ultimately survival; young Eliza, whose baby has died; and the immigrant women like Inge, whose time in the institution was possibly safer for her than her home and marriage.</p>
<p>Calaby describes the asylum’s daily routine, such as menus, the gendered work regime for patients, and the hopeful intercession of visitors and advocates. Her characters are well-drawn portraits of women inmates, but also of the nuances in their care. </p>
<p>Some doctors were sympathetic figures who worked for the recovery of patients. Some nursing staff physically harmed patients. In <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/28344">Attending the Mad</a>, an important, well-regarded history of labour in the asylum, Lee-Ann Monk examines another side of the silenced experiences of both the “mad” and those who worked to manage and care for the confined. Miss Simmons, a controlling nurse who handles the women roughly, reflects the various kind and mean attendant identities in the historical record. The novel’s inmates experience her “care” as “punishment”. </p>
<p>Simmons slaps patients, and makes one young patient, Eliza, empty the “domestics” each morning: “It shouldn’t be her duty, but Simmons says it’s a punishment. For what, I don’t know. Eliza does everything she’s told to”, Inge tells Charlotte.</p>
<p>As it evolved, psychiatric practice became more reliant on the language of diagnosis. Charlotte – a witness to this professionalisation of mental health treatment – notices the way “classes” of patient are given roles or privileges, or deprived, within the institution.</p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230248649">My own research</a> has examined the blurred line between the asylum, families and the outside world. Patients could leave on trial, as Charlotte is able to do. “Recovery” was possible, though often assessed through the performance of appropriate gendered behaviour such as letter-writing, tasks such as needlework, mixing at social events like the asylum ball, or attending church services. All these practices formed part of the “moral therapy” of the day.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-catherine-hay-thomson-the-australian-undercover-journalist-who-went-inside-asylums-and-hospitals-129352">Hidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Constraint and resistance</h2>
<p>From the start of the book, where Charlotte is forcibly fed through a tube, we understand that submission to the institution is not a choice. She is pinned down by two female attendants and a rubber tube is forced through her nostril by a doctor:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She tried to struggle, but the women held her tightly: she could move only her head. […] this was an assault she never could have imagined. Her sinuses stung, her eyes watered; it felt like the tube must surely pass into her brain.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530843/original/file-20230608-21-g7bh09.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Force feeding.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inquiries into <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5912785">Kew Asylum</a> in 1876 and the <a href="https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/papers/govpub/VPARL1886No15Pi-clxxii.pdf">Royal Commission</a> into asylums in Victoria in the late 1880s both took evidence from many people, including inmates. </p>
<p>We have access to their voices of protest and reflection, and to their understanding of the violent treatment they sometimes received – as well as the carelessness that allowed accidents to happen, such as the novel’s horrific one in the asylum’s laundry, where a young inmate has her hand crushed in the mangle, leaving it “like a piece of butcher’s meat, misshapen and pulverised”. These voices of protest and complaint are reflected in Calaby’s novel, and also underscore the agency some women patients had in the space of the official inquiry.</p>
<p>In the 1876 Kew Inquiry, <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Reading_madness/4EkyGQAACAAJ?hl=en&bshm=nce/1">I found</a> the recorded words of women to be loud, full of purpose, and self aware. One patient, Margaret Henderson, gave formal evidence about being treated with “plunge baths” by attendants who held her under water:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I may have been dong something objectionable to them before I would be put into a bath, and I would look to be punished by it […] they said it was a thing belonging to the asylum, and I was to submit to it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Patients emerged in the inquiry as powerful advocates for others who were weaker than themselves, just as we see in Calaby’s novel. Laid bare in the evidence of investigations carried out about the state of asylums during the 19th century, “madness” or mental breakdown was exposed as complex, troubling and unknowable. But the inquiry also reflected a changing understanding of mental illness and its treatment, leading to greater scrutiny of medical men, asylum practices and the quality of care provided.</p>
<p>Kew Asylum and its population was a microcosm of the wider world of deprivation, control, violence, poverty and class that shaped the colonial world.</p>
<p>House of Longing examines the well-documented need for support for inmates from outside the asylum’s walls to achieve “recovery” and release. It also hints at the stumbling efforts of the medical fraternity to understand how to care for the mentally ill, who were women and men from all walks of life. </p>
<p>And it’s a hopeful story about love and courage – which suggests alternative futures for women seeking independence from marriage and social norms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catharine Coleborne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Tara Calaby’s novel peeps into the interior lives of women in a 19th-century asylum and uses her historical imagination to generate new knowledge.
Catharine Coleborne, Professor of History, School Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208097
2023-06-25T05:55:02Z
2023-06-25T05:55:02Z
Victoria has rediscovered a dragon – how do we secure its future?
<p>The Victorian grassland earless dragon (<em><a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190233">Tympanocryptis pinguicolla</a></em>), not seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-not-giving-up-the-search-for-mainland-australias-first-extinct-lizard-117831">since 1969</a>, has been <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/reptile-thought-be-extinct-rediscovered-victoria">found in grasslands</a> west of Melbourne. No need to fear this dragon, though; these lizards are just 15cm long fully grown. </p>
<p>The dragon is Australia’s most imperilled scaled reptile. This is an extraordinary second chance. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/still-here-night-parrot-rediscovery-in-wa-raises-questions-for-mining-75384">rediscovery of a species</a> thought to be extinct inspires hope of finding other <a href="https://theconversation.com/extinct-but-not-gone-the-thylacine-continues-to-fascinate-us-201865">lost treasures</a> like the Tassie tiger. </p>
<p>But rediscovery only happens because a species has become so scarce it has eluded even the experts who know best where to look. To save it from extinction, three things must happen quickly: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>intensive care – create a conservation breeding population, manage its remaining genetic diversity, and breed enough individuals to return to the wild</p></li>
<li><p>within the species’ range, protect habitats of the size, quality and quantity needed to support self-sustaining populations</p></li>
<li><p>restore and manage these habitats, reduce threats, reintroduce the dragons and monitor outcomes to ensure the species’ long-term viability.</p></li>
</ol>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1161412944854507520"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-not-giving-up-the-search-for-mainland-australias-first-extinct-lizard-117831">Why we're not giving up the search for mainland Australia's 'first extinct lizard'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Intensive care</h2>
<p>This first step is to set up a climate-controlled, disease-free conservation breeding facility, run by the ICU doctors and nurses of conservation. It’s a tragedy that the only option is to take the last few individuals of a species from the wild to secure its future. With that decision made, it is essential they receive the best possible care. </p>
<p>Fortunately, Melbourne has experts who know how to build and run such facilities, reintroduce species to the wild and monitor their recovery. In this way, Zoos Victoria and collaborators have over the past decade averted the extinction of the mountain pygmy possum, lowland Leadbeater’s possum, helmeted honeyeaters, Baw Baw frog, southern corroboree frog and spotted tree frog. </p>
<p>This work involves setting up, maintaining and staffing such a facility, as well as surveys to locate and move individuals into captive breeding. Based on experience with <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/a-beacon-of-hope-frog-saving-push-spawns-zoo-s-500k-breeding-centre-20220930-p5bm7m.html">endangered frogs</a>, plus the extra costs of outdoor enclosures, the cost will be around A$2 million over the next five years.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="biological drawings of the grassland earless dragon" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533597/original/file-20230622-19-btp646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The grassland earless dragon was feared extinct, with only museum specimens, photos and drawings remaining.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/16665">John James Wild/Museums Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-australian-lizard-species-are-barely-known-to-science-many-may-face-extinction-161572">Hundreds of Australian lizard species are barely known to science. Many may face extinction</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Securing habitat</h2>
<p>Merely keeping a species alive in zoos <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-015-9537-z">is not conservation</a>. Self-sustaining wild populations must be established to recover a species. This is where complexity, uncertainty and economics really bite. </p>
<p>The dragon has only ever been found in the critically endangered ecosystem known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ecocheck-victorias-flower-strewn-western-plains-could-be-swamped-by-development-57127">basalt plains grasslands</a>. Agriculture and housing development have reduced these grasslands to <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7219/">less than 3%</a> of their pre-European extent. Most of what remains is on private land. </p>
<p>The dragon’s long-term fate depends on managing the site where it was found and any areas nearby where dragons are living. We also need substantial new areas of suitable plains grasslands as conservation reserves where captive-bred animals can be released. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/npre.2009.3387.1.pdf">Research</a> tells us we need at least six independent, self-sustaining populations for the dragon to stand a chance of persisting for at least the next 50 years. Even if well-managed, some populations will occasionally be lost to disease, predation, hot fires, or other chance events. </p>
<p>Individuals will have to be released back into those areas once the areas recover and can support the species again. In pre-European times, animals could naturally migrate back into such places. Today, habitats are too fragmented for that to happen. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, basalt plains grasslands continue to be lost to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-11/melbourne-grassland-destroyed-developer-conservation-tension/101275526">legal and illegal clearing</a>, the use of fertilisers that favour exotic grasses, weed invasion, rock removal, intensive grazing and the loss of regular low-intensity “cool” fires historically <a href="https://theconversation.com/before-the-colonists-came-we-burned-small-and-burned-often-to-avoid-big-fires-its-time-to-relearn-cultural-burning-201475">used by Traditional Owners</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/before-the-colonists-came-we-burned-small-and-burned-often-to-avoid-big-fires-its-time-to-relearn-cultural-burning-201475">Before the colonists came, we burned small and burned often to avoid big fires. It's time to relearn cultural burning</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>To make matters worse, the Victorian government has over the past decade <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/broken-promises-turn-fragile-grasslands-into-unprotected-basketcase-20200617-p553p4.html">broken its promise</a> to <a href="https://www.audit.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/20200617-Endangered-Grasslands-report.pdf">set aside large areas</a> of western plains grasslands as conservation reserves. </p>
<p>Securing new conservation areas will be expensive given the competing demands for this land. However, the government has received offset payments from developers when they (legally) destroy grasslands to build houses. It’s time to use those funds to create the reserves the dragon and other endangered grassland species need to survive. </p>
<p>We estimate securing six high-quality grasslands of at least 100 hectares each will cost at least $30 million.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="grassy, rock-strewn hillside with a tree on the horizon" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533622/original/file-20230623-5432-ozzzks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The biggest cost of ensuring the survival of the dragon and other endangered species will be securing enough of their grassland habitat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabeth_donoghue/2851275651/">Elizabeth O'Donoghue/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-vast-majority-of-melburnians-want-more-nature-in-their-city-despite-a-puzzling-north-south-divide-206938">The vast majority of Melburnians want more nature in their city, despite a puzzling north-south divide</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Managing threats and restoring habitats</h2>
<p>These reserves will need careful and active management. In the absence of frequent cool fires, and in the presence of invasive weeds and animal pests, these areas will lose the plant species that make them special and beautiful. Weeds, cats, foxes, dogs and rabbits all create unsuitable habitat for dragons. </p>
<p>Many of these grasslands are so degraded they need a lot of restoration work, almost starting from bare soil. </p>
<p>Weed control and fire management to maintain six 100-hectare reserves as suitable habitat for dragons will cost around $2.4 million a year. These reserves would of course be home to many more grassland animals and plants, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/ecocheck-victorias-flower-strewn-western-plains-could-be-swamped-by-development-57127">other endangered species</a> such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-realised-the-fat-tailed-dunnart-was-under-threat-heres-how-i-got-the-species-officially-listed-200632">fat-tailed dunnart</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ecocheck-victorias-flower-strewn-western-plains-could-be-swamped-by-development-57127">EcoCheck: Victoria's flower-strewn western plains could be swamped by development</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="map showing range of grasslands earless dragon to the west of Melbourne" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533592/original/file-20230622-23-4p9jiq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Development has destroyed most of the grassland habitat across the dragon’s former range.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=66727">Commonwealth DCCEEW</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can’t be sure of the exact costs of buying, restoring and managing grasslands. Our estimates assume, for example, the sites contain most grassland plant species. If areas were being restored from bare soil, ten-year restoration and management costs would more than double. </p>
<p>Other uncertainties include land prices, the costs of weed and pest control and fire management, and the possible need to help insect populations establish as a sustainable source of dragon food.</p>
<h2>We can afford to save the dragon</h2>
<p>The whole program is likely to cost around $56 million over ten years. More than half the cost involves buying highly sought-after properties. </p>
<p>If this sounds like a lot of money, consider that Australians spend over <a href="https://www.petfoodindustry.com/news-newsletters/pet-food-news/article/15469415/national-survey-reveals-australians-spending-on-pets">$30 billion</a> a year on pet care. Just the GST on that spending ($3 billion) would cover the annual <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12682">cost of conserving</a> most of our <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicthreatenedlist.pl">1,900 or so endangered species</a> (most don’t have the dragon’s expensive taste in real estate). As a nation, we can afford to save the dragon and <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-the-budget-ditched-the-stage-3-tax-cuts-australia-could-save-every-threatened-species-and-lots-more-205305">most of its endangered friends</a>, as <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021C00182">the law requires</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brendan Wintle has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian, NSW and Queensland governments, the Commonwealth National Environmental Science Program, the Ian Potter Foundation, the Hermon Slade Foundation, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. He is a board director of Zoos Victoria and a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. She is a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a board member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF's Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.</span></em></p>
The successful quest to find a species last seen more than 50 years ago has added to the urgency of protecting the vanishing grassland habitat of a lizard that had been feared extinct.
Brendan Wintle, Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne
Sarah Bekessy, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206189
2023-06-07T20:07:59Z
2023-06-07T20:07:59Z
Eliza Batman, the Irish convict reinvented as ‘Melbourne’s founding mother’, was both colonised and coloniser on two violent frontiers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529965/original/file-20230605-23-q0jtve.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=110%2C29%2C2026%2C973&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Reminiscence of John Batman’s house above the Yarra Falls. A group of Aboriginal people camp at the lower right side near the river. Artist: WFE Liardet, 1875. Watercolour, pen, pencil and ink.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy State Library of Victoria.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 8 1835, 188 years ago today, pastoralist John Batman crossed the Bass Strait and arrived on the shores of Naarm (now Melbourne city), on Kulin lands. His Irish-born convict wife, Eliza Batman, and their seven daughters arrived at Port Phillip the following year. </p>
<p>They had come from Van Diemen’s Land (Lutruwita/Tasmania), bringing 30 servants with them, including convicts, two Aboriginal boys, and Aboriginal men from New South Wales, known as the “Sydney Natives”. </p>
<p>Seeking land, the Batmans moved their large pastoral enterprise with this group of convicts and Aboriginal people to what is now known as Batman’s Hill overlooking the Yarra River. The two young Palawa boys who travelled with them from Tasmania were Rolepana, whom the Batmans had named “Ben Lomond”, and Lunnerminner, or “Jack Allen”. </p>
<p>In the midst of Tasmania’s Black War and once in Port Phillip, the Batmans would be entangled with Aboriginal people across two violent frontiers. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/noted-works-the-black-war-29344">Noted works: The Black War</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>At Melbourne’s centenary of his landing in 1935, John Batman was celebrated as an intrepid settler and <a href="https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00603b.htm">the city’s founding father</a>. Eliza Batman, however, has remained largely a footnote to this contested history. Was she a founding colonial mother? How should we remember her? What happened to her children and the Palawa boys who became part of the larger Batman pastoral “family” enterprise, forced to travel across the Bass Strait to Port Phillip? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529967/original/file-20230605-27-g992za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of John Batman, charcoal and pencil on white paper ; 38.0 x 28.6 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 19th and early 20th centuries, monuments, roads and parks were dedicated to John Batman. At one time, it was even proposed that Melbourne be named Batmania in his honour. By the late 20th century, Batman had become problematic: <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=482">his dark deeds</a> in Tasmania as leader of the Ben Lomond massacre had entered public consciousness and debate. </p>
<p>Since then, there has been much controversy around Batman as Melbourne’s founding father and his place in public memory. The Batman sculpture once on Collins Street no longer stands in the Melbourne CBD. The Australian Electoral Commission <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/20/melbourne-electorate-of-batman-renamed-after-indigenous-activist">renamed the inner-city federal seat of Batman</a> in honour of the Aboriginal rights campaigner Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper. </p>
<p>Eliza Batman is missing in these public debates around colonisation and the politics of memorialisation. Too often frontier violence is understood as male, martial, and situated on remote borderlands. Yet, colonial violence is not only racialised, but gendered and intimate. It is close to home, and all too often occurs between those known to each other. </p>
<p>Popular histories have excluded Eliza and her family almost completely from these stories of colonial Tasmania and Victoria. She has often been dismissed as a low-class, illiterate doxy and drunken convict who died an ignominious death while living under a pseudonym in a rooming house in Geelong in 1852. Yet Irish-born Eliza (then Elizabeth Callaghan) from County Clare was literate and astute.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529969/original/file-20230605-213248-481627.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Memorial plaques to Eliza and Pelonamena (mis-spelt) at Geelong cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We’ve been interested in Eliza Batman for a long time. In the late 1990s, we drove to Geelong on a dusty, hot January day to find Eliza’s grave at the cemetery, which was then unmarked. Although her actual grave remains somewhere in the paupers section, Eliza is memorialised in a plaque alongside that of her seventh daughter, who bore the curious name Pelonamena. Looking more deeply, we found that the Batmans named their seventh daughter after an Aboriginal woman, “Pellonymyna”.</p>
<p>We do not seek to rehearse the popular notion of John Batman – or Eliza – as the founders of Melbourne, or of a triumphal Bass Strait crossing of a founding family from Van Diemen’s Land to Port Phillip. Rather, we wish to reveal other crossings in looking at the Batmans. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.academia.edu/41454103/Eliza_Batman_s_house_unhomely_frontiers_and_intimate_Overstraiters_in_Van_Diemen_s_Land_and_Port_Phillip">research</a> into Eliza Batman and her colonial home opens uncomfortable vistas onto the pastoral frontier where colonial women, forced kinship, affection and violence were bound together. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-john-batman-melbournes-founder-and-murderer-of-the-blacks-1025">The truth about John Batman: Melbourne's founder and 'murderer of the blacks'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Convict infamy and the iron collar</h2>
<p>Eliza was a small woman of dark hair and brown eyes, around 5 feet and 2½ inches. In 1820, aged 17, she was tried at the Old Bailey in London for passing forged notes, a crime called “uttering”. One of her male accomplices was hanged, but Eliza’s sentence was commuted to 14 years transportation to the Australian colonies. </p>
<p>Eliza was transported to Tasmania in 1821 on the ship Providence with 102 other female felons. The <a href="https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON40-1-1$init=CON40-1-1p256">convict indent</a> or list made on “Elizabeth Callaghan’s” arrival in Hobart, noted “gaol report bad”. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://stors.tas.gov.au/CON40-1-1$init=CON40-1-1p256">convict indent</a> also records that once in Hobart she absconded from several masters. Each time she was placed in the stocks, fed bread and water, and forced to wear the iron collar, a punishment often reserved for women. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529962/original/file-20230605-201070-eeqyvs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eliza Batman’s daughter, Pelonamena Frances Darling Batman. Born Ben Lomond, Tasmania, 11 July 1834.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 3.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1820 the commandant at George Town, Colonel Cimitiere, called the iron collar “a badge of infamy and disgrace” that was the “usual Instrument throughout the Colonies which is put round the neck of women of Infamous character”. </p>
<p>There are no portraits or photographs of Eliza that can be found, but her likeness is suggested by the photographic portrait of her daughter Pelonamena.</p>
<p>Later Eliza absconded again, and was soon living under the pseudonym Elizabeth Thomson, at the property “Kingston” in the Midlands with John Batman. In early 1828 Batman requested permission from Lieutenant Governor Arthur to marry Eliza. By this time they had three daughters. Arthur approved the union, and on 29 March 1828, Eliza and John were married.</p>
<h2>Writing Eliza</h2>
<p>As historians, how do we write about Eliza? This can be no simple reclamation of history. Eliza was both a colonised Irish woman and a coloniser, entangled in the violent frontiers of early Australia. She was mistress to the Batman household and profited from this large enterprise in the midst of a pastoral boom and the expulsion of Aboriginal peoples from their traditional lands. </p>
<p>Throughout her life, Eliza negotiated harsh penal servitude, privilege and mobility as the mistress of the Batman family’s large pastoral holdings across two southeastern colonial frontiers in the 1830s. Although the convict stain followed her all her life, Eliza was not a low-class woman or prostitute as some biographers have suggested. In her final years she endured dire poverty and suffered a violent death. She was murdered in a rooming house in Geelong, while living under another pseudonym, Sarah Willoughby.</p>
<p>There is no entry for Eliza in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The scant accounts of her life tend to be stereotypical. In the dictionary entry on <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/batman-john-1752">John Batman</a> she is framed largely as a woman of “somewhat abandoned character”, although historian P.L Brown concedes she was “an able woman” who “wrote a good letter”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529963/original/file-20230605-17-1npnd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert S. Close’s book. 1957.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the only dedicated account of her life, Robert S. Close’s racy novel, Eliza Callaghan (published 1957), follows Eliza from London and Newgate Gaol to her introduction to John Batman. The sensational by-line on the cover reads: “Untamed […] she fought for life and love”. Historians, mostly male, have reinvented her repeatedly, just as Eliza, in her own lifetime, reinvented herself.</p>
<p>Archival sources of Eliza’s voice are fragmentary. There are no diaries or collections of personal correspondence discovered to date. However, a close reading of surrounding sources reveals much about Eliza and her experiences during her life. As researchers, we find her story tests the limits of memorialisation – there are no easy narratives here.</p>
<h2>Mistress at Kingston</h2>
<p>In Tasmania, the Batman property “Kingston” was a large station situated on Plangermaireener Aboriginal land in the Ben Lomond region.</p>
<p>Batman had taken part in and profited from the Black War between Aboriginal people and settlers in Tasmania (1828–1834), as his household at Kingston became a depot and service point in the execution of “roving parties” and orchestrated attacks against Aboriginal peoples.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529966/original/file-20230605-29-jadchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kingston, John Batman’s property in Tasmania. Photographer: G. S. Roberts, c. 1914–1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Acc. no. H22711, A. C. Dreier Postcard Collection, State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is well recorded that John Batman had participated in <a href="https://www.ourtasmania.com.au/people-batman.html">the “Black line”</a> and organised these “roving parties” from his property at Kingston during the genocidal war against Aboriginal peoples. It is also documented that in September 1829 he led the Ben Lomond massacre, where <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=482">at least 17 Aboriginal people died in a dawn attack</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-evidence-for-the-tasmanian-genocide-86828">Explainer: the evidence for the Tasmanian genocide</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It was during this attack that John Batman abducted the two-year-old boy Aboriginal Rolepana (renamed by the Batmans “Ben Lomond”). Batman reported afterwards to British Colonial Secretary, John Burnett, that he kept the child <a href="https://www.ourtasmania.com.au/people-batman.html">because he wanted “to rear it”</a>.</p>
<p>During this time Lurnerminner (renamed “Jacky” or “Jack Allen”) was at Kingston. A third Aboriginal boy was also held there, renamed “John Batman”. We have not discovered what became of him.</p>
<p>Eliza, as mistress of Kingston, was a central part of the daily business activities of the household and station and its role as a depot for roving parties. The pastoral home, or station, was a site of colonial domesticity, but it was also an unhomely “contact zone” in which Eliza, as the mother and mistress of the household, taught the dispossessed Aboriginal boys to read and to recite the Lord’s Prayer. </p>
<p>Eliza had the boys baptised. On 2 June 1830, John Batman rode home to Kingston for the baptism of his four daughters and Rolepana, the survivor of the Ben Lomond massacre. In this new colonial world, Rolepana lost his Plangermaireener name. </p>
<p>At Kingston, the boys were used as labourers: they drove the plough, milked the cows, and tended the swine. There is <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-76231-9_6">some evidence</a> that they were “flogged with a whip”. Aboriginal children like Rolepana and Lurnerminner were taken from their own families to become reincorporated into the colonial homestead as dependants and servants. They were enfolded in colonial intimacies that recast acts of aggression as acts of kindness and civilisation, and dispersal of Aboriginal families as care.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530225/original/file-20230606-25-5zryct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emily Bowring, ‘Ben Lomond’, 1859.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">
Sketches in Early Tasmania and Victoria by Emily Bowring. von Stieglitz, K.R. (ed). Published by Fullers Bookshop Hobart, 1965.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Eliza was undeniably privileged by her race, she was also impoverished by her gender. Later in Melbourne, upon her husband’s death in May 1839, she was cruelly written out of Batman’s will and given only five pounds, leaving her destitute with eight children to care for. </p>
<p>A long fight ensued over the Batman will, which languished in the shadow of Melbourne’s chancery court. Eliza eventually lost her home and much of the family’s land holdings. Her young son, Charles Batman, had died. She could not support her daughters, so they were separated and sent to the households of friends around Port Phillip.</p>
<p>By contrast, John Batman’s death left the two young Aboriginal boys, Lurnerminner and Rolepana, without access to the network of support that was available to the Batman children. These boys from Tasmania were left largely to fend for themselves in Melbourne.</p>
<p>Rolepana went on to work for colonist George Ware, but died in Melbourne in 1842. Lurnerminner went to sea and worked on whaling ships, perhaps claiming a kind of freedom offshore that was not possible onshore. He later returned to Tasmania to live at Oyster Cove Aboriginal Station, south of Hobart. </p>
<h2>Pellonymyna</h2>
<p>There is another hidden woman in this story: the Aboriginal woman named Pellonymyna. Names are touchstones in the poetics of memorialisation, and their use and exchange, especially across cultures, can be potent. While Rolepana lost his Plangermaireener identity to be christened “Ben Lomond”, the Batmans’ seventh daughter claimed a Plangermaireener name. </p>
<p>In July 1834, Eliza gave birth to this daughter. The Batmans named this child Pelonamena Frances Darling Batman, after Pellonymyna, or Pellenominer, an Aboriginal woman from Ben Lomond. </p>
<p>In the midst of the land war, Pellonymyna was incarcerated at Flinders Island Aboriginal station, along with others, and placed under the guardianship of the commandant, Frances Darling. Darling was well known to the Batman family, and it seems this appellation was made partly in his honour.</p>
<p>Travelling Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker also met Pellonymyna on Flinders Island, and her name appears in Walker’s unpublished journal in a list of Aboriginal people held there. On the surface, this naming appears be a mark of affection and reciprocal exchange. But it is a disquieting gesture to the Plangermaireener people the Batmans aggressively displaced. The Aboriginal woman, Pellonymyna (also known as Bangum or Flora), was <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.400935459168555">later sent to the Oyster Cove Aboriginal Station</a>, south of Hobart. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529968/original/file-20230605-17-f8ybx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Pellonymyna’ recorded in Quaker George Washington Walker’s unpublished journal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This exchange of a name is an example of the uneasy ways forced colonial kinships were made and memorialised under the sign of home and family. It was through these apparently familial vectors of imperial power – where land, homes and children and names were taken from Aboriginal people – that everyday domestic yet unhomely relationships were forged on southeastern frontiers. </p>
<p>In 1851 Eliza’s daughter, Pelonamena Frances Darling Batman, married Port Phillip resident Daniel Bunce, who later became director of the Geelong Botanical Gardens. Together they had two infant children, although neither survived past one year. Pelonamena died at the age of 25.</p>
<p>Across all the southeastern colonies European women and men were making homes – and at the same time Aboriginal people and families were losing their homes, land and children. </p>
<p>These gendered, domestic borderlands of colonialism in Australia still require far more historical scrutiny. The politics of their memorialisation will always be challenging.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penny Edmonds receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Berry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Eliza Batman has remained largely a footnote to her husband, whose dark deeds in the war over land are now well-known. How should we remember her today?
Penny Edmonds, Matthew Flinders Professor, Flinders University
Michelle Berry, Adjunct researcher, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206066
2023-05-23T12:02:24Z
2023-05-23T12:02:24Z
Victoria bites $117 billion bullet, begins the long march of land tax reform
<p>The Andrews government’s ninth budget is its toughest. The bill from Victoria’s COVID experience, as well as the state government’s ambitious infrastructure spending, has finally come due.</p>
<p>The pandemic has added more than $30 billion to the state’s total net debt, bringing the total to a whooping $117 billion. (New South Wales’s state debt, by comparison, is <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/1-3b-in-a-month-nsw-hit-by-pre-poll-budget-blowout-20230308-p5cqke.html">about $80 billion</a>.)</p>
<p>Victoria’s floods in 2022 have added to the debt. But so too has the Andrews goverment’s borrowing for its $90 billion “<a href="https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/">Big Build</a>”, encompassing projects from removing Melbourne’s level crossings, extending Melbourne’s <a href="https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/metro-tunnel">underground rail network</a> and building <a href="https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/suburban-rail-loop">a suburban rail loop</a>.</p>
<p>The state’s debt load was manageable when interest rates were low. But with borrowing rates now almost 4% and rising, interest payments are swallowing increasing amounts of the government’s budget. Interest payments on the debt are expected to be $5.5 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, rising to $8 billion by 2026-27.</p>
<p>There are only two ways to fix this: reduce spending or increase taxes. Andrews and his treasurer Tim Pallas have chosen to do a bit of both, with a ten-year plan to pay down the $30 billion COVID debt.</p>
<h2>Less infrastructure spending, more taxes</h2>
<p>The Victorian government has already announced it will delay several infrastructure projects. The Melbourne Airport rail link and the Geelong rail upgrade have been put on ice due to the federal government’s ongoing review of infrastructure projects. If they are delayed, as seems likely, they will lower the debt burden of the state.</p>
<p>This will be a shame for Melbourne’s frequent flyers, but is probably the right call. Infrastructure Australia says the construction sector is already at capacity on large infrastructure projects. This significantly increases the likelihood of cost and time blowouts. Infrastructure Australia expects the (recently widened) Tullamarine Freeway won’t reach capacity for at least another decade, so delaying the rail link is probably the best course of action.</p>
<p>To help pay down the debt, a suite of tax hikes has been implemented, primarily rises in payroll tax (falling predominantly on large businesses) and land tax (which is largely paid by landlords). </p>
<p>The measures are expected to raise more than $8 billion over the next four years, although they will be put in place for a decade.</p>
<h2>Reforming land tax</h2>
<p>Beyond the immediate task of paying down debt, the Victorian government has taken on the task of land tax reform, proposing to eliminate stamp duty on all industrial and commercial land in favour of an annual land tax.</p>
<p>No changes affect residential land, at least for now. But this could change if the reform proves popular.</p>
<p>Land taxes are the most efficient, and hardest to dodge, form of taxation. </p>
<p>Taxes on labour, such as income tax, can <a href="https://taxpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/publication/ttpi-working-papers/11429/marginal-excess-burden-taxation-overlapping-generations-model">discourage work</a>. Taxes on company profits can discourage investment and lead businesses to set up shop elsewhere. Land cannot be moved, and taxing it does not discourage its use.</p>
<p>The biggest problem with replacing stamp duty with land tax is that it often takes a lot of time and money for a fair transition to occur. In the Australian Capital Territory, a transition that began in 2012 is <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6203608/the-act-governments-plan-for-rates-reform-and-what-comes-next-explained/">taking 20 years</a>. The Victorian government proposes doing it in ten years, with further details to be released later this year.</p>
<p>The next transaction to occur after July 2024 will still attract stamp duty, but transitions after that initial one will be shifted to an annual land tax model.</p>
<p>The Andrews government also has a plan to phase out taxes on business insurance over the next ten years. </p>
<p>This small, but highly inefficient, tax has long been criticised by economists as it has punished businesses that seek to mitigate risk by buying public liability or professional indemnity. Removing it, albeit slowly over the next decade, will help the Victorian economy grow over the coming years.</p>
<p>Budgets are all about choices. The Victorian government has no easy choices. </p>
<p>Faced with a mountain of debt, it has outlined a plan for paying down the debt with a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts. The job remains far from complete, but this budget is a decent first step to get Victoria’s finances back on track.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isaac Gross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Andrews government has made a decent first step to reduce Victoria’s mountain of debt by $30 billion over the next decade.
Isaac Gross, Lecturer in Economics, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193860
2022-11-16T01:51:17Z
2022-11-16T01:51:17Z
How superblocks can free up and improve CBD space for the people of Melbourne – a step-by-step guide
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494367/original/file-20221109-24-sts1xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2210%2C1055&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">frontispiece</span> </figcaption></figure><p>For 185 years, Melbourne’s <a href="https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/hoddlegridheritage">Hoddle Grid</a> – the ordered layout of CBD streets and blocks designed in 1837 – has dictated the flow of people and vehicles in the city centre. But how well does the grid serve 21st-century needs?</p>
<p>Melbourne faces three interconnected challenges that conflict with a business-as-usual, car-based grid. These are: how to end the dominance of cars; how to respond to the reality of the city centre as a residential area; and how to “<a href="https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/business/grow-business/business-events/Pages/reigniting-melbourne.aspx">reignite</a>” post-pandemic activity in the CBD. </p>
<p>Superblocks are an approach, pioneered in <a href="https://theconversation.com/superblocks-are-transforming-barcelona-they-might-work-in-australian-cities-too-123354">Barcelona</a>, to making urban areas more liveable and people-friendly. </p>
<p>A superblock covers an area of multiple city blocks – typically nine in a 3x3 format – that excludes through traffic. In this space, cyclists, walkers and residents have priority, though cars still have low-speed access to all buildings within the area. Superblocks transform formerly car-dominated streets into public spaces that can be used for a range of activities. </p>
<p>We have developed a step-by-step approach to introducing superblocks to Melbourne.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Diagram explaining the superblock concept" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495512/original/file-20221115-17-zsbgg4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/superblocks-are-transforming-barcelona-they-might-work-in-australian-cities-too-123354">Superblocks are transforming Barcelona. They might work in Australian cities too</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Colonialism lives on rent-free in our cities</h2>
<p>The Hoddle Grid was used an <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/4/3/77/htm">instrument of power</a> for expropriating land from peoples of the Eastern Kulin nation. It asserted formal control over lands that John Batman had acquired <a href="https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/Batman_treaty">illegally</a>. </p>
<p>The array of regular blocks would have helped with selling land to distant speculators by signalling equality among bidders, military control and efficient circulation of people and air. </p>
<p>For much of the 20th century, the grid has been open to vehicle through traffic. More recent developments have given nods to pedestrians, laneways and liveability. </p>
<p>Over <a href="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/hdp.au.prod.app.com-participate.files/9815/2635/8912/Transport_Strategy_Refresh_-_Background_paper_-_City_Space.pdf">60% of street space</a> in the grid is still given over to cars, although these account for less than 10% of all trips within the grid. As a result, it is still a significant <a href="https://public.tableau.com/shared/FRK3SNYZR?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link&:embed=y">site of injury</a>, involving both road crashes and colonial dispossession.</p>
<p>While the grid has remained conceptually stuck in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the central business district, despite its name, has become a residential area. Promoted by the <a href="https://architectureau.com/articles/melbourne-releases-most-forward-looking-plans-since-postcode-3000/">Postcode 3000</a> project in the 1990s, there was a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/from-doughnut-to-metropolis-how-melbourne-banished-its-tumbleweeds-20180216-h0w7gw.html">shift</a> from a “doughnut city” – populated suburbs around a hollow centre – to a cafe society. </p>
<p>The city centre went from <a href="https://www.routledge.com/City-Edge/Charlesworth/p/book/9780750663533">750 registered residential units</a> in the early 1980s to <a href="https://data.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Property/Residential-dwellings/44kh-ty54">more than 28,000</a> today. This spurred a rise in the number of bars, cafes and restaurants. </p>
<p>To reshape the city centre in ways that better meet the needs of Melburnians now and in the future, the grid must be redesigned. It is time, in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/54097541/Hospicing_Modernity_Facing_humamitys_wrongs_and_the_implications_for_social_activism">the words</a> of Canadian scholar <a href="https://ubc.academia.edu/VanessadeOliveiraAndreotti">Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti</a>, to “wake up, smarten up, step up, own up, clean up, grow up, and show up”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-australian-cities-have-changed-in-the-last-30-years-65870">Density, sprawl, growth: how Australian cities have changed in the last 30 years</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How can superblocks improve the grid for people?</h2>
<p>But how can superblocks be applied in car-dominated Melbourne? A staged and bespoke approach to gathering information and planning routes is needed. We suggest the following steps.</p>
<h2>1. Audit the grid</h2>
<p>Hoddle’s innovation was to have a mixture of little and main streets running parallel to one another. As a result, the sizes of junctions vary.</p>
<p>As well as assessing the locations of junctions and what they are like, in Melbourne we must also consider tram routes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of the area of junctions from 200 to 2000 sqm" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495349/original/file-20221115-21-zirg8v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Locations of large and small junctions in the Hoddle Grid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónica Suárez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of junctions, cars dominate alongside trams and buses" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495351/original/file-20221115-19-wa1y1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Junctions categorised by vehicle types crossing at each intersection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónica Suárez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Work out what configurations are needed and where</h2>
<p>The rectangular form, mix of large and little streets, tram lines and existing pedestrian areas all suggest departures from the “classic” 3x3 superblock that looks like a hashtag. We’re looking at including some 2x3 superblocks. All these forms should be considered to increase and improve space for pedestrians. </p>
<p>We propose four different options. In the following maps the green dots are junctions that have been made highly accessible for pedestrians. The more green dots, the better. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing the largest number of superblocks for Melbourne" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495356/original/file-20221115-15-4qw9ls.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Option 1: Yields the largest number of superblocks by rerouting traffic along the roads with tramways. This involves sending traffic down Bourke Street Mall and rerouting Swanston Street trams along Russell Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónicá Suarez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Option 2 with less green dots and superblocks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495360/original/file-20221115-21-6qlwcg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Option 2: Yields fewer green dots and maintains the Bourke Street pedestrian mall, but moves the Swanston Street tram line to Russell Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónicá Suarez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Option 3: a more conservative proposal that works around the current pedestrianisation of Bourke and Swanston streets and maintains the tram where it is." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495365/original/file-20221115-21-jmwzqc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Option 3: A more conservative proposal that maintains current tram locations. However, in a superblock plan the centre junctions should not be a location for movement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónicá Suarez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of the most conservative approach, leaving everything as is and include trams in the superblocks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495367/original/file-20221115-22-je45wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Option 4: Acknowledges that some junctions may have to include trams in the centre of the superblock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónicá Suarez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Assess the success of different options</h2>
<p>Option 1 above increases the area of footpaths from around 169,000 square metres to 385,480 square metres - an increase of around 11 MCGs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing existing footpaths with an area of 169,076 square metres." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495371/original/file-20221115-17-6cpasl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Existing footpaths in the Hoddle Grid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónica Suárez using data from City of Melbourne</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing the footpaths in green" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495369/original/file-20221115-19-w5cpj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Option 1 produces a 2.3 times increase in footpath space and greater pedestrian connectivity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Alexia Yacoubian and Mónicá Suarez</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Placing open spaces in junctions radically changes the pedestrian experience. Using a <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.06.515356v1">method from ecology</a>, we can calculate a pedestrian connectivity index – the probability that a pedestrian can get from one point on a footpath to another in the grid without crossing a road. For the current grid, the probability is 0.2%. For the superblock model, it’s 4% – a 20-fold increase. </p>
<p>Even though pedestrians have more access, unlike a pedestrianisation plan, vehicle access to the buildings remains largely the same.</p>
<h2>4. Decide how to use all this new open space</h2>
<p>Once the questions shift from a matter of “if” to “how”, other questions come into play. What to do about car parking? We know <a href="https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1671673/v1_covered.pdf?c=1655396502">off-street garages within 200 metres</a> of on-street car parks could accommodate half of this parking. </p>
<p>How can these new spaces in junctions be used? The renderings below (by Mónica Suárez and Alexia Yacoubian using Google Street View images) provide some ideas. The first shows a “green dot” space where a car-only junction has been converted to pedestrian space. The second shows a “yellow dot” junction shared by trams and pedestrians.</p>
<hr>
<h3>Before and after: corner of Exhibition and Little Lonsdale streets</h3>
<iframe frameborder="0" class="juxtapose" width="100%" height="300" src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=cad95b86-6174-11ed-b5bd-6595d9b17862"></iframe>
<hr>
<h3>Before and after: corner of Swanston and Lonsdale streets</h3>
<iframe frameborder="0" class="juxtapose" width="100%" height="300" src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=f6c6b6c0-6175-11ed-b5bd-6595d9b17862"></iframe>
<hr>
<p>These are pilot ideas - e.g. the discussion should continue to how the grid interacts with surrounding streets and with Birrarung. But it could also act as a template for other cities in Australia that are similarly modern, colonial and grid-based.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cars-have-taken-over-our-neighbourhoods-kid-friendly-superblocks-are-a-way-for-residents-to-reclaim-their-streets-187276">Cars have taken over our neighbourhoods. Kid-friendly superblocks are a way for residents to reclaim their streets</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>5. It’s a marathon not a sprint</h2>
<p>For more than 30 years, cities around the world from Curitiba to Barcelona have in effect been saying: thank you, dear car, for all you have given us in the 20th century, but now it is time to move on. </p>
<p>In practice, this needs to be a gentle and caring process with many steps, learning as we go. It is as de Oliveira Andreotti might argue, low-intensity activism and a marathon rather than a sprint.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgments: The ideas in this article were developed as part of a workshop at RMIT. Participants included Zena Cumpston, Leanne Hodyl and representatives from City of Melbourne, Department of Transport, Yarra Trams, Infrastructure Victoria, RACV, RMIT, Melbourne and Monash Universities. Any errors remain the authors’.</em></p>
<p><em>Correction: This article has been updated to correct an error in the number of registered residential units in the central Melbourne area (postcode 3000). The figure of 96,000 should have been 28,000.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marco Amati receives funding from a variety of organisations including AURIN, ARC, Hort Innovation, State and Local Government. He is currently a co-convenor of this course: <a href="https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/green-corridors-for-clean-air">https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/green-corridors-for-clean-air</a> </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris De Gruyter receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management (AITPM).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Salvador Rueda receives funding from multiple multilateral and national government sources. He is working pro bono on the Melbourne superblocks concept.</span></em></p>
The Hoddle Grid that dictates the flow of vehicles and people in central Melbourne has had its day. It can be remade to reduce the dominance of cars and create a liveable city for the 21st century.
Marco Amati, Associate Professor of International Planning, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
Chris De Gruyter, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
Salvador Rueda, Co-Director, Maestría Online en Ciudades, Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña (IAAC)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193111
2022-10-28T00:44:46Z
2022-10-28T00:44:46Z
What’s in the mud? Flood victims’ fears eased by early test results
<p>Flooding stirs up river sediments, which can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126691">spread contaminants</a> in our waterways and floodplains. Flood water can carry sediments bearing <a href="https://eos.org/articles/when-rivers-are-contaminated-floods-are-only-the-first-problem">contaminants from a range of sources</a>, both historical and new, such as sewage, petrol stations, industrial yards and farming areas. This is worrying many people whose homes and gardens have been hit by repeated floods across eastern Australia. </p>
<p>One of the sites of the latest flooding is the suburb of Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s inner west. The Maribyrnong River’s industrial past means <a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/about-epa/publications/2037">swimming was already not recommended</a>. The community has longstanding concerns about water and sediment quality. The flood washed those concerns right into the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/i-need-start-all-over-again-the-clean-up-in-maribyrnong-begins-20221015-p5bq0h.html">homes of hundreds</a> of residents.</p>
<p>In response, EPA Victoria’s Science division mobilised last week, at the request of Maribyrnong Council, to provide some answers for residents. We took samples from the river at three locations. We also collected and analysed flood sediments in public areas and residents’ gardens. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/flood-impacted-rivers">results so far</a> from across the impacted area are consistent – the chemicals and compounds analysed were mostly below levels of concern for human health. The exception was concentrations of pathogens like <em>E. coli</em>, which is linked to sewage. Exposure to sunlight is expected to reduce these pathogen levels. </p>
<p>The best thing you can do to protect yourself at these times is to stay clear of the river and wear gloves, boots and masks while cleaning up. Leave your dirty shoes outside and wash your hands regularly. While flood conditions and clean-ups continue, stay abreast of the <a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/incidents/victorian-floods-october-2022">most recent advice</a> on managing the hazards.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a hi-viz vest kneels down to collect a sample from a nature strip" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492045/original/file-20221027-29153-bp702g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An EPA worker collects samples from sediments left by the floods in Maribyrnong.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-go-wading-in-flood-water-if-you-can-help-it-its-a-health-risk-for-humans-and-dogs-too-178027">Don't go wading in flood water if you can help it. It's a health risk for humans – and dogs too</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why was Maribyrnong at high risk?</h2>
<p>The river flooding raised significant concerns in the community because it drains from an industrial catchment with <a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/current-projects-issues/pfas-in-maribyrnong-catchment">known contamination</a>. The catchment is also home to <a href="https://www.melbourneairport.com.au/Corporate/About-us/Environment/PFAS-Management">Tullamarine Airport</a>, a known source of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (<a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/environmental-information/pfas">PFAS</a>). These industrial chemicals are persistent – they’re known as “<a href="https://phys.org/news/2022-10-chemicals-persist-wastewater-treatment-crops.html">forever chemicals</a>” – and spread easily through the environment. </p>
<p>Maribyrnong sits on a river floodplain, which accommodates excess water and sediment during high flow. The redistribution of contaminated sediment across such areas during floods is <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2014.02.004">well established</a>. Research also has found examples of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.12.079">toxicity in farm animals</a> from such events.</p>
<p>In addition to daily water sampling along the Maribyrnong, we have to date sampled sediment from 109 gardens and 13 public areas. To reflect the potential sources of contamination, flood water and sediment are being analysed for a suite of:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>potentially toxic trace metals – arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, manganese, nickel, lead and zinc</p></li>
<li><p>chemicals present in oil, coal and petroleum known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons</p></li>
<li><p>PFAS</p></li>
<li><p>pathogen indicator bacteria including <em>E. coli</em> and <em>Enterococci</em>. </p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="EPA worker stands next to his vehicle as he labels newly collected samples" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492049/original/file-20221027-18797-cqxe8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The EPA tested for a wide range of contaminants in samples from 109 gardens and 13 public areas that were flooded in Maribyrnong.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/victorias-wild-storms-show-how-easily-disasters-can-threaten-our-water-supply-162846">Victoria's wild storms show how easily disasters can threaten our water supply</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>So why are contamination levels not higher?</h2>
<p>Sediment cores from floodplains and riverbanks allow scientists to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1071/MF14111">evaluate what it contains</a>. Bands of coarse particles – sands and silts – from high-flow events are interspersed with finer clay deposited as the water recedes. Finer deposits often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2007.05.011">contain more contaminants</a> than the coarser material. </p>
<p>This is because the surface-area-to-volume ratio of a particle increases with decreasing particle size. This means there is more surface area for <a href="https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=csiro:EP149391&dsid=DS3">metal ions</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10934529.2019.1632625">organic contaminants</a> to bind to finer sediments.</p>
<p>Floods are known to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.10.004">deposit potentially toxic trace metals</a> on floodplains. However, other large flood events, such as the one caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, have <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18934-hurricanes-cleaned-up-lead-laden-new-orleans/">produced outcomes</a> like we see in Maribyrnong, where clean sediments have been draped over more contaminated urban soils. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/flood-impacted-rivers">results so far</a> show flood sediments contained average concentrations of lead, a well-known contaminant, about o<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2013C00288/Html/Volume_2#_Toc351712081">ne-third of the national guideline</a> for residential gardens. Lead was an element of concern because of the <a href="https://wwiiathome.com.au/efm.html">former munitions factory</a> in Maribyrnong.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/backyard-hens-eggs-contain-40-times-more-lead-on-average-than-shop-eggs-research-finds-187442">Backyard hens' eggs contain 40 times more lead on average than shop eggs, research finds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Levels of PFAS chemicals were also very low. On average, concentrations were roughly a tenth of the <a href="https://haveyoursay.agriculture.gov.au/nemp-on-pfas/widgets/385062/documents">values regarded as being of concern</a> for human health. </p>
<p>Small amounts of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (<a href="https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/pfos.aspx">PFOS</a>) and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (<a href="https://www.industrialchemicals.gov.au/consumers-and-community/and-poly-fluorinated-substances-pfas">PFHxS</a>) were detected. This is unsurprising given the upstream sources at Tullamarine Airport.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1581434936384401408"}"></div></p>
<h2>What’s the next step?</h2>
<p>EPA Science has engaged the State Emergency Service to set up similar sampling in regional locations. This will help to provide the same evidence-based guidance to communities affected by floods in those areas. This work should begin next week, with the organisations working together on sampling and fast-tracked laboratory analysis. </p>
<p>The current focus of this new rapid response from EPA Victoria is for flood-impacted communities. The work will shortly shift to all Victorian residents who want to know what’s in their soil. Through EPA’s <a href="https://www.epa.vic.gov.au/for-community/get-involved/citizen-science-program/gardensafe">GardenSafe</a> program, they can have their garden soil tested, free of charge, for trace element contaminants and soil quality indicators.</p>
<p>Building homes on a floodplain, which by definition is a plain that floods and where homes will always be at risk, arguably <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/research/natural-disasters/floods/causes-and-impacts">increases the impacts of climate change</a>. That said, it’s not a new venture for humans who have been taking advantage of accessible and organically rich floodplains <a href="https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/metadata/publications/ranking-of-the-worlds-cities-to-coastal-flooding/11240357">for centuries</a>. </p>
<p>Given how much flood-prone land is now developed, the crux of long-term management is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-causing-sydneys-monster-flood-crisis-and-3-ways-to-stop-it-from-happening-again-186285">ensure we are better prepared</a>. Future decisions should aim to create adequate space for rivers to <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-lived-through-hurricane-katrina-and-helped-design-the-rebuild-floods-will-always-come-but-we-can-build-better-to-prepare-153452">do their natural work</a>.</p>
<p>Rapid sampling and advice do not fix the root cause of the problem. However, this work can ease residents’ fears, allowing them to focus on cleaning up and rebuilding their lives after the flood.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-a-state-of-sandbagging-what-can-we-learn-from-all-the-floods-here-and-overseas-193011">Beyond a state of sandbagging: what can we learn from all the floods, here and overseas?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p><em>The authors undertook the work discussed in this article as employees of the EPA Victoria.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193111/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Patrick Taylor works for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria. He is the Executive Director of EPA Science and is also Victoria's Chief Environmental Scientist. He is an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney. The EPA funded the analysis of the samples mentioned in the article as part of its response to the Victorian statewide flood emergency. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kara Fry works for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria. She is a Citizen Science Officer in EPA's Science Partnerships team. Previously, Kara was a research assistant at Macquarie University where she managed the citizen science programs VegeSafe and DustSafe. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Leahy works for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria. He is the Principal Scientist - Freshwater. He is an Associate of RMIT University STEM College.</span></em></p>
Foods stir up river sediments and can spread contaminants across the floodplain. It’s a risk in areas with a history of industrial pollution, like Maribyrnong, but EPA test results are reassuring.
Mark Patrick Taylor, Victoria's Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University
Kara Fry, Honorary Researcher, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University
Paul Leahy, Research Associate, RMIT STEM College, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188815
2022-09-22T20:15:34Z
2022-09-22T20:15:34Z
Friday essay: reclaiming artist-musician Anita Lane from the ‘despised’ label of muse
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485084/original/file-20220916-17-dl68vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C8%2C1794%2C1188&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anita Lane</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MuteEnhanced</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I heard Anita Lane had died aged 61 in April 2021, a memory flashed up: I’m sitting beside her at the foot of a bed in the mid-1980s, and she turns to me to say how much my hair has grown. </p>
<p>I don’t recall why we were sitting on that bed in a darkened bedroom of the unpretentious Paddington flat in Sydney she shared with her boyfriend, Andrew. I don’t know why I remember this moment, out of so many insignificant moments evaporated by time and lost in the wash of youthful substance use. But it vibrates with aching, incomprehensible poignancy. Perhaps, I sense a glimmer of the fleeting subconsciousness connecting us in our vulnerability. </p>
<p>We were young women then, in our 20s (Anita some years my senior), trying to free ourselves from the hold of charismatic exes, who both happened to be living legend “punk” musicians. She and <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-transcendent-rage-nick-cave-and-the-red-hand-files-144735">Nick Cave</a> had called it quits several years earlier (they would soon reunite), and I was raw and messy after a parting of ways with Rob Younger, singer of the influential band <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/10/radio-birdman-brutally-honest-doco-cements-legacy-of-volatile-sydney-punk-band?">Radio Birdman</a> and singer-songwriter in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Christs">The New Christs</a>. </p>
<p>We weren’t friends, as such; we just had encounters around the traps over a period of many months – though she was an indie “it girl”, so I’d heard of her well before we met, and we had mutual friends over the years.</p>
<p>I remembered, too, that Anita once saved my life in that flat – but that story would only distract us.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TylcuxIYW2Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Anita Lane’s ‘The World’s a Girl’, from her final album, Sex O'Clock.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More than a muse</h2>
<p>Anita Lane was a singer, songwriter and recording artist, who released <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/479734-Anita-Lane-Dirty-Sings">a solo EP</a> and <a href="https://www.discogs.com/master/67147-Anita-Lane-Dirty-Pearl">two</a> <a href="https://www.discogs.com/master/67145-Anita-Lane-Sex-OClock">albums</a> between the late 1980s and early 2000s. A central player in the 1970s Melbourne art scene – peopled by the likes of Nick Cave, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowland_S._Howard">Rowland S. Howard</a>, comedian <a href="https://theconversation.com/noice-different-unusual-watching-kath-and-kim-as-a-locked-down-historian-166261">Gina Riley</a> and filmmaker <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dogs-in-space-30-years-on-a-once-maligned-film-comes-of-age-56288">Richard Lowenstein</a> – she contributed lyrics to some of Cave’s most famous early songs.</p>
<p>Their first co-written recording, <a href="https://youtu.be/NQS8rwIo_Cc">A Dead Song</a>, from The Birthday Party’s <a href="https://www.nickcave.com/releases/prayers-on-fire/">Prayers on Fire</a>, caught John Peel’s attention for high rotation. She co-penned <a href="https://www.nickcave.com/lyric/from-her-to-eternity-2/">From Her to Eternity</a>, the classic song on the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ first studio album of the same name. She is often cited <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/anita-lane-nick-cave-dead-1162241/">in the music press</a> as a founding or brief member of The Bad Seeds. </p>
<p>She worked closely with Mick Harvey, who produced or co-produced all her major recordings, and she was also an impressive visual artist. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mGOavpn7sbo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">From Her to Eternity, co-written by Anita Lane and Nick Cave, was performed in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the announcement of Anita’s death, obituaries popped up in online music magazines celebrating her as Cave’s muse. It is understandable journalists and biographers underscored crucial Cave/Lane collaborations – she directly aided his ascent – but these nods provoked indignant criticism among fans and friends. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/arts/music/anita-lane-dead.html">New York Times article</a> was a prime example of how the media outs itself as sexist. The headline, tagging Anita simplistically as a “rocker”, was followed by an intro that read, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ms. Lane was Nick Cave’s collaborator and girlfriend during his formative period and helped define his sound. She also made records of her own.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It could have been ironic comedy gold in other hands, but instead stands as an illustration of how women’s creative accomplishments are devalued. </p>
<p>Anita seems to have been sprinkled with an extra dash of <em>je ne sais quoi</em> fairy dust. So, she was idealised and rhapsodised over as a “muse” – a tag that followed her into the mediatised afterlife. </p>
<p>As Cave wrote on his blog, <a href="https://www.theredhandfiles.com/tell-us-about-anita/">The Red Hand Files</a>, Anita “despised the concept of the muse but was everybody’s”. She profoundly affected people and their art-making, and the media can’t be expected to disregard that. But the coverage throughout her career failed to convey that, as Cave candidly proclaimed, Anita was “the smartest and most talented of all of us, by far”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/conversing-with-the-divine-why-we-still-need-our-muses-37051">Conversing with the divine – why we still need our muses</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘A living artwork’</h2>
<p>Melbourne-raised, Brooklyn-based composer, producer and performer <a href="http://www.foetus.org/content/">J.G. Thirlwell</a> (known as Foetus, Manorexia etc., and for his work on Archer) knew Anita from around Melbourne. They became firm friends after she moved to London to be with Nick and Co. “She resonated wherever she went because she had an incredible magnetic presence which was very alluring […] this incandescent presence,” says Thirlwell. </p>
<p>He is not alone in describing Anita as “a living artwork”. It wasn’t just a matter of putting out a few records, and she didn’t inspire people just by being captivating. She had a huge impact, Thirlwell says, because she was a great artist, but </p>
<blockquote>
<p>not the sort of person whose art you could catalogue and quantify; her art was the way she thought and moved through life. Everything was artful about her.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376579.The_Andy_Warhol_Diaries">The Andy Warhol Diaries</a>, Warhol says he coined the term “superstar” for people who are very talented, but whose talent can’t be sold. Anita was a superstar, and that’s why the reductive coverage galled many. They had it the wrong way around, casting her a muse-artist – when her innate creativity meant she was always an artist first: an artist-muse. </p>
<p>Commenting on a public Facebook thread, after her death Mick Harvey took the press to task for straining to make tasteless and banal connections between Lane and Cave. He conceded that Anita’s mystery and her rebuff of showbiz glitz disadvantaged her. He added that he took solace, by contrast, from the outpouring and accolades from fans and acquaintances, which, he felt, got closer to the truth. </p>
<p>Anita was a contradiction. She had friends scattered far and wide, but was guarded and notoriously isolated, especially in her maturing years. She was a conspicuously absent interviewee in the 2011 documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2015298/">Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard</a>. She did not cooperate with Mark Mordue’s recent Cave biography, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460713211/boy-on-fire/">Boy on Fire: The Young Nick Cave</a>. And she would almost certainly have declined an interview request from me. (Harvey and Cave did not respond to interview requests.)</p>
<p>If you search the internet, you’ll find many images and references to her, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Lane">Wikipedia page</a>, and album reviews. You’ll find a few thoughtful homages, such as Eleanor Philpot’s <a href="https://thequietus.com/articles/29144-anita-lane">Unearthing A Pearl: Praising the Sexual Mysticism of Anita Lane</a> in The Quietus, which argues that her musical body of work was a pioneering study of “female sexuality”. And you might come across the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/anitalaneforfans/">Anita Lane Facebook page</a>, run by a French fan.</p>
<p>The only remnant of interview footage I unearthed was a degraded and grainy 21-second clip from the 1992 Dutch documentary <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/nick-cave-documentary-stranger-in-a-strange-land/">Stranger in a Strange Land</a>, where Anita, otherworldly, responds to an unheard question, presumably posed by filmmaker Bram Van Splunteren. “Well, he really does have a muse,” she says of Cave, in her distinctive doll voice, “and it’s not me. It’s a real one.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BpP9iWupUo0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard – Anita did not participate.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anita was precocious from an early age, with an organically <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-fluxus-movement-art-museums-galleries">Fluxus</a> experimental bent, and she was known for being a fount of inventive ideas that mostly vaporised once aired. As a visual artist, she had an assured hand that could magic an image in a streak of fast lines. Her eagle eye for weakness informed her merciless caricatures, and she often turned that laser vision against herself.</p>
<p>Bronwyn Adams/Bonney, a violinist with <a href="http://crimeandthecitysolution.org/">Crime & the City Solution</a>, says Anita was always busy “doing little drawings and making artworks” in a homely, creative practice mode. Cave confirms this, declaring that she would sit at his kitchen table sketching with a “clear, light line full of humour, throwing each drawing away and starting another”.</p>
<p>Anita was a disarmingly singular person. Yet, she is also the epitome of a certain kind of restless, unorthodox, creative young woman who came of age in the vapour trail of postwar nuclear-family modernism, transmuted by the 1960s and 70s counterculture. </p>
<p>Unconventional women coming up in the 70s and 80s were influenced by various art and fashion movements of the 20th century and second-wave feminism, but mainstream culture was still trapped in a patriarchal time warp. Anita grew up in the crosshairs of that cultural tension, oblivious to the looming, corporatised arts sector of the future. During that period, artistically inclined young people concentrated in inner cities, mostly surviving on the dole, dressing in op-shop fare, and often self-medicating on the regular. </p>
<p>In Sydney and Melbourne, hard drugs were everywhere, and were relatively plentiful and cheap. Some say heroin flowed so freely due to America turning a blind eye to poppy production and distribution during the dubious alliance between the US and the Taliban. Heroin was funnelled through Southeast Asia and ferried into Australia on private boats. </p>
<p>In the indie music milieu, we ran in packs, taking hours getting ready to records played loud, heading out to navigate dark clubs and suburban pubs when most were settling down to sleep. There were state-based rivalries, die-hard cliques, and miscellaneous sub-genres – sometimes allied, sometimes warring – and allegiances were forged and broken with the furore of ancient battlefields. Computers were in the realm of <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-old-2001-a-space-odyssey-still-offers-insight-about-the-future-102303">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> science-fiction; some of us didn’t even have a landline. People <em>visited each other</em>, dropping in with new vinyl or some stash. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-reasons-andy-warhol-is-so-popular-right-now-179865">Five reasons Andy Warhol is so popular right now</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The art school scene</h2>
<p>According to Bronwyn, a “near-mystical synchronicity” led to the core posse of the Melbourne art-music underworld finding each other in the pre-Ballroom St Kilda days circa 1978. </p>
<p>Bronwyn attended alternative Swinburne Community School, which brought her into contact with <a href="https://www.perimeterbooks.com/products/peter-milne-juvenilia">Peter Milne</a>, soon-to-be scene photographer and visual artist, and others who would become key players. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Anita had moved to Era, a “progressive” co-ed secondary school. </p>
<p>From there, she enrolled to study at Prahran art school (later amalgamated with the Victorian College of the Arts) where she befriended fellow student Rowland S. Howard. Rowland had declared himself the future of rock and roll aged 15; he went on to become a guitarist in <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/78466-The-Boys-Next-Door">The Boys Next Door</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birthday_Party_(band)">The Birthday Party</a> – and later, a solo artist. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lp41tokijrc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Anita Lane, solo artist, performing ‘Jesus Almost Got Me’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By all accounts, though Anita was outstanding as a visual artist, she lacked ambition and focus. As Cave <a href="https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nick-cave-anita-lane-tribute-25754/">detailed</a> on his blog, perhaps stretching the point, having secured a place at the “most prestigious art college in Australia”, Anita purchased an easel and some materials and “never went back in”. As Bronwyn says, “Her art was like drawing a perfect circle in the sand, and then the sea coming in and washing it away, and that was what she liked.” </p>
<p>Bronwyn recalls visiting Peter’s house, where Rowland was working on a logo for a xeroxed fanzine, Pulp, with his art-school friend in tow. “I’d heard about Anita and her best friend, Lisa Creswell, and how great they were,” says Bronwyn. “She hadn’t dyed her hair red yet. I think it was dark blonde. She had big eyes. A perfect, small nose and very full lips. She had these slender, Florentine hands. She had pale skin, very light, but with a gold tinge. Long legs, coltish.” </p>
<p>Anita wasn’t driven by trends, but she had a look: miniskirts, boots, and baby doll dresses. “She’d wear hot pants with a bib and sew a big heart on the front. She had her own aesthetic and philosophy,” but at a certain point, “she lost interest in being a clothes horse.” </p>
<p>Anita’s avant-garde edge and flair for creative expressions were evident. “She was an amazing fashion designer, but she didn’t do anything with it; she just did drawings of dresses. She wrote poetry, but she was more focused on visual art. She could have sculpted. She could have done anything.”</p>
<p>Anita was the kind of person who obsessed people. Many, including an adolescent and delicate Rowland S. Howard, were unrequitedly in love with her before Nick Cave entranced her into her first serious (albeit rocky and fitful) relationship and a lasting artistic camaraderie. They reportedly got together at a party in 1977, a few months after that nucleus formed. Cave took her to the Hilton for breakfast the following day, which was about as posh and passionate as a suburban boy could get.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A red-haired young woman and dark-haired man in suit and tie. Anita Lane and Nick Cave" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486021/original/file-20220922-26-pcat36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anita Lane and Nick Cave. Polaroid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jessamy Calkin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anita was 17, Nick was 19, and overnight, despite their youth, they became a power couple, emitting an instantly unified force-field of cool – though Anita was never self-consciously cool, as so many underground luminaries were. The Boys Next Door gigged around Melbourne furiously, and by 1979 the original cluster of 25 or so had boomed exponentially and congregated at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Ballroom_(Melbourne)">Crystal Ballroom</a>. </p>
<p>From there, Nick and Anita were launched onto their shared (if disparate) paths of prominence. He courted and fashioned global reputation with a product-centric, indefatigable work ethic. She made her mark with collaborative and sporadic solo musical offerings. </p>
<p>Bronwyn states that “she was more advanced than him, in terms of her personal vision”. Though encouragement flowed mutually, Anita influenced Nick critically from the start, sometimes styling him and making his clothes. Bronwyn gestures toward the piano key shirt featured in early promo shots of The Boys Next Door, which Cave sports with spiky hair and black eyeliner. </p>
<p>Anita was also an unacknowledged giver to Cave’s taker; he’s implied as much on the public record, bringing to mind John Lennon’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/oct/06/how-yoko-ono-helped-create-john-lennon-imagine">admirable admission</a> that ego prevented him from attributing Yoko Ono’s influence on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgkThdzX-8">Imagine</a> when it was released.</p>
<p>Couplings of creatives are often confounded by complications: creative conflicts, competitiveness, jostling for attention, pique at slights, failed reassurances. Not to mention tempestuous weather patterns involving feelings and sex. Loving a fêted frontman can lead to lashings of pain. While the menfolk of Indietown were generally more restrained than your Led Zeppelins or Mötley Crües, the titillation, temptations and touring inflamed wounds. </p>
<p>Biographical accounts of Cave’s early career during the years they were an intermittent couple make clear that he had affairs. While that worked both ways – and Anita was reportedly friendly towards his other women – there were signs she suffered more than she might have let on. </p>
<p>Other interpersonal intricacies could also play havoc. For instance, a man might find himself dealing (or rather not dealing) with a mentally ill girlfriend. Anita spoke about the depression that dogged her during an interview for <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/ian-johnston/bad-seed-the-biography-of-nick-cave">Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave</a> in the 1990s. She seemed more outward-looking and available at that time – a period that correlates with the “recovery” revolution in the alternative music community. (Thirlwell asserts Anita led the “clean and sober” charge of the Melbourne crew.) </p>
<p>She told Ian Johnston she was “grieving all the time and pining for something” and carried a burden of sadness “like it was raining in my chest”. But that insight came later, after Cave had achieved fame beyond Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-singular-vision-new-film-tells-the-touching-story-of-musician-and-triffids-founder-david-mccomb-166758">'A singular vision': new film tells the touching story of musician and Triffids founder David McComb</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Rising stars and ‘epic psychodrama’</h2>
<p>During the 70s, first-generation Australian TV kids found a welcome window to the alluring lives of expats who managed to escape the shores of the sleepy Antipodes. There were two standard routes out: Australia to India, for those of a hippyish persuasion, and Australia to London, the heart of the colonial motherland – the major artery for those with more worldly ambitions. </p>
<p>In 1980, having achieved eminence in Australia, The Boys Next Door undertook the Australian bands’ rite of passage. They had renamed the band The Birthday Party by the time the plane touched down at Heathrow, and Anita traded her comfortable family home for dingy squat living in Thatcher’s blighted Britain. </p>
<p>As Cave’s star rose, Anita’s status as a muse snowballed. Though she was creatively active musically, working closely with Cave et al, Anita was, at that point, still viewed by music fans more as the Queen of King Nick’s burgeoning fringe court than an artist in her own name. While he had the confidence of a hundred suns and grew infamously intolerant of the media from a position of cocky resistance, Anita vacillated between being pleased with the jewels in her crown (she once told a friend she considered herself one of the most natural singers she’d ever heard) and nervy uncertainty. </p>
<p>That instability fed a distrust of the gaze of others that saw her recoil from the attention she so effortlessly attracted. “She was leery of putting herself out there because she’d get performance anxiety,” Bronwyn explains. And she had cause to be concerned. “Because people loved her, there was a lot of bitchy gossip. Jealousy. Worship. A poison and treacle mixture.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kGcrrttxv0o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nick Cave (with Warren Ellis) performs a tribute to Anita Lane, who he calls ‘one of the original Bad Seeds’, six months after her death.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trying to keep up with Anita and the on-again, off-again nature of her relationship with Cave is a dizzying exercise; Anita was transnational, traversing borders and men as fluidly as art forms. </p>
<p>By all accounts, Anita and Nick also had trouble keeping track of each other. “Nick would disappear, and then Nick wouldn’t know where Anita was for days on end,” says Thirlwell of the mad London days. At some point, she left Cave for a turbulent stretch in New York with Australian journalist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Rothwell">Nicolas Rothwell</a>, who Bronwyn describes as “Oxbridgey”.</p>
<p>It gets harder to follow her movements after that. But though there were comings and goings across continents, and she and Nick had other lovers of varying significance, their standing in each other’s lives seems to have been unshakeable. </p>
<p>During one of their extended breaks in the mid-80s, Anita moved to Sydney and the Paddington flat, where I met her. After I went to rehab I never saw Anita again. At some point during the mayhem of my “early recovery”, I heard she’d gone to Berlin, where Cave was based. He was struggling to hold it together, and Anita was summoned attend to him. But when she arrived, they spun into a complicated spiral of reciprocal turmoil. </p>
<p>Bronwyn was brought in as an editor on Cave’s novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/and-the-ass-saw-the-angel-popular-penguins-9780141045610">And the Ass Saw the Angel</a>, which he was then working on. She tells of their decamping to Hamburg to escape the sycophants that bothered him like flies on a hot day. The three took up residence near the river in a “spooky, warehouse apartment full of dying tropical fish”; the mood was one of “epic psychodrama”. It wasn’t long before they separated again, but Anita stayed on in the northern hemisphere. </p>
<p>Nick moved on to São Paulo and Viviane Carneiro. Anita married German Johannes Beck and her first child, Rafael (known as Raffie) was born. When she left Beck, she moved to Morocco, where she met Andrea Libonati, a Sicilian man who fathered her younger sons, Luciano and Carlito. She purchased an old frescoed apartment in Palermo, where the family lived. </p>
<p>Anita fell back into addiction and after seven years, she and Libonati migrated to Australia, settling in beachy Byron Bay in Northern New South Wales. It’s hard to think of a less likely place for the nocturnal Anita Lane I recall, but those who knew her better than I did say she loved the wilds. In her later years, she took trips to Harvey Bay in Queensland where her parents owned a holiday house. </p>
<p>While it’s tempting to assume Byron promised a child-friendly location, with weather more suited to a Mediterranean partner than Melbourne, someone close to Anita suggests it was a “geographical” – a term for re-locations staged in an attempt to escape addiction. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-punks-legacy-40-years-on-60633">Friday essay: punk's legacy, 40 years on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dirty Sings and swan songs</h2>
<p>Like many outside the inner sanctum, I had no idea how gifted Anita was in her own right until her 1988 solo debut, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/479734-Anita-Lane-Dirty-Sings">Dirty Sings</a>, announced her.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485263/original/file-20220919-2934-sn1iup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Milne, courtesy of M. 33, Melbourne</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Anita of that period is captured in my favourite photo of her, taken by Peter Milne and featured in his <a href="https://www.perimeterbooks.com/products/peter-milne-juvenilia">Juvenilia</a> project, an archival retrospective of his work as a young photographer, when he snapped friends who went on to become cultural heavyweights. </p>
<p>It is an image that speaks volumes. Translucent skin. Flaming red hair echoing a velvet orange chair. The trademark Melbourne red lip. The deep periwinkle blue of the dress and the white Peter Pan collar. The rose gold hue of the anonymous space and the superimposed shadow in the form of a disjointed cross, hands resting in her lap and at her throat as if in supplication. And above all, the eyes like the two sides of a quarter moon: one gleaming in a shaft of light, the other waning into darkness like a perfect visual metaphor. </p>
<p>Anita told Johnson the <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/479734-Anita-Lane-Dirty-Sings">Dirty Sings</a> EP was a suicide note and an assertion of the validity of the disparaged and feminised experiences of self-doubt and vulnerability. But it was her 1993 album, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/154022-Anita-Lane-Dirty-Pearl">Dirty Pearl</a>, that resounded in the ears of reviewers. These were productive years – or rather, they were the years when her creativity was most captured and manufactured as product. </p>
<p>Boy Next Door/Bad Seed Mick Harvey, acclaimed for keeping Cave’s bands on the road during their most unmanageable stints, was Anita’s most continuous musical partner. She made guest appearances on Harvey’s <a href="https://mute.com/mute/releasing-double-cd-of-his-two-serge-gainsbourg-albums-intoxicated-man-pink-elephants">albums of Serge Gainsbourg covers</a> released in the mid-90s, singing the parts originally performed by the women hailed as Gainsbourg’s muses: Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot and Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of Serge and Jane). Anita even played some live shows with Harvey, promoting the albums.</p>
<p>Anita also branched out from her longstanding co-writing and guest vocal performances with Cave, Harvey and Co., to work with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Adamson">Barry Adamson</a> (ex-Magazine and Bad Seeds), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blixa_Bargeld">Blixa Bargeld</a>, a founding Bad Seed and lead singer of <a href="https://neubauten-org.translate.goog/de/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc">Einstürzende Neubauten</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Haut">Die Haut</a> and musician and DJ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrun_Gut">Gudrun Gut</a>, churning out a wealth of original songs and covers. </p>
<p>Cave has nominated “Stranger Than Kindness” released on the 1986 Bad Seeds album <a href="https://www.nickcave.com/releases/your-funeral-my-trial/">Your Funeral … My Trial</a> (Cave later co-opted the song title for his 2020 book) as his favourite among the songs he’s performed. He notes Anita’s lyrics as a deciding factor, and he’s right to honour her striking poetics. </p>
<p>Cave might view “Stranger Than Kindness” as her signature song, but Anita had another in mind: “The Petrol Wife”, the penultimate song on her last album, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nZtaatj7cJuzZiF33LcFyH5grBPP11F0s">Sex O'Clock</a> (released in 2001). Anita had every reason to be proud. Of all her songs, “The Petrol Wife” seems the one she most shaped. </p>
<p>It stands out on an album that is more smooth dance-electro than balladeer. A few bars into tender acoustic strumming, her voice kicks in, double-tracked in out-of-time harmonies conveying the subjective fracturing at the heart of a damaging sexual relationship. The lyrics in the fervid verses and chorus hint at danger – and, alludes a close friend, intimate partner violence. It was, in effect, along with the final track <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4QAIN7eruPb0xngWPNDisD">“Bella Ciao”</a>, a cover of an Italian folk-protest anthem, her swan song. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qgknmBL9GHU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Petrol Wife was Anita Lane’s ‘swan song’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anita left behind a stellar recording oeuvre. Though her reluctance to publicise narrowed its reach, the music press did her no favours in perpetuating the “muse” label after she surfaced as a solo artist. Even if, as Thirlwell states, “she would cringe at the thought of ‘career’”, she was serious about her art. “Anita never wanted to be a public figure, and at the same time, she’d be upset that her stuff didn’t get recognition,” says Bronwyn, noting her internal conflict.</p>
<h2>The muse – maligned and revered</h2>
<p>There have always been artist-muses. But before the modern technologies that enabled the twinned rise of youth and popular culture in the 1950s, they either dwelled in total obscurity or were actively maligned by society at large (even if they later came to be revered). </p>
<p>Women like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Faithfull">Marianne Faithful</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell">Joni Mitchell</a> were also renowned muses. Faithfull’s prodigious output, staying power, and willingness to play live eventually pushed her to the fore of public consciousness as a singer-songwriter and outstripped her association with Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones. </p>
<p>Mitchell was famously partnered with Graham Nash, <a href="https://theconversation.com/listening-to-songs-of-leonard-cohen-singing-sadness-to-sadness-in-these-anxious-times-142661">Leonard Cohen</a>, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Sam Shepard and others during the 60s and 70s – but her genius as a songwriter and singer and crossover from folkie to the big time soon overwhelmed her muse status.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_phZZgkT1Jk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Marianne Faithfull’s first hit, As Tears Go By, was by Mick Jagger and Keith Jones.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anita was, like them, slim, fair, finely featured, with a Monroesque appeal that combined innocence with sexiness. Beauty, it seems, is in the “muse” job description. </p>
<p>The gendered slant hails from <a href="https://theconversation.com/conversing-with-the-divine-why-we-still-need-our-muses-37051">ancient Greek mythology</a>: the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, and Zeus, the king of the gods, served as guides for art or science. Chaucer popularised the term in the late 1300s, and the “muse” was linked to lyrical poetry in Europe. </p>
<p>The timing was no accident. It followed the advent of chivalry and romantic and courtly love during the Middle Ages, when knights took platonic succour from married noblewomen in return for undying loyalty. The “muse” as a noun grew more democratised over time (if still somewhat class-based), coming to signify the capacity of a human goddess to move a man to make art. </p>
<p>Critiquing the idea of the muse doesn’t mean rejecting the potential for creative inspiration across genders. It merely interrogates the notion of the fetishised flesh-and-blood muse who treads a one-way, gender-binaried, heteronormative street in the service of men. </p>
<p>There were outlier queer women artists who were considered galvanising for well-known men, such as <a href="https://guitar.com/features/interviews/the-revolution-wendy-melvoin-lisa-coleman-recording-performing-with-prince/">Wendy and Lisa</a> of Prince and the Revolution (who maintained a long-term lesbian relationship). But they weren’t fussed over as muses, the way straight women have been. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FgQ-irSwywo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Wendy and Lisa, who performed with Prince, ‘weren’t fussed over as muses’ – and broke away as a duo.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The dynamics in the indie music environment both mirrored and defied established gender politics. The guys, generally benign and progressive compared to most men of the day, were nevertheless heavily conditioned by the patriarchy that came before them. And, of course, some were more enlightened than others. </p>
<p>The men Anita worked with understood she was their equal and more. Anita was less accessible and public-facing than those men – and the women who made the top-40 charts. But the bottom line is: men can fly under the radar and be seen to matter to the ordinary eye, and women who break through to the mainstream gain visibility. But women like Anita, steadfastly subcultural artist-muses in the shadow of men who pull focus, slip down the cracks. </p>
<p>Anita garnered a devoted cult following and is not to be pitied. But injustice is done to women hampered by “muse” shackles when their under-appreciated creative pulses pump so ardently. In short, her associations and collaborations with more famous men robbed her of due recognition for being inspired as well as inspiring. </p>
<p>Masculinity remains the naturalised centre of talent and success in the industry, which labours the gender of women musicians. Donita Sparks, guitarist and vocalist of American grunge-metal band L7, disclosed the tiresome burden of being a “girl band” in a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6288290/">recent documentary</a>. L7, mates of Cave’s from the 1994 Lollapalooza tour, have also been outspoken about the disproportional levels of abuse women experience.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://musicindustryreview.com.au/">music industry review </a>into “sexual harm, sexual harassment and systemic discrimination in the contemporary Australian music industry and recommendations for reform” was recently published. Most women I know in the industry could readily contribute. Sexual violence was then, as it is now, a perpetual threat. </p>
<p>As Bronwyn confirms, “We were focused on not getting raped and dealing with constantly being catcalled and followed and groped.” We were also, the odd exception aside, inflicted with learned self-loathing and irking insecurities. “We suffered from Girlitis,” says Bronwyn. “You catch it from society.” </p>
<p>That structural setup alone can cause psychic schisms that undermine women artists. And most families are a theatre of harm by degrees. No rattling skeletons jump out when digging into Anita’s history – but there are intimations of discord in the suburban pastoral family portrait.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-the-strokes-of-a-guitar-solo-joni-mitchell-showed-us-how-our-female-music-elders-are-super-punks-188075">With the strokes of a guitar solo, Joni Mitchell showed us how our female music elders are super punks</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Suburban beginnings</h2>
<p>Anita was raised by middle-aged parents in Glen Iris, in southeast Melbourne. Divided by Gardiners Creek, it was quiet and hilly with a distant view of the Dandenong mountains – a dull place for a girl child of the 1960s and 70s. Anita reminisced affectionately about the leafy concrete streets populated with freestanding art-deco houses and red-brick postwar homes. Her own house was, says Bronwyn, “ramshackle”. Glen Iris had no pub and only the questionably named brutalist Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre on High Street for a landmark. Like many Australian burbs at that time, it had a Chinese restaurant for a spot of cuisine diversity. </p>
<p>Anita’s family weren’t bohemian or oddball, and there doesn’t seem to be obvious context for Anita’s eccentricity. She adored her father, who had been in the air force and had likely seen war (a touching image can be found on the internet of a young Anita with her aged dad). She had a fraught relationship with her mother, whom she thought a conformist and experienced as intrusive. And she had a considerably older brother.</p>
<p>Anita grew up a girly girl, loving pretty things: Bambi, swans, and other stereotypical embodiments of purity and goodness. This appreciation for cuteness stayed with her throughout her adulthood. By the time the Ballroom scene had sprung to life, and Anita was an arty teen writing poems and sketching, her folks were senior citizens.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485255/original/file-20220919-27-bnbvqe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anita Lane grew up a ‘girly girl’, loving pretty things.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jessamy Calkin/Mute</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After her relationship with Libonati ended, Anita returned with her growing boys to the Glen Iris family home to care for her mother, who had developed Alzheimer’s – having outlived her husband. Juggling rowdy youngsters and an aged parent with a progressive neurological disorder must have been a tough, tiring stint. </p>
<p>“Anita was running on lots of different platforms,” explains <a href="https://www.emilyhumphries.website/">Emily Humphries</a>, a fellow visual artist and Anita’s most stalwart, hands-on friend and staunchest art champion during the last ten years of her life. “Her door was open, and her house was filled with teenagers to 20-somethings she was taking care of. That was a big thing for her, the housing of humanity.”</p>
<p>Following the 2001 release of Sex O’Clock (re-released in 2021 on its 20th anniversary), Anita drifted away from songwriting. She made no statement about renouncing solo recording. Most likely, it wasn’t even a conscious decision. She refocused, <a href="https://jonimitchell.com/paintings/">like Joni Mitchell</a>, on visual art.</p>
<p>The “Mary Rug”, which showed in a 2017 exhibition in St Kilda curated by Humphries, was the last major artwork Anita produced and made public. She painted her “infinite prayer”, as Emily calls it, on a massive cut of carpet in her garden in a zoned frenzy. Emily describes how Anita stained the rug to sully it, transforming it to create a portrait of a trio of women: shimmering, bloodied, and metaphorically walked upon. Sorrow meets the archetypal. Anita was an “ephemeral” artist, says Emily. “She danced her work through the kitsch and familiar scraps of objects.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485265/original/file-20220919-22-mcc5ue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Elena Popa/provided by Emily Humphries</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anita was “a people person”, according to Thirlwell. Close friends say she gradually withdrew and became less socially active due to a combination of health issues (including diabetes) and her lifelong introversion. Emily describes the latter as a hypersensitivity which, coupled with Anita’s super-intelligence, made being out among it tremendously taxing.</p>
<p>When her mother died, having spent a couple of years in residential aged care, Anita sold the Glen Iris house. She missed Europe but struggled to get her health up to speed for travel, so she relocated to a house in hipster Collingwood. Her sons were living independently, returning for spells, and she passed her days pottering and making art.</p>
<p>Emily insists that despite her struggles, Anita “maintained an air of punk” and her artist’s eye was still sharp. She was “busy decorating the universe”. There she sits, insect-like, six pairs of glasses poised on her head. Next, she’s setting up tripods with light fittings fixed on them, dressing them up in tutus to create the illusion of tentacled jellyfish, and pondering opening a rehab for women. </p>
<p>She was also, according to Emily, an avid Googler. “If she loved you, she would research stuff for you.” If she was on your team, she was always on the case. And she retained her sense of humour: “She was probably the funniest person I’ve ever met.” That’s a remarkable statement, given that Emily is the daughter of comedian <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-barry-humphries-humour-is-now-history-thats-the-fate-of-topical-satirical-comedy-117499">Barry Humphries</a> and his second wife, dancer Rosalind Tong.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/male-artists-dominate-galleries-our-research-explored-if-its-because-women-dont-paint-very-well-or-just-discrimination-189221">Male artists dominate galleries. Our research explored if it’s because ‘women don’t paint very well’ – or just discrimination</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Seasoned women artists</h2>
<p>The women artists of Anita’s generation are maturing in an environment hostile to ageing, and to artists of all persuasions who aren’t big names – in a culture that equates promise and productivity with youth. Many still working navigate economic hardship, thanks to decades of prioritising art over financial planning. </p>
<p>“Anita’s divine energy was for her art, but her pulse externally was low because she was drained by ill health and trying to support boys with barely any money,” says Emily, expressing anger at “the lack of understanding and economic support available to genuinely creative women”.</p>
<p>Some of us survived long and well enough to shake off Girlitis, awakening from its fevered dream to a formidable lucid power. No longer dependent on the affirmation of our worth, we know it – finally, fiercely (on a good day). </p>
<p>But that doesn’t fund our art. Neoliberal governments in countries like Australia and the UK have systematically cut arts funding to scraps. While Anita eventually had the benefit of an inheritance, many don’t.</p>
<p>For most of her last decade, Anita had a partner – a reserved IT type keeping nine-to-five hours, who assumed the role of stepfather to her children. The demise of that relationship, about a year before she died, left Anita unmoored, suggests Emily.</p>
<h2>Farewelling Anita</h2>
<p>There’s a tendency to speak of compulsive self-harm in clichés: the Dimmed Bright Young Thing, the Rock n’ Roll Suicide, the Plath Melancholic. But moral platitudes elide the heartbreak in and for each afflicted life. Those forced to watch the narrative unfold find themselves in a dreadful dilemma. As Thirlwell puts it, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>worrying about Anita was like worrying about the weather. There’s not much you could do about it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anita was aware her friends and family were concerned. She told Emily that Cave had described witnessing her periodic returns to destructive patterns as beholding “a crime against God”. “She spoke a lot about Nick,” Emily confirms. “He was terribly important to her. It was a constant friendship.” Her mighty life-force pushed back again and again, but hope and confidence faded. She fell prey to the belief she could not be helped. </p>
<p>Yet Anita is not a wretched figure; Emily speaks for many when she says, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want her brilliance known beyond a sense of tragedy. I want her properly placed in Australia’s creative heritage and the world sphere.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No cause of death was announced. Fans expressed disbelief, friends mourned, and her people closed ranks, tight-lipped ever since, apart from the occasional oblique lapse, like Cave’s blog reference to the “rampant, unstable, fatal energy” that made it “both easy and terrifying to love her”. </p>
<p>Anita, mysterious to the end, defied obvious conclusions in death as she had in life; it seems her last months and weeks involved a complex scenario, and there were multiple contributing factors to her untimely passing. As Thirlwell says emphatically, “Anita would have liked to have stayed around for her kids. She loved them very much.”</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s just as well she stepped away from the industry when she did, since the contemporary music landscape is relentlessly characterised by the kind of self-promotion and marketing she loathed. As Bronwyn lamented in an anguished public Facebook post paying tribute to Anita, “high functioning brand-driven professionalism is the go”. </p>
<p>I binge-watched YouTube videos the day I heard the news. In the clip for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrniVTXH5-o">“The World’s a Girl”</a>, co-written with Harvey, black-and-white and sepia shadows flicker beguilingly out of focus, and Anita dances around Morocco, hair wind-swept, like a dervish outlier Bardot. She frolics with sly, sultry humour amid religious iconography, Hollywood Golden Age glamour, and subversive symbolism in the monochrome video for the country-twanging <a href="https://youtu.be/lp41tokijrc">“Jesus Almost Got Me”</a>. And she bounces through the clip for her cover (with Barry Adamson) of “These Boots Are Made For Walking” holding her unfazed baby. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Foj0DN4J6VU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anita rarely sang in public, afflicted with stage fright, so it was a treat to discover footage of a 1992 live performance of <a href="https://sonichits.com/video/Anita_Lane_%26_Blixa_Bargeld/Subterranean_World_(How_Long...)">“Subterranean World (How Long Have We Known Each Other Now?)”</a>. Anita, in duet with Blixa Bargeld, is playfully tender, and appears relaxed. She beams at the end of the ode to friendship, when Bargeld kisses her cheek as the last notes sound. </p>
<p>How, I wondered, did she feel about herself as an artist in those final years? Emily tells a illuminating secondhand story. </p>
<p>She describes meeting a younger woman at an event, who mentioned Anita. They chatted, and the woman said, “You know I saw her in a 7/11 late one night in St Kilda.” She recounted how she told Anita, awestruck, they had met years before. She didn’t expect Anita to remember a transitory moment with a “nonentity” and was stunned when Anita recalled the exact time and place. The younger woman gushed, and Anita looked to the ground and said, “I’m surprised you even know who I am.”</p>
<p>Anita’s wake was rescheduled several times during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Melbourne spent 262 days under restrictive public health orders – enduring lockdown after lockdown. It went ahead in March 2022 at Abbotsford Convent on the Yarra River, a grand medieval compound that was once a Catholic nunnery and is now a thriving multi-arts precinct. </p>
<p>The prevailing Ballroomers came out in force, gathering in a high-ceilinged room fragrant with flowers. One attendee declared the ambience “celestial”, while another suggests the vibe was less spiritually embracing for those outside the cloistered in-crowd. </p>
<p>The many guises of Anita were projected, and there was a shrine of her art and personal mementos. There was no live music, though there had previously been plans along those lines. Her son’s eulogies brought tears to eyes, and the youngest read a letter written by the Brussels-based artist Marcus Bergner. Bronwyn spoke, erudite and heartfelt. International friends like Thirlwell and Kid Congo Zoomed in, Nick streaming silently among them. There was a bar, and people sat around talking about Anita, who was long gone and more ethereal than ever.</p>
<p>In the early 2000s, she recorded vocals for the English version of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr0XTtshpnU">“Blume”</a>, an atmospheric track by Einstürzende Neubauten, which she co-wrote and performed in duet with Bargeld. Anita does not appear in the official video (though interestingly, PJ Harvey can be clocked miming into a bullhorn in a split-second cameo). </p>
<p>In a voice that contains multitudes, described as “haunting babygirl” by Joel Gausten, she sings of being a supernova before ascending to a gloriously eerie chorus and trailing off into a guttural spoken-word German whisper that seems to emanate from an arcane mist.</p>
<p>And I can’t think of a more fitting elegy. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Clarification: After publication, Mick Harvey contacted the author to inform us that he had never received her interview requests. He says he would have been willing to have been interviewed for this essay.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meera Atkinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
After Anita Lane died, former collaborator Nick Cave said she “despised the concept of the muse but was everybody’s”. Meera Atkinson highlights her achievements – with help from those who knew her.
Meera Atkinson, Adjunct Lecturer in Writing, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/189118
2022-08-24T20:01:57Z
2022-08-24T20:01:57Z
The ‘city’ is becoming increasingly digital, forcing us to rethink its role in life and work
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480493/original/file-20220823-22-y3dtnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C0%2C5577%2C3744&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The role of the city is changing. To find out how, we surveyed more than 2,000 Victorians living in Melbourne, its suburbs and regional centres in April 2022. </p>
<p>The survey is the first of its kind in Australia and documents a pivotal point in Melbourne of social and economic reopening after long and stringent COVID lockdowns. The findings are <a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/events/2022/august/infrastructure-demands-required-for-a-digital-cbd">being released today</a> in our Digital Infrastructures report as a part of the <a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/partner/research-partnerships/future-digital-cbd">Digital CBD project</a>. </p>
<p>At the threshold of a “new normal”, we found the <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-in-victoria-262-days-in-lockdown-3-stunning-successes-and-4-avoidable-failures-172408">long lockdowns</a> to contain the spread of the virus, and the rapid adoption of digital technologies, have changed the way we engage with the city. It’s now seen as less a place of work and more of a place for socialising, shopping and services.</p>
<p>What people told us is that at the time of reopening in Melbourne, they were getting into the city about once a month on average. This included people living in the suburbs and regional centres. People who went into the city for work did so for an average of only nine hours a week.</p>
<p>It’s not surprising they were visiting the city centre much less often but, still, it raises the question of <a href="https://eurocities.eu/latest/city-dialogue-on-urban-development-and-covid-19/">what we want to use the city for</a>. That was the subject of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/liveable-cities-who-decides-what-that-means-and-how-we-achieve-it-48825">long and complex debate</a> even before the pandemic.</p>
<p>We surveyed a representative sample of 2,064 people. This means we can be confident that what they told us broadly represents experiences across the population. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2h16KJmR2Vk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">RMIT researchers interviewed people about how they feel about Melbourne and the rise of a digital city.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/liveable-cities-who-decides-what-that-means-and-how-we-achieve-it-48825">Liveable cities: who decides what that means and how we achieve it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is the role of the city in the wake of the pandemic?</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/few-australians-have-the-right-to-work-from-home-even-after-covid-heres-how-that-could-change-187696">Work remains the main reason</a> for people to engage with the city. Our survey respondents in the workforce did so for an average of nine hours a week. </p>
<p>When we look at the work-from-home data we gathered, one in seven employed people work from home completely, and a third practice hybrid work arrangements in Victoria. We found that on average people will work from home two days a week. These averages are taken from people who live and work full-time and part-time across the regions and suburbs, not just in the inner city. Most employed people valued and wanted to continue to have this choice of whether to work from home or in the office. </p>
<p>So, Melbourne city can’t really be thought of as the place where workers go – that is, the office hive. What people told us makes it seem like a lifestyle space. Indeed, what they felt was important in Melbourne was the hospitality scene, essential services (such as medical appointments), and the cultural and creative life, including education, sport and shopping.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1534033645626859521"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/few-australians-have-the-right-to-work-from-home-even-after-covid-heres-how-that-could-change-187696">Few Australians have the right to work from home, even after COVID. Here's how that could change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The suburbs as ‘cities’</h2>
<p>But many could easily <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/a-tale-of-two-suburbs-and-how-covid-has-changed-the-way-we-shop-20220309-p5a301.html">find those activities in their suburbs</a>. This means getting to the city is much less important for them. </p>
<p>Those living in the regions had more trouble remembering when they last visited the city, which suggests it is not essential to their everyday lives.</p>
<p>Despite these perceptions of the shifting centrality of the city in people’s daily lives, residents felt they were spending about the same amount of time in the city as before the pandemic. This observation needs to be treated with caution because a quarter of Melbourne residents in our survey were spending much less time in the city than before the pandemic.</p>
<h2>Are people ready for a digital city?</h2>
<p>These findings suggest we need to ask whether a city can depend on its reputation for lifestyle to hold its position in a global economy, or as a political centre and trade gateway. As digital technologies have been rapidly adopted during the pandemic, we think it is more important to consider how we can position Melbourne as a digital city of the future.</p>
<p>A digital city refers to the array of connected devices and infrastructures that complement the city’s business, cultural and social life. Digital activities range from personal devices such as smartphones to initiatives like the <a href="https://www.theurbanlist.com/melbourne/a-list/the-lume-melbourne2">digital art gallery</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1559410185663221761"}"></div></p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/partner/research-partnerships/future-digital-cbd">our report</a> on the new infrastructure demands for Melbourne, we see the city as an eclectic hub that supports entrepreneurial, creative, cultural, learning and digital endeavours that interweave the regions and connects to the global context.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tech-diplomacy-cities-drive-a-new-era-of-digital-policy-and-innovation-89959">Tech diplomacy: cities drive a new era of digital policy and innovation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Digital inclusion is vital</h2>
<p>But for city residents to know how to engage with and benefit from a digital city, they need to have the skills and access to technology. Melbourne residents also told us about their digital abilities. Like the findings from the <a href="https://www.digitalinclusionindex.org.au/">Australian Digital Inclusion Index</a>, we found Melburnians have high digital abilities, but not all are ready for the digital city of the future.</p>
<p>Digital skill-building is essential. We also need to ensure technologies are accessible and affordable and that internet access is reliable so <a href="https://www.digitalinclusionindex.org.au/key-findings-and-next-steps/">no one is left behind</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1552847832046260225"}"></div></p>
<p>The pandemic has transformed the city. This is an opportunity for some more imaginative thinking. </p>
<p>Our report highlights the investments we need to make to create a more inclusive city. We now need to think about what is needed, materially and socially, for a digital city to foster wellbeing for every individual and across society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexia Maddox receives funding from the Victorian Higher Education State Investment Fund (VHESIF).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacinthe Flore receives funding from the Australian Research Council and RMIT University.</span></em></p>
A survey of more than 2,000 people as Melbourne reopened after COVID lockdowns shows the pandemic and digital technology have made the city less a place of work, more a place to visit now and then.
Alexia Maddox, Research Fellow, Blockchain Innovation Hub, RMIT, RMIT University
Jacinthe Flore, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187100
2022-08-21T20:02:23Z
2022-08-21T20:02:23Z
Jay Carmichael’s gay love story set in conservative 1950s Australia intrigues, but fails to convince
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479336/original/file-20220816-26-4evxl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Streetscenes, Melbourne, 1950.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Strizic/State Library of Victoria</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/marlo-9781925713695">Marlo</a>, a gay love story set in 1950s conservative Australia, draws on library and archival research. We know this because at the end of his book, author Jay Carmichael – a gay man himself – cites the work of Denis Altman and myself (in my role as a gay historian), among others. The novel is illustrated with photographs from collections in the State Library of Victoria and the Australian Queer Archives.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Marlo – Jay Carmichael (Scribe)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Marlo concerns central character Christopher’s sexual coming-of-age, after moving to Melbourne as a young adult from the small country town of Marlo in East Gippsland. The novel explores how same-sex-attracted men lived their lives during the repressive period following the end of the second world war.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="two men in a boat on a beach" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479244/original/file-20220816-20306-mu81pz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Christopher moves to 1950s Melbourne, where he finds a job as a mechanic and shares a house with a friend from Marlo, Kings, and his girlfriend. During a picnic in the Botanic Gardens, Christopher bumps into another suit-wearing young man, Morgan, who later in the novel we discover is an Aboriginal Australian, living in white society with a Certificate of Exemption from the Board for the Protection of Aborigines (New South Wales). </p>
<p>Christopher and Morgan struggle with what appears to be Christopher’s self-loathing and yearning for acceptance.</p>
<h2>Camp men in 1950s Melbourne</h2>
<p>Same-sex-attracted men were known as “camp” before gay liberation popularised the term “gay” for homosexual men. <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3614333.html">Their lives</a> were made more difficult by the association between sexual nonconformity and the political threat from Communism.</p>
<p>Marlo is at its most convincing when dealing with the social life that was available to camp men in 1950s Melbourne, and the discretion men like Christopher needed in order to pass, until they felt secure about who they were talking to and socialising with.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women in tailored suits. A singer onstage […] Men in ball gowns. Each different. In this café, together, they made a whole. Distinct and complete. They were the same in that they were outcast, outlawed, underground.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Christopher’s relationships with his sister Iris and his boyfriend Morgan, and the tensions they created for him, are intriguing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As we danced, I could have told Iris that the connection I felt with Morgan was similar to the connection I felt with her […] But it was her wedding night; all this could wait for a better time. Then again, I couldn’t be sure there ever would be a better time".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before Christopher met Morgan, Iris had been his emotional anchor, but she wasn’t privy to knowledge of his sexuality. Despite Morgan’s reservations, Christopher insists that he join him at Iris’s wedding.</p>
<p>Morgan goes for a jog when they arrive at Christopher’s family home, is shunned by Iris, and wisely refuses to attend the wedding celebrations. The novel sets up but does not fully deal with Christopher replacing his dependence on Iris with his love for Morgan.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="image of a small-town landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479302/original/file-20220816-14-2wgmlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The novel’s protagonist, Christopher, moves to Melbourne from small-town Marlo, Victoria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library Victoria/Rose Stereograph Co</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Repressive society, repressed self</h2>
<p>In places, Jay Carmichael’s prose is inspired and elegiac: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And in the morning, before the world was clear-eyed, we would go, quiet, to our days.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On one occasion, as the physical relationship develops between Christopher and Morgan, he investigates Morgan’s body for any evidence of self harm: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the shower, I checked his arms for self-inflicted scars or marks […] He did not have a blemish, but I determined he carried them within. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But he shows less interest in Morgan’s arms, thighs, genitals – or anything approaching the erotic.</p>
<p>It seems somewhat odd also that as a man in his 20s, ruminating over his budding physical relationship with Morgan, Christopher continued to use the term “things” to describe his genitals. (Which readers were first introduced to when as a child, his friend, Kings, showed Christopher his “things”.)</p>
<p>The connection the author might have intended here – between a repressive external society and an internalised, repressed view of the self – was not something <a href="https://federationpress.com.au/product/homophobia-an-australian-history/">my research</a> revealed in men who were born in the 1920s and ‘30s and were sexually active in 1950s Australia. Many admitted to cautiously conducting their social/sexual relationships to avoid attracting the attention of <a href="https://theconversation.com/9-in-10-lgbtq-students-say-they-hear-homophobic-language-at-school-and-1-in-3-hear-it-almost-every-day-160356">homophobes</a>, others to positively welcoming the police raiding their parties – for the “mystique” it brought them.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/faggots-punks-and-prostitutes-the-evolving-language-of-gay-men-73136">Faggots, punks, and prostitutes: the evolving language of gay men</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Occasional jarring notes occurred when other present-day features intruded in this novel set in the 1950s – when, for example, picnickers in the Botanic Gardens had “bubbly” with lunch. (I am not a cultural historian but suspect that, if drunk in Melbourne in the 1950s, champagne was the preserve of a small elite.) The scene seems more like a present-day invention than a reflection of the past. </p>
<p>And, when Christopher had a “duvet” over his legs and later opened a bottle of “merlot” after finishing work in a mechanics’ garage, my credulity as a reader was tested.</p>
<p>While these factual anomalies might seem slight, they may cause readers to wonder about the author’s other historical representations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="two policemen in uniform" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479306/original/file-20220816-26-mkvd3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Homosexuality was illegal in Australia in the period when Marlo is set.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library New South Wales collection: 'Home and Away'</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my view, a weakness of the novel is its focus on what I suspect are the author and his peers’ current concerns (such as self-harm). Forcing these and other improbable material features on the past suggests an insufficiently strong understanding of history.</p>
<p>There is an important difference between using our current interests to investigate the past, which Carmichael suggests he is doing, but did not do well in my view (the author’s note explaining his sources runs to eight pages) and imposing our present-day concerns on the past. I suspect he has done the latter.</p>
<p>Some writers of historical novels are known to spend months verifying everyday facts from the past: dress, modes of social interaction, food, drink and diet (for instance).</p>
<p>Examples of those who have excelled in this field include Mary Renault (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67700.The_Persian_Boy">The Persian Boy</a> and other books in her Alexander the Great trilogy), Marguerite Yourcenar, first woman elected to the French Academy (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12172.Memoirs_of_Hadrian">Memoirs of Hadrian</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/103197.Coup_de_Gr_ce">Coup de Grâce</a>), and more recently, Hilary Mantel (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/75450-thomas-cromwell">Wolf Hall</a>).</p>
<p>When done well, the historical novel shows how good writing and a strong grasp of history can enhance a richer understanding of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187100/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Jay Carmichael’s novel explores how Australian same-sex attracted men lived during the repressive period after the end of the second world war. But does it impose present concerns on the past?
Peter Robinson, Honorary Senior Lecturer, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187625
2022-08-11T20:04:32Z
2022-08-11T20:04:32Z
Friday essay: sex, swimming and smudgy louvres – watching Monkey Grip 40 years on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478246/original/file-20220809-16-p1hk56.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C19%2C673%2C442&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An early poster for Monkey Grip, starring Noni Hazelhurst and Colin Friels.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The woman’s name is Nora, and she’s getting out of the pool when she goes to look at the guy she’s seeing and sees something better: a sexy stranger, Javo, who radiates a type of bruisy depth. He hangs back near the famous sign, AQUA PROFONDA, while Nora and the guy she’s seeing, Martin, do their thing. He looks like he’ll be trouble, but not the bad kind of trouble; the kind it might be interesting to catch.</p>
<p>Nora learns from a mate that Javo likes heroin, though he seems to have kicked it; the mate is the girlfriend of Nora’s housemate, and in the anything-goes manner of the time, Javo is soon hanging out with Nora and Martin, enough that Javo can ask Martin how “together” they really are, and relay Martin’s evasive response straight to Nora – a canny move for such a cruisy guy.</p>
<p>Soon, she’s taking him to an art show that she has to cover for the small, busy alternative paper for which she writes reviews. Afterwards, she asks him if he’d like to stay the night. “That would be good,” he tells her, and it’s on.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a woman and man, smiling, stand in front of a weathered wall, the side of a house" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478176/original/file-20220809-19-ffr1dv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noni Hazelhurst as Nora and Colin Friels as Javo in Ken Cameron’s 1982 film Monkey Grip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the morning, Nora’s 11-year-old daughter, Gracie, finds out; Martin finds out. After Javo heads off, Nora relaxes in the kitchen and says, “I suppose I’ve done it again” – the wrong thing, the wrong man – but the story we’re talking about, of course, is Ken Cameron’s <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/monkey-grip-1982/122/">Monkey Grip</a> (1982), and the casting of Noni Hazlehurst is one of its great coups. </p>
<p>Resignation, pleasure, self-satisfaction, concern: it’s all there in the delivery, and it all takes a back seat to a wonderful feeling that it doesn’t matter much at all. She supposes she’s done it again, and you may now grow aware of a disquieting question that is interesting to this movie the way a mouse is interesting to a cat.</p>
<p>Maybe understanding the implications of what you’re doing has little to no bearing on whether or not it’s actually done? And then the inverse – you can be wise enough to know what’s happening to you and have it happen anyway. This suspicion becomes unbearable as the film goes on. Nora’s carefree nature, which can be cruel but is rarely nasty, lifts the viewer and carries them over the movie’s darkest parts, but there’s always the sense that something irrevocable is happening, a little bit past the line of sight, a little way out of control.</p>
<h2>Making a novel into a movie</h2>
<p>The film is based on Helen Garner’s 1977 novel, and Garner and Cameron are listed as co-writers. On the indispensable website Ozmovies, where <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/monkey-grip-1982/122/">the Monkey Grip entry</a> splices an interview with Cameron by Peter Malone and an account of Cameron’s DVD commentary into a narrative of how the screenplay was written, Cameron explains that he cut up and re-pasted the novel, typed it up “so that it resembled a movie”, then finessed the adaptation in constant conversation with Garner; he has a collection of letters in which she suggests solutions and scenes. </p>
<p>Garner says on the DVD commentary that she saw 14 or 15 drafts of the script, and then was there for the filming because Nora’s daughter, Gracie, is played by her own daughter, Alice, who is a sharp presence through the film, cheery and watchful, and possessed of slightly eerie wisdom.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1DK_GmoxOfI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Helen Garner co-wrote the film Monkey Grip, with director Ken Cameron.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Garner disliked the casting of Colin Friels as Javo, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/bach-to-the-future-20080614-2qob.html">telling</a> The Age’s Peter Wilmoth in 2008, “I just can’t believe they cast Colin Friels as the junkie. [. . .] He was so healthy, a great big bouncing muscly surfing guy.” We all know people like Javo – if not the heroin, then the sulky mood – and it’s true that they’re not Colin Friels. </p>
<p>But I think of a point that a friend once made about a different kind of story, where two impossibly hot people have a meet-cute on a tram. That doesn’t happen in real life, someone at the time complained. But there are people in the world who look like that, my friend explained; when they hook up, it’s often with each other, and it has to happen <em>somewhere</em>. </p>
<p>If Friels’s Javo is not realistic to the story, then neither, perhaps, is Hazlehurst’s Nora, and you have to have someone like Friels to make the viewer believe that someone like Hazlehurst would give him the time of day. Monkey Grip is a movie, and it has to have some glitz. They have to hook up <em>somewhere</em>, and they hook up here.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a woman riding a bike past the Edinburgh Gardens" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478247/original/file-20220809-20-m5kemu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noni Hazelhurst’s Nora seemed to herald a new era of complex roles for women in 1982.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Umbrella Entertainment</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sex was an issue for this film. At first, nobody liked it, neither the distributors, nor “most of” the Australian Film Commission, which, speculated producer <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/vale-patricia-lovell">Patricia Lovell</a>, saw it as pornographic. Stratton had interviewed Lovell for his 1990 book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16041149-the-avocado-plantation">The Avocado Plantation</a>, about the turbulent economics of the 1980s in Australian film. The story of Monkey Grip’s production is harrowing. It almost found funding, but “fell over for lack of $150,000”. </p>
<p>Lovell moved on and produced <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/">Gallipoli</a> instead; by the time tax breaks made production more viable, other costs had gone up, so it was still a struggle to fund. When it finally got off the ground, some new funding problem meant that it looked like production might delay for two weeks – sending Lovell to hospital, where she spent 48 hours under sedation from nervous exhaustion. </p>
<p>When the film was done, Lovell heard that Gilles Jacob, director of the Cannes Film Festival, had been told “by someone in authority” that “the Australian government would not be pleased if Monkey Grip competed at Cannes” (though it did). Lovell screened the movie for three distributors in Melbourne, all of whom turned it down; one told her, “I loathed it.” Finally, Lovell distributed it herself, and after the first week’s takings offered proof of its heft, it was picked up officially by Roadshow.</p>
<p>Lots of films are incredibly sexy or incredibly sexual (dark, yearning, weird); Monkey Grip is both. It shows the parts of sex that are all about desperation, habit and distraction as much as those that are about intimacy, spontaneity or fun. </p>
<p>The first time Nora has sex with Javo is full-on, but first it’s so tentative that you think it might not happen; they get under the covers and at first you think they might just go to sleep. As soon as it’s happening, you realise that it was silly to think it might not. The eyes are closed, the clothes are off, the facial expressions work very hard; there’s some finger-sucking where the camera doesn’t cut away, and a kiss that’s more sexual than the finger-sucking.</p>
<p>Cameron told Stratton: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had no problem with the actors during the filming of those scenes. I felt it was worth going all the way with them, and I was young enough not to have hang-ups. The atmosphere on the set was a bit funny: in the end, I had the entire crew, myself included, rehearse naked . . . we all believed in the novel and the film, so we felt those scenes had to be done that way.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s great, and sex reappears throughout the film as something that’s both absolutely normal – enmeshed in work, time, reading, eating sandwiches, meeting deadlines, having daughters, moving house, writing lyrics, being in bands – and something that’s like Javo: on a spectrum between consuming and impossible.</p>
<h2>On smack</h2>
<p>After Javo behaves oddly at a party, he says to Nora, “You just don’t get it, do you?” When he’d told her he was “stoned” earlier, he meant he was on smack. Nora smiles and kisses him. Javo overdoses. Nora visits him in hospital, where Javo is smoking. He looks at an old man across the room and says, “Jeez, old people give me the shits.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a sad-looking woman with shaggy hair looks to the right" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1252&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1252&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478233/original/file-20220809-22-x5kab1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1252&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The film-tie in cover of Monkey Grip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abebooks</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Javo comes over to Nora’s share house and finds her in the shower and decides that she will be the one to give him outpatient care. Someone who knows how to inject penicillin comes over to show her how it’s done. Nora gives the injection; Javo is upset. They make jokes about the penicillin injection that are really jokes about junk; Gracie grabs the needle and says, “Don’t do it – you’ll get hooked!” All laugh. Everything in the house appears to settle down. Javo becomes part of the family, presiding over the children Nora lives with and the sharing of gifts.</p>
<p>And then one day Javo’s gone. First there is a false bottom, which presages those to come. He’s gone, and Nora finds him again, in a kind of drab bohemian lair, a large, dark, brick building with an arched window, where he gets to gesture at a traumatic origin. He has sex with Nora. He says – or sort of says; the line is fed by Nora – that his father is the reason women “never hit the mark”. </p>
<p>That night, Nora wakes up and Javo isn’t there. She finds him in another room, in the middle of shooting up, which he finishes doing despite her presence, half meeting her eyes. And then he’s really gone; he’s off to Singapore, with Martin (the guy Nora was seeing at the start – played by Tim Burns). Javo sends Nora a postcard. He wrote it on the plane, so there’s nothing about the trip itself. The world has swallowed him up.</p>
<p>The seasons change; Nora’s place of residence changes. She hears news in the winter that Javo is in Bangkok, in prison for stealing sunglasses (also with Martin). She sends him letters daily. “I miss him a real lot,” she tells a friend she’s hooking up with. “Like a piece of glass stuck in your foot,” the friend suggests.</p>
<p>And then, one sunny day, he’s back – in a garden full of hanging ferns and staghorns, Nora’s new, less-ramshackle share house. They go inside; she touches his face; they have sex slowly. “Now that he was back all the splinters of my life made sense again,” narrates Nora. </p>
<p>But straight away, there are new complications – pasta, women, alternative theatre. Nora takes Javo for coffee and gnocchi with her pension cheque, and Javo ruins it by going to talk to another woman under the obvious pretext that he wants to see what kind of cigarettes they’ve got behind the counter. The woman is Lillian (Candy Raymond), a co-star in a play he’s acting in, and he lurks on the other side of the restaurant chatting her up while the waiter brings the meals out to Nora.</p>
<p>“I mean, she’s too much,” Javo tells Nora; but Nora “feel[s] like she’s lining you up”. Later, the play is staged, in an awful and effective little scene, with Javo as the greasy bartender in a shiny vest, while Lillian is playing a “sight for sore eyes”, a “babe” in a silver slitted dress. </p>
<p>He has to throw up, he leaves the stage but doesn’t quite make it, getting as far as a prop piano bench. Nora runs down from the audience to tend to him, and he keeps speaking his lines while he’s sick.</p>
<h2>A third-act feeling</h2>
<p>Now there’s a third-act feeling; things begin to escalate. But part of what makes it so hard to watch – so like relationships you’ve seen people have, relationships you’ve been in – is that there aren’t any climaxes or moments where peace is restored, there’s just peaks that mean nothing, moments of understanding that distract from other problems, resolutions that will probably be broken. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a woman, mirrored, with a man, mirrored, and two hands gripping each other across the poster" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478232/original/file-20220809-22-hux0f8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ken Cameron found Helen Garner’s novel, Monkey Grip, hard to adapt for film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Movie Database</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Garner told Wilmoth that Cameron found her novel hard to adapt for film because </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it hasn’t really got a filmic structure. It’s like a long-running TV series . . . it just starts and it goes on and on and eventually it stops.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The film mirrors the novel, which mirrors life, yes, but it also mirrors Javo, whose personal magnetism is all the more striking because the rest of him is staggering, exhausting. Cameron cast him after Doc Neeson, frontman of the Angels, dropped out and Cameron saw Friels at the Sydney Opera House playing Hamlet. For all his gravity he’s also disappointing and ordinary (“Jeez, old people give me the shits”); the story is never allowed to settle around him.</p>
<p>He creeps into Nora’s bed for comfort like a sick kid would. She holds him and kisses him. A needle is left out on the dining room table, in the middle of a household scene where the children are hitting Nora in the head with their dolls and asking her to make them cups of Milo. </p>
<p>“I want to stop,” says Javo, “but I can’t do it now. I can’t stop while the play’s on . . . I can’t perform when I’m coming down.” Nora understands. “When the play’s finished I’ll get off it and we’ll go away somewhere, go up north.” They’ll go to Sydney, see some friends, go to the beach, get a tan. He’ll go cold turkey. “I’m sick of the junk,” he says.</p>
<p>Cut to Javo playing harmonica in the passenger seat of a Mack truck being driven by a stranger, Nora and Gracie in the back. Soon, they’re at a diner just outside of Sydney, facing the kinds of problems faced by families on Australian road trips. They can’t order pies because the diner microwave’s turned off. Perhaps things are going to be all right.</p>
<h2>Filming Sydney as ‘a pretty good Melbourne’</h2>
<p>Although Cameron seems sheepish about the fact that Monkey Grip was filmed largely in Sydney – he explains in the DVD commentary that he was based in Sydney, as were Lovell, the DOP and the production designer, so by the time casting was done (in Sydney) and they’d secured funding, “we’d dug a big hole for ourselves in Sydney” – it’s a great joke of the movie that it does a pretty good Melbourne. </p>
<p>“I would have loved to have made it in Melbourne,” says Cameron, beyond the one week of exteriors he was able to film: “it’s the plaster that you see outside the window, it’s just all sorts of tiny things that you can’t reproduce”. </p>
<p>But when Nora rides her bike down a wide, leafy street, it feels like a suburb of Melbourne where you just haven’t been. Because the film is iconic to Melbourne (as is the novel), it’s satisfying that this seems to have no impact on viewers, as little as knowing that Rear Window <a href="http://movie-locations.com/movies/r/Rear-Window.php">was filmed in LA</a>. It undercuts the seriousness that forms around iconic things; it makes it easier to see the thing itself.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eeRBctkbd7o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Monkey Grip was filmed in Sydney, but here are some of the Melbourne exterior scenes, spliced together.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When they get to Sydney – which scenes were also filmed in Sydney – the house they stay in is all pink light. The bed is “pre-warmed” by a dog. ‘What a good idea!’ says Javo when Gracie jumps in the bed, and they cuddle up together. It’s holiday time. With a clean shirt, Sydney light, and a comb run through his hair, Javo is transformed into a man on the upswing. Nora catches him trying to take money from her purse while she’s napping and says “Jeez, you’re good-looking.” He asks if 20 bucks is okay; he’s “just going to see some friends”.</p>
<p>While he’s out, Gracie consults the I Ching – big part of the novel, small part of the film – about the likelihood that the three of them will be going as planned to Manly tomorrow. The universe responds and says “don’t count on it, sister”. Nora asks Gracie what she thinks of Javo, who acknowledges that he’s a junkie, which of course has its problems, but, “You should be nicer to him, and leave him alone, that’s what I reckon.” When he finally comes home, Nora finds him in the kitchen, suspiciously going to town on a baguette. </p>
<p>“This was supposed to be a holiday,” says Nora. “What are you doing, what do you want?” He says, “I want some Vegemite,” and it’s all downhill from there. He converts a fight about doing smack and making empty promises into a discussion about whether or not he’s understood. If she understood him, would she like him? A good question at the wrong time.</p>
<p>Later on, in bed, he says, “I do this over and over. Whenever I get something good, I destroy it.” But just as he’s really exhausted your patience (you lose patience with both of them), the film finds something new in the couple, which is one of the pleasures of the looser, TV-like structure, where characters don’t have to change and grow; they can surprise you with qualities that disappear, then emerge anew, as if shuffled. </p>
<p>When it’s obvious that they’re done with each other, generosity becomes possible. They have a tender disagreement about which of them is going to leave the trip early and go home to Melbourne. It’s him. They kiss. As he rides away in the cab, he plays a little riff on his harmonica and gifts it to Gracie. Gracie and Nora catch the ferry to Manly. “You’ll get over it,” Gracie advises Nora. The ferry’s nice at night, she observes. While Javo has been happening to Nora, Gracie has been growing up. How often do you get to see this kind of thing on film, the child turning casually into the adult? </p>
<p>In The Avocado Plantation, Stratton points out that Hazlehurst as Nora in 1982 seemed like it would herald a coming age of complex roles for women actors, which the rest of the 1980s turned out to largely squander. He also mentions Wendy Hughes’s role as Vanessa in Carl Schultz’s excellent 1983 movie <a href="https://www.ozmovies.com.au/movie/careful-he-might-hear-you">Careful, He Might Hear You</a>, another adaptation of a well-loved Australian novel. </p>
<p>I got chills when Nora and Gracie went on the Manly Ferry; at the end of Careful, He Might Hear You, Vanessa, who’s a snob, decides for once in her life to cross the Harbour on the Ferry, gets into a collision, and drowns. Over in Melbourne, Hazlehurst’s Nora puts on her lipstick and decides it’s time to give her life a little TLC. Her metaphor is a tub that’s been draining towards Javo; now it’s time to put the plug back in.</p>
<p>She goes to a gig. (It looks like The Corner, but I’m sure it’s in Sydney.) One of the odd surprises of the film is that Chrissy Amphlett, Divinyls frontwoman, plays a muso in Nora’s circle named Angela; at the gig, she plays ‘Boys in Town’ from start to finish, but with actors playing the band (the rest of the Divinyls turned down roles in the film). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dRuNkBybku0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Chrissy Amphlett plays Nora’s muso friend Angela in Monkey Grip.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nora’s hair is slicked down and tied back; she’s wearing a sleek, feathered dress. She cuts loose, dances, laughs with friends; she reconnects with former housemate Clive (played with warmth by Michael Caton). Nora’s world remains spiky and young but it’s comfy without Javo. Soon, she’s writing in front of an open fire. She’s writing on a tram. She writes a short story addressing her feelings towards Lillian and doesn’t think there’s any particular reason to show it to her before publishing. Her life changes again. She moves house again. There’s the sticky business of telling her housemate, but these things are there to be dealt with.</p>
<p>“I just want it quite clear,” she tells the man she’s moving in with, “that we’re not moving into this house as a couple.” She reads books; she looks up words in the dictionary. Around her, children squabble. The framed picture of Virginia Woolf that Nora transports between residences assumes its place above the new workstation, perpetually stately and sentinel. Then, once again, there he is, in a striped shirt of thin fabric and a ragged, rather fashion-forward open seam. “You look great,” she says. “What happened?”</p>
<p>It’s Javo’s softer side. They go up to her bedroom. He sits in a sunny chair. “I’ve been having a really good time these days,” he says. “I’ve been knocking around a bit. Seen Lillian a couple of times.” Nora lies on the bed looking deeply unimpressed. Unprompted, Javo explains that he never loved Nora; he really needed her when he came back from Thailand, but he’s starting to feel better again. A tear slides down her cheek. “Come on, mate, we can outlast the lot of them,” he says. “We see so little of each other, we’re bound to,” she says, as if that’s the point.</p>
<p>In another room Nora’s housemate sits on the bed, playing guitar in his yellow socks and Volleys. He knows Javo is there but he’s being tactful about it. Later, they all go to a party. Life happens around them. A woman at the party observes that men do not like liberated women. People meet for quiet chats by a trellis adorned with green lights. And then the awful moment: someone’s crying in the dark over a can of Fosters and it turns out, incredibly, they’re crying about you.</p>
<p>It’s Lillian, and she’s now read Nora’s published story, the one she decided not to tell Lillian about. “Events don’t belong to people,” Nora explains. But everyone knows who the characters are, Lillian argues. “Twenty people in Carlton do not constitute everybody!” says Nora. </p>
<p>Lillian accuses Nora of just <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/25/helen-garners-monkey-grip-makes-me-examine-who-i-am">publishing her diaries</a> – a critique that famously dogged Garner at the time, as if, she wrote in an essay in 2001 and was still telling Claudia Karvan in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-28/books-that-made-us-puts-australian-literature-in-the-spotlight/100645224">an ABC special</a> 20 years later, writing diaries isn’t an interesting, challenging, valuable thing to do. But there’s no time for that discourse; Javo is inside, and look – he’s thrown up on himself again.</p>
<p>“Sorry, Nor!” he says. “Guess the dope’s fucked me liver.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be sorry, people have had to do this for me heaps of times,” she fibs, as she picks him up and hauls him away from the party. </p>
<p>Her housemate goes on tour. She rides her bike; she thinks. She drops a letter round to Lillian’s: “Can you see this gets to Javo?” She keeps riding her bike – one of the skills Hazlehurst had to learn for the film; the other, she told Women’s Weekly, was swimming – and soon she’s at her old share house, where lovely Clive still lives. She cries in his arms. She cries in the arms of a woman she hasn’t met. She leaves the house and cries again in front of the cast-iron fence. Was this scene filmed in Melbourne? Again, if not, it’s a pretty good fake.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="swimmers in the Fitzroy Pool, with the words 'AQUA PROFUNDA' (deep water) on the wall behind them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478174/original/file-20220809-26-mtzcdn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fitzroy Pool, with its famous ‘AQUA PROFONDA’ sign, is an iconic Monkey Grip location: ‘a paradise’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ashton_29">Ash29/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And now we’re back at Fitzroy Pool, and it’s summer again. In the DVD commentary, Alice Garner points out that the scenes at the pool, which were filmed at <a href="https://www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/RALC">Ryde Aquatic Leisure Centre</a>, have done the trick for any Melburnian who’s seen the film, and even Cameron says he’s “quite proud” of the recreation. (When I watched it, I took it as self-sighted gospel that the bleachers at the Fitzroy Pool used to be blue on the verticals.) </p>
<p>Rachel Ang, whose 2018 comic <a href="https://www.glompress.com/swimsuit-by-rachel-ang">Swimsuit</a> was set at Fitzroy Pool, told me they set the comic there because “it’s really an amphitheatre, this stage for all kinds of emotional drama”. Ang, who is also an architect, was struck by the “formal power” of the space where the sun acts as a spotlight and shines on “everything”, the dramas and their social implications. </p>
<p>Victoria Hannan, whose 2020 novel <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/victoria-hannan/kokomo">Kokomo</a> also has a critical scene set at the pool, told me that she did so as a “direct tribute” to Monkey Grip – the scene in the novel where Nora tells Clive, “No-one will understand but this is a paradise.”</p>
<p>I wanted to spend this time with the plot of Monkey Grip because I wanted to try to see, if I could, the thing itself. By the end of the movie, what’s obvious is that the thing itself extends beyond the characters and past the movie’s frame, into the rich shine of the sunshine, the blue soak of the pool. </p>
<p>There are fabulous clothes (Nora wears everything from a fuzzy tangerine sweater to a pair of pedal-pushers in animal print; even Martin, at one point, wears a denim jacket and rope-net shirt). It’s the yeahs, give-it-a-burls, fair-dinkums, I-think-it’s-beauts; a song done well at band practice is described as “very tasty”. It’s the slowness, the detail, the gossip, the repetition. Everyone’s always smoking in front of louvres that are always smudgy, and though the men may look unfathomable, they’re also always there.</p>
<p>At the pool, Nora gossips with another old housemate. Gracie gossips at the water’s edge with the old housemate’s kid. Javo is at the pool, under the AQUA PROFONDA sign. Nora approaches him in possibly the best outfit of the film, a red cap and lemon bomber over a one-piece bathing suit. It makes her happy that Javo’s doing well, but it’s bloody painful, too. It’s like watching a kid grow up and take off. She liked him needing her.</p>
<p>“Mate,” Javo says. “Our relationship’s permanent. Maybe we could go out tonight or something.” But she’s seeing a movie with Gracie. She remembers him the summer before, and it makes her reflect on their world, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>how we thrashed about, swapping and changing partners, like a complicated dance to which the steps hadn’t quite been learned, all of us somehow trying to move gracefully, in spite of our ignorance. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A beautiful score rises, quite heavy with strings. Everything is blue. The credits rise. The movie ends.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This essay is extracted from <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/melbourne-film">Melbourne on Film: Cinema That Defines Our City</a> (RRP:$34.99), which is published by Melbourne International Film Festival and Black Inc.</em></p>
<p><em>Monkey Grip will screen at MIFF on <a href="https://miff.com.au/program/film/monkey-grip">Sunday 14 August</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronnie Scott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Ken Cameron’s film of Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip is dark, yearning, weird – and incredibly sexy – writes Ronnie Scott.
Ronnie Scott, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187442
2022-08-09T00:52:39Z
2022-08-09T00:52:39Z
Backyard hens’ eggs contain 40 times more lead on average than shop eggs, research finds
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478187/original/file-20220809-16-86bvbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C33%2C4408%2C2908&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s nothing like the fresh eggs from your own hens, the <a href="https://www.chickenguard.com.au/chicken-keeping-is-on-the-rise-australia/">more than 400,000</a> Australians who keep backyard chooks will tell you. Unfortunately, it’s often not just freshness and flavour that set their eggs apart from those in the shops. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119798">newly published research</a>* found backyard hens’ eggs contain, on average, more than 40 times the lead levels of commercially produced eggs. Almost one in two hens in our Sydney study had significant lead levels in their blood. Similarly, about half the eggs analysed contained lead at levels that may pose a health concern for consumers.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-verdicts-in-we-must-better-protect-kids-from-toxic-lead-exposure-41969">Even low levels</a> of lead exposure are considered <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp13.pdf">harmful to human health</a>, including among other effects <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30025-2/fulltext">cardiovascular disease</a> and decreased IQ and kidney function. Indeed, the World Health Organization has <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health">stated</a> there is no safe level of lead exposure.</p>
<p>So how do you know whether this is a likely problem in the eggs you’re getting from backyard hens? It depends on lead levels in your soil, which vary across our cities. We mapped the areas of high and low risk for hens and their eggs in our biggest cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – and present these maps here.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119798">Our research</a> details lead poisoning of backyard chickens and explains what this means for urban gardening and food production. In older homes close to city centres, contaminated soils can greatly increase people’s exposure to lead through eating eggs from backyard hens. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="chickens scratching in the dirt" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476428/original/file-20220728-20511-ejyizd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chickens love scratching and pecking in the dirt. Unfortunately, that’s how lead from the soil gets into them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What did the study find?</h2>
<p>Most lead gets into the hens as they scratch in the dirt and peck food from the ground. </p>
<p>We assessed trace metal contamination in backyard chickens and their eggs from garden soils across 55 Sydney homes. We also explored other possible sources of contamination such as animal drinking water and chicken feed. </p>
<p>Our data confirmed what we had anticipated from our analysis of more than 25,000 garden samples from Australia gardens collected via the <a href="https://www.360dustanalysis.com/">VegeSafe program</a>. Lead is the <a href="https://www.mapmyenvironment.com/">contaminant of most concern</a>.</p>
<p>The amount of lead in the soil was significantly associated with lead concentrations in chicken blood and eggs. We found potential contamination from drinking water and commercial feed supplies in some samples but it is not a significant source of exposure. </p>
<hr>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aehBQA0lH2M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>Unlike for <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/managing-individual-exposure-lead-australia#block-views-block-file-attachments-content-block-1">humans</a>, there are no guidelines for blood lead levels for chickens or other birds. <a href="https://www.aavac.com.au/files/2015-16.pdf">Veterinary assessments</a> and research indicate levels of 20 micrograms per decilitre (µg/dL) or more may harm their health. Our analysis of 69 backyard chickens across the 55 participants’ homes showed 45% had blood lead levels above 20µg/dL. </p>
<p>We analysed eggs from the same birds. There are no food standards for trace metals in eggs in Australia or <a href="https://www.fao.org/fao-who-codexalimentarius/sh-proxy/en/?lnk=1&url=https%253A%252F%252Fworkspace.fao.org%252Fsites%252Fcodex%252FStandards%252FCXS%2B193-1995%252FCXS_193e.pdf">globally</a>. However, in the <a href="https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/publications/Pages/25th-Australian-Total-Diet-Study.aspx">19th Australian Total Diet Study</a>, lead levels were less than 5µg/kg in a small sample of shop-bought eggs. </p>
<p>The average level of lead in eggs from the backyard chickens in our study was 301µg/kg. By comparison, it was 7.2µg/kg in the nine commercial free-range eggs we analysed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4037389/">International research</a> indicates that eating one egg a day with a lead level of less than 100µg/kg would result in an estimated blood lead increase of less than 1μg/dL in children. That’s around the level <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/212_04/mja250427.pdf">found in Australian children</a> not living in areas affected by lead mines or smelters. The <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/managing-individual-exposure-lead-australia#block-views-block-file-attachments-content-block-1">level of concern used in Australia</a> for investigating exposure sources is 5µg/dL. </p>
<p>Some 51% of the eggs we analysed exceeded the 100µg/kg “food safety” threshold. To keep egg lead below 100μg/kg, our modelling of the relationship between lead in soil, chickens and eggs showed soil lead needs to be under 117mg/kg. This is much lower than the Australian residential guideline for soils of 300mg/kg. </p>
<p>To protect chicken health and keep their blood lead below 20µg/kg, soil concentrations need to be under 166mg/kg. Again, this is much lower than the guideline.</p>
<h2>How did we map the risks across cities?</h2>
<p>We used our garden soil trace metal database (more than 7,000 homes and 25,000 samples) to map the locations in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne most at risk from high lead values.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Sydney showing areas of high and low lead risk for backyard chickens" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476799/original/file-20220801-13622-gfamgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Levels of lead risk for backyard chickens across Sydney. Dark green dots indicate areas with safe lead levels. Light green and yellow dots are areas over the safe lead level. Orange and red dots indicate areas with high levels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Max M. Gillings, Mark Patrick Taylor</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Melbourne showing areas of high and low lead risk for backyard chickens" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476800/original/file-20220801-44691-cb37jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of Melbourne showing levels of lead risk for backyard chickens. Dark green dots indicate areas with safe lead levels. Light green and yellow dots are areas over the safe lead level. Orange and red dots indicate areas with high levels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Max M. Gillings, Mark Patrick Taylor</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Brisbane showing areas of high and low lead risk for backyard chickens" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476801/original/file-20220801-13622-30yjyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of Brisbane showing levels of lead risk for backyard chickens. Dark green dots indicate areas with safe lead levels. Light green and yellow dots are areas over the safe lead level. Orange and red dots indicate areas with high levels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map: Max M. Gillings, Mark Patrick Taylor</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>Deeper analysis of the data showed older homes were much more likely to have high lead levels across soils, chickens and their eggs. This finding matches other studies that found older homes are most at risk of legacy contamination from the former use of lead-based paints, leaded petrol and lead pipes.</p>
<h2>What can backyard producers do about it?</h2>
<p>These findings will come as a shock to many people who have turned to backyard food production. It has been on the rise over the past decade, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-21/green-finger-boom-sprouts-from-rising-cost-of-living/101250928">spurred on recently</a> by soaring grocery prices.</p>
<p>People are <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/PB-59-Grow-Your-Own.pdf">turning to home-grown produce</a> for other reasons, too. They want to know where their food came from, enjoy the security of producing food with no added chemicals, and feel the closer connection to nature.</p>
<p>While urban gardening is a hugely important activity and should be encouraged, previous studies of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021002075">contamination of Australian home garden soils</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352340921004352">trace metal uptake into plants</a> show it needs to be undertaken with caution. </p>
<p>Contaminants have built up in soils over the many years of our cities’ history. These legacy contaminants can enter our food chain via <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-006-2027-1">vegetables</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b04084">honey bees</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.04.128">chickens</a>.</p>
<p>Urban gardening exposure risks have typically focused on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.10.054">vegetables and fruits</a>. Limited attention has been paid to backyard chickens. The challenge of sampling and finding participants meant many previous studies have been smaller and have not always analysed all possible exposure routes. </p>
<p>Mapping the risks of contamination in soils enables backyard gardeners and chicken keepers to consider what the findings may mean for them.</p>
<p>Particularly in older, inner-city locations, it would be prudent to get their soils tested. People can do this at <a href="https://www.360dustanalysis.com/">VegeSafe</a> or through a commercial laboratory. Soils identified as a problem can be replaced and chickens kept to areas of known clean soil.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The authors acknowledge Tahereh Yazdanparast as first author of the research paper.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Patrick Taylor received funding via an Australian Government Citizen Science Grant (2017-2020), CSG55984 ‘Citizen insights to the composition and risks of household dust’ (the DustSafe project). The VegeSafe and DustSafe programs are supported by publication donations to Macquarie University. He is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dorrit E. Jacob and Vladimir Strezov do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Lead levels in backyard hen eggs are often much higher than in eggs bought in the shops. A new study of soil lead, chickens and eggs locates the high-risk areas in our biggest cities.
Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, Macquarie University
Dorrit E. Jacob, Professor, Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University
Vladimir Strezov, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185132
2022-07-15T00:28:49Z
2022-07-15T00:28:49Z
The Barassi Line: a globally unique divider splitting Australia’s footy fans
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471991/original/file-20220701-16-ue86sm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C1140%2C848&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikidata Fellowship</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A particular eccentricity of the Australian sporting landscape is that, culturally, our football codes remain strongly tied to their geographic origins. </p>
<p>Australian rules originates from Melbourne, with the southwestern states as heartlands. The rugby codes made their Australian sporting debut in Sydney, with northeastern states as heartlands.</p>
<p>This phenomenon was dubbed “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barassi_Line">the Barassi Line</a>” in 1978, describing a cultural dividing line based on football preference proposed to run from Eden, NSW, through Canberra and up to Arnhem Land. The term was first used by historian Ian Turner in his Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture that year.</p>
<p>The Barassi Line has been a focus of <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.405891829523236">my research</a> and has recently been <a href="https://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/the-barassi-line/">plotted and visualised</a> by Brett Tweedie as part of his <a href="https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Inaugural_Wikidata_Fellows_announced">Wikidata fellowship</a>.</p>
<p>In a country that has largely avoided political and cultural hyper-partisanship, the <a href="https://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/the-barassi-line/">Barassi Line</a> is perhaps our strongest sociogeographic dividing characteristic, and certainly novel in the global context.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1177727116110024707"}"></div></p>
<h2>Red states and blue states</h2>
<p>Where one is raised has a remarkably strong bearing on likely football preferences.</p>
<p>If you walked down the streets of Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart or Perth, every third person you walked by would be interested in Australian rules and no other football code.</p>
<p>If you entered a Melbourne pub filled with people interested in football (of any variety), <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.143058285756777">82% of them would AFL supporters</a>. </p>
<p>In a similar Sydney sport pub, <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.143058285756777">73% would support a rugby code</a>. Notably, however, support for the rugby codes <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17430437.2020.1807953">varies significantly across Sydney’s geographic subregions</a>. For example, rugby league interest is nearly half as prevalent in North Sydney (28%) as compared to Sutherland (52%).</p>
<p>If you’re Australian, you might be thinking, “Yeah – of course!” But this is not the international norm.</p>
<p>In the United States, for instance, where terrain can range from snow fields to desert landscapes, the variance in popularity between mainstream professional sports leagues is comparatively minimal. </p>
<p>While basketball’s popularity is linked to inner-city urbanisation and baseball <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Wpg6AwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT15&dq=a+companion+to+american+sport+history&ots=ehVE6bWB12&sig=x7X2EoOhYBmpAzQol_alxZH622s#v=onepage&q=a%20companion%20to%20american%20sport%20history&f=false">retains a rural stronghold</a>, <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=AU">Google search volume data</a> nonetheless reveals that 48 of America’s 51 states exhibit an identical hierarchy of sport league popularity (being gridiron, basketball, baseball and ice hockey).</p>
<h2>Where is the Barassi Line and how has it changed?</h2>
<p>Australian rules authorities have actively attempted to shift the Barassi Line. </p>
<p>As early as 1903, Australian rules administrators began investing in game development, <a href="https://www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/products/code-wars-the-battle-for-fans-dollars-and-survival">spending more than £10,000</a> on footballs, jumpers, and school coaches to promote the code in Sydney. </p>
<p>In the past decade, the AFL has distributed <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/afl-funding-ladder-revealed-100m-gap-between-top-and-bottom-clubs-20220304-p5a1yp.html">A$220 million in additional funding</a> to its four northern expansion clubs (the Sydney Swans, GWS Giants, Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast Suns).</p>
<p>Yet despite ever-increasing media coverage and professionalisation, it is remarkable how intact the line remains.</p>
<p>Come 2019, AFL free-to-air telecasts averaged <a href="http://www.footyindustry.com/?page_id=142139">261,000 Melbourne viewers</a>, compared with 21,000 and 23,000 in Sydney and Brisbane, respectively (when not featuring a local team). </p>
<p>Similarly, NRL matches held an average rating in Sydney of <a href="http://www.footyindustry.com/?page_id=145474">about 197,000</a>, compared with ratings typically between 5,000 and 20,000 across southern markets. </p>
<h2>Mapping the battlefront</h2>
<p>Given the Barassi Line represents a metaphorical battlefront, however, real progress is perhaps best measured at the frontline.</p>
<p>Here, the <a href="https://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/the-barassi-line/">Wikidata fellowship work visualising community football clubs</a> is insightful. This mapping identifies 1,504 Australian rules and 861 rugby league clubs nationally. (Of course, as primarily a creative work, it is possible some clubs were missed in this mapping project). But the distribution of clubs is particularly illuminating, noting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>where Aussie rules was dominant, it was clearly dominant, with league making up just 15% of the two-code-preferred at most in Aussie rules states […] League on the other hand, even when the dominant code, still had a much higher percentage of Aussie rules clubs.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471992/original/file-20220701-14-jjfh4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This mapping identifies 1,504 Australian rules and 861 rugby league clubs nationally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikidata fellowship</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The conclusions outlined in this <a href="https://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/the-barassi-line/">data visualisation</a> align with those in my book <a href="https://www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/products/code-wars-the-battle-for-fans-dollars-and-survival">Code Wars</a>. </p>
<p>Australian rules is successfully creeping the Barassi Line northward, with the border-straddling region of Murray in NSW aligned with Australian rules. </p>
<p>Significantly, this <a href="https://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/the-barassi-line/">mapping</a> work suggests Australian rules is also advancing in the adjacent Riverina region.</p>
<p>These regions, while small in population, are of high strategic importance to the football codes because such regional areas produce a disproportionate amount of elite athletes. </p>
<p>Wagga Wagga in the NSW Riverina is known as the “City of Good Sports”. It not only produces a very high number of elite athletes per capita (<a href="https://www.waggawaggaaustralia.com.au/visitor-information/city-of-good-sports/">“the Wagga effect”</a>), but does so across an amazing diversity of sports.</p>
<p>Luminaries include Mark Taylor, Michael Slater, Alex Blackwell, Wayne Carey, Paul Kelly, Peter Sterling, Nathan Sharpe, as well as the Mortimer and Daniher families.</p>
<p>The Barassi Line is hence not just of academic interest, but of vital importance for our football codes in terms of maintaining vibrant junior participation bases. This helps secure the nation’s best future athletes.</p>
<h2>The Barassi Line and the broader NSW-Victoria rivalry</h2>
<p>A noteworthy feature of the Barassi Line is how it reflects more broadly upon New South Wales and Victoria, which remain fierce cultural, political, and economic rivals more than 120 years after federation.</p>
<p>This was brought into particular focus by political barbing over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2021/jul/20/victoria-premier-daniel-andrews-takes-swipe-at-nsw-for-not-implementing-ring-of-steel-video">COVID management</a>, but is otherwise most regularly overt in <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/motorsport/formula-one/a-loss-for-f1-nsw-premiers-gibe-over-really-disappointing-melbourne-news-drivers-debate-supercarsstyle-penalty-system-pit-talk/news-story/703226c411767e4e74d8eb5ef7c82f22">sport</a>. </p>
<p>Sporting barbs fuel the state rivalry because Melbourne consciously targeted becoming Australia’s sporting capital in the 1980s. This was a means of <a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.7202/029575ar">economic salvation</a> by diversifying from manufacturing. Sydney, by contrast, positioned itself as the nation’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09523367.2012.746816">preferred financial centre</a>.</p>
<p>While Melbourne’s sport attendance culture is <a href="https://theconversation.com/aussies-are-sports-mad-but-victorians-are-the-clear-winners-45761">widely lauded</a>, Sydney advocates have previously quipped this reflects the city’s otherwise <a href="https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19911890225">dullness</a>. </p>
<p>Irrespective of our individual sporting preferences, the Barassi Line is something to honour. </p>
<p>It not only puts Australia among the world’s most unique sports cultures. It also explains why we have so many professional football teams and leagues to support. </p>
<p>That Australia’s relatively small population can sustain such an abundance and diversity of football is worth celebrating.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hunter Fujak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In a country that has largely avoided political and cultural hyper-partisanship, the Barassi Line is perhaps our strongest sociographic dividing characteristic, and certainly novel globally.
Hunter Fujak, Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/170206
2021-10-21T19:17:05Z
2021-10-21T19:17:05Z
As Melbourne cautiously opens up today, what lies ahead?
<p>This morning, Melburnians are waking up to the end of the city’s sixth lockdown.</p>
<p>Since March 2020, Melbourne has spent <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/17/australias-melbourne-set-to-end-worlds-longest-lockdowns">more time in lockdown than any other city in the world</a>. It’s been a long and arduous journey for its five million people, as well as other parts of Victoria at certain times.</p>
<p>Today’s relaxations reflect the fact that Victoria has reached its milestone of 70% of eligible adults fully vaccinated against COVID earlier than expected.</p>
<p>So what can Melburnians do from today, how did this happen earlier than expected, and will hospitals cope?</p>
<h2>What will change today?</h2>
<p>People are <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/victorians-hard-work-means-hitting-target-ahead-time">no longer confined to five reasons to leave home</a>. Ten people are able to visit households and the nightly curfew will end. There will be no distance limit for travel within metropolitan Melbourne.</p>
<p>Hospitality venues can open to 20 fully vaccinated people indoors and 50 outdoors. Most outdoor settings – cafes, cinemas, and physical recreation facilities including pools – will open with up to 50 fully vaccinated people per venue. At last, fully vaccinated Melburnians can get a haircut and have their dogs groomed.</p>
<p>To the relief of many parents exhausted by home learning, the start of the staggered school return of Grade 3 to Year 11 in metro Melbourne commences today.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1450921930949730307"}"></div></p>
<h2>Has the roadmap changed?</h2>
<p>Yes, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/19/victoria-covid-roadmap-premier-declares-we-are-opening-up-with-lockdown-to-end-in-late-october">previously announced roadmap</a> has been modified and some restrictions have been eased ahead of time, such as the ceiling on household gatherings and travel limits.</p>
<p>The school opening schedule has also been brought forward.</p>
<p>The reasons given by Premier Daniel Andrews for these changes have been the accelerated pace of COVID vaccinations, facilitated in part by increasing vaccine supply, and the shortening of intervals between first and second doses.</p>
<p>Modelling by the Burnet Institute conducted in mid-October provided <a href="https://www.burnet.edu.au/news/1529_victorian_lockdown_to_end_21_october_updated_burnet_modelling">more optimistic and reassuring estimates</a> of the impact of reopening on health services than earlier modelling.</p>
<p>In addition to the faster than anticipated uptake of vaccines, this is in part because assumptions made in the revised model are based on real world Victorian data, rather than projections based on international evidence. The anticipated length of hospital stay has been on average much shorter than previously anticipated. The chances of overwhelming the hospital system after reopening have dropped from 63% to just 23%.</p>
<p>As of yesterday, 3.4% of <a href="https://www.covid19data.com.au/victoria">active cases</a> in Victoria <a href="https://www.covid19data.com.au/hospitalisations-icu">were hospitalised</a> and 0.6% were in ICU. These are much lower rates than those experienced in NSW at the peak of its outbreak. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1449540215287083013"}"></div></p>
<h2>What can we expect next?</h2>
<p>Modelling by a number of institutes, including Doherty and Burnet, predicts an increase in cases after lockdowns end. Victoria will be able to observe the outcomes of easing restrictions in NSW.</p>
<p>However, there are important differences between the two states. Cases began to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-19/experts-warn-low-covid-positive-case-numbers-cant-be-maintained/100548280">steadily decline in NSW</a> once 50% of eligible adults were fully vaccinated, and average daily case numbers were down to 530 on the day the lockdown ended. On the other hand, Victoria’s <a href="https://www.covid19data.com.au/victoria">seven-day average of new daily cases is almost 2,000</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-sydneys-covid-numbers-didnt-get-as-bad-as-the-modelling-suggested-169368">Why Sydney's COVID numbers didn't get as bad as the modelling suggested</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Meanwhile, we can learn from the experiences of other countries that eased restrictions at comparable levels of vaccination. A lot has been said about Denmark’s relative success at controlling COVID after lifting restrictions. </p>
<p>However, Denmark didn’t remove restrictions until <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/denmark-lifts-covid-restrictions-crediting-high-vaccine-uptake-rcna1967">more than 70% of its entire population was fully vaccinated</a> (83% of eligible adults). Melbourne has just over 55% fully vaccinated when considering the total population.</p>
<p>When Denmark began to ease restrictions, it was reporting around 500 cases a day (similar to NSW) and the number continued to decline to around 300 ten days later. Since then, the number of cases has steadily increased to a <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/">current average of 700 per day</a>. However, the health system is coping with <a href="https://www.sst.dk/en/english/corona-eng/status-of-the-epidemic/covid-19-updates-statistics-and-charts">around 126 people hospitalised and 11 in ICU</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1448283957846593541"}"></div></p>
<p>Portugal currently has the highest vaccination rate in the world – <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-05/how-portugal-managed-to-have-the-highest-rates-of-vaccination/100514138">85% of the entire population is fully vaccinated</a>. The COVID infection rate and hospital admissions have dropped to their lowest levels in nearly 18 months.</p>
<p>However, it was cautious about easing restrictions and only allowed bars and nightclubs to reopen <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/portugal-lift-most-remaining-covid-19-curbs-pm-calls-responsibility-2021-09-23/">last month</a> when the entire population vaccination coverage was greater than 80%. Even now, customers at entertainment venues have to show a digital vaccination certificate or a negative COVID test and masks are still compulsory in specific settings.</p>
<h2>The safe road ahead</h2>
<p>Today should not be seen as “freedom day”. But it is the first step towards a time when the pandemic won’t dominate our daily lives.</p>
<p>Victorians have made significant sacrifices over 2020 and 2021, and will now be able to enjoy a wide range of social choices as our vaccine coverage increases.</p>
<p>But it’s important the community understands the breadth and sustainability of these freedoms will depend on remaining vigilant around a few key prevention behaviours, especially recognising COVID symptoms, testing, and short periods of isolation for people who contract COVID.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-09/210919%20-%20Burnet%20Institute%20-%20Vic%20Roadmap.pdf">Modelling</a> has shown better outcomes when vaccinated people continue to test when they have symptoms. We need to continue to get vaccinated and aim to reach and perhaps exceed global leaders in vaccination levels, as we prepare for <a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/10/20/covid-boosters-greg-hunt/">booster shots later this year</a>. </p>
<p>Experience overseas indicates the Delta wave is also disproportionately affecting the young, including school children. Safe schools are an absolute necessity – improved ventilation, vaccinated teachers and children 12 and above, and indoor masks can mitigate the risk of infection.</p>
<p>Navigating the next few months will require a whole-of-community effort. Victorians have done it before and can do it again.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-vaccination-to-ventilation-5-ways-to-keep-kids-safe-from-covid-when-schools-reopen-166734">From vaccination to ventilation: 5 ways to keep kids safe from COVID when schools reopen</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>We acknowledge the valuable assistance by Burnet Institute researcher Scott Umali.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Toole receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council funded by the Commonwealth government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Stoové is a recipient of a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellowship and has received investigator initiated research funding from Gilead Sciences and AbbVie, and consultant fees from Gilead Sciences, for activities unrelated to this work. He has also received funding to support research and program activities from the Commonwealth and Australian jurisdictional governments. He is Head of Public Health at the Burnet Institute which has conducted modelling for the Victorian Government to inform the Melbourne COVID-19 roadmap. </span></em></p>
Today should not be seen as ‘freedom day’. But it is the first step towards a time when the pandemic won’t dominate our daily lives.
Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute
Mark Stoové, Head of Public Health, Co-Head HIV Elimination Program, Head of Justice Health Research, Burnet Institute
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/168467
2021-09-22T05:08:24Z
2021-09-22T05:08:24Z
Melbourne earthquake: what exactly happened, and what’s the best way to stay safe from aftershocks?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422569/original/file-20210922-27-105ks1m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C183%2C5526%2C3517&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Ross/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A magnitude 5.8 earthquake has struck about 115 kilometres east of Melbourne in Victoria, causing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2021/sep/22/melbourne-earthquake-live-updates-victoria-tremor-mansfield-">damage</a> to buildings and forcing residents <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/21/australia-earthquake-melbourne-damage/">to evacuate</a> across the city. The quake, which started near Woods Point at a depth of 12km, was also felt in Sydney, Canberra, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-22/live-melbourne-earthquake-victoria-nsw-canberra/100481780">Adelaide</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-22/earthquake-victoria-melbourne-nsw-sydney-canberra-act/100481732">even as far as Launceston</a>, Tasmania.</p>
<p>I and the co-author of this article, Dee Ninis, work as earthquake scientists at the <a href="https://www.src.com.au/">Seismology Research Centre</a>. Researching earthquakes is our life’s work. Here’s what you need to know to understand why today’s earthquake happened, and the geological conditions that triggered it.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1440458861975011331"}"></div></p>
<h2>Where was it exactly?</h2>
<p>On-ground sensors distributed by the Seismology Research Centre have confirmed the earthquake was of a 5.8 magnitude, with an epicentre about 60km south-east of Mansfield in Victoria. The preliminary <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000fd9v/moment-tensor">focal mechanism</a> of this earthquake is strike-slip, meaning the rocks likely slid past each other laterally on what is probably an east-west oriented fault. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422540/original/file-20210922-19-1grom4i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The earthquake was felt across the region at around 9.15am today. Geoscience Australia had received 32,409 felt reports as of when this article was published.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/Geoscience Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia experiences fewer earthquakes than plate boundary regions, such as New Zealand. Many of Australia’s suspected neotectonic faults (faults which have hosted earthquakes in recent geological times) have not been thoroughly investigated, commonly due to lack of funding and resources for earthquake research. </p>
<p>However, earthquakes basically happen for the same reason in Australia as they do in New Zealand: there is a buildup of elastic strain energy in the crust, which eventually needs to be released. And most of this energy release occurs due to the rupture of weak zones in the crust, called faults.</p>
<p>Geoscience Australia hosts a <a href="https://earthquakes.ga.gov.au/">database</a> of what we think might be active faults across Australia, but few of these faults have been studied on the ground.</p>
<p>Most of the neotectonic faults near today’s earthquake were identified from remote elevation data — and this alone doesn’t reveal information such as when, how big and how often previous earthquakes on these faults occurred.</p>
<p>What we look for here is displacement at Earth’s surface, formed by movement during previous quakes. Such displacement is only caused by moderate to large earthquakes relatively close to the surface.</p>
<p>If it’s deep enough, it’s entirely possible for a quake to happen at a fault that never ruptures the surface — so we can’t see evidence for it. At a magnitude of 5.8 and a depth of 12km, we don’t expect today’s event to have an associated surface rupture, although it is remotely possible.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422515/original/file-20210922-25-1wcrkro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Conversation’s readers sent in their accounts of the earthquake, which was felt across Melbourne’s suburbs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Is this an unusual event?</h2>
<p>While some early reports suggested today’s earthquake was the “largest on-land earthquake in Australia since 1997”, this isn’t the case. Australia has an earthquake of magnitude 6 or higher every six to ten years, on average. That’s based on an instrumental record going back about 150 years. </p>
<p>The 2016 <a href="http://www.ga.gov.au/news-events/events/public-talks/public-talks-archive/the-26th-may-2016-mw6.0-petermann-ranges-earthquake-another-large-earthquake-in-an-unanticipated-location">Petermann Ranges</a> earthquake in the Northern Territory was a magnitude 6.1 quake. And while Australia is not a tectonic plate boundary, it is still quite seismically active. </p>
<p>This morning’s earthquake was the largest onshore quake ever recorded in Victoria. Other recent <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victorias-top-10-earthquakes-20141204-11zsew.html">earthquakes</a> include two magnitude 5 quakes: one in 1996 near Mt Baw Baw, and one in 2012 near Moe.</p>
<p>But just because we haven’t seen such a high-magnitude earthquake in our time doesn’t mean they don’t happen. For instance, there is geological evidence for a possible magnitude 7 earthquake occurring sometime between 70,000 and 25,000 years ago, on the Cadell Fault near the Victorian town of Echuca. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-earthquake-that-rattled-melbourne-was-among-australias-biggest-in-half-a-century-but-rock-records-reveal-far-mightier-ones-168471">The earthquake that rattled Melbourne was among Australia's biggest in half a century, but rock records reveal far mightier ones</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Earthquakes are more intense and frequent in plate boundary regions. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Plate">Pacific plate</a> boundary, which passes directly through New Zealand’s South Island, lies to Australia’s east.</p>
<p>But despite this — and although the tectonic deformation rates across Australia are lower than the deformation rates at plate boundary regions — Australia has seen earthquakes in places you wouldn’t expect (unless you’re an earthquake scientist). </p>
<p>For instance, the Tennant Creek earthquake sequence in 1988 saw three separate shocks erupt within 12 hours, with magnitudes of 6.2, 6.3 and 6.6 (the main shock). </p>
<h2>What about aftershocks?</h2>
<p>Several <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-22/live-melbourne-earthquake-victoria-nsw-canberra/100481780">aftershocks</a> followed the main event this morning, some occurring within the hour. In an earthquake sequence, an “aftershock” is defined as an earthquake that’s smaller than and which follows the main shock. The strongest aftershocks come soon after the main event and slowly taper off. </p>
<p>We do expect the region around today’s earthquake epicentre to remain active, and we will probably have more felt events in the next few days. In fact, we would expect aftershocks to continue up to decades afterwards, although through time most of these will become too small to be felt (the Tennant Creek earthquake sequence of 1988 is still ongoing).</p>
<p>If, under unfortunate circumstances, we experience an even larger earthquake soon — then that will become the main event, and the quake from this morning will be designated a “foreshock”. </p>
<p>So we all have to stay alert. Even if the aftershocks aren’t as intense in magnitude, smaller quakes can still be incredibly damaging depending on their depth and location. In the 2011 Christchurch disaster, it was an <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/canterbury-earthquake-september-2010">aftershock</a> of magnitude 6.3 which wreaked the most havoc, and led to many people’s deaths.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1440461207572398091"}"></div></p>
<h2>How to prepare?</h2>
<p>In terms of personal safety, the best thing to do during an earthquake is drop to the ground, take cover and hold on. If you’re inside a house or other building, try to crawl under something sturdy to protect yourself, such as a solid table. This will help save you from anything that might fall.</p>
<p>If you experience a quake while you’re outside, make sure you’re as far away from buildings and other structures as possible, as these too can fall on you. You need to be in an open area. Victoria’s State Emergency Service has more <a href="https://www.ses.vic.gov.au/plan-and-stay-safe/emergencies/earthquake">recommendations</a> on what to do, including: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>staying away from glass, windows, outside doors and walls and anything that could fall such as lighting fixtures</p></li>
<li><p>not using a doorway unless you know it is strongly supported and is close to you </p></li>
<li><p>keeping in mind the electricity may go out, and sprinkler systems or fire alarms may turn on.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, if you’re considering any activities that might put you at risk, such as roofing, gutter cleaning, and other activities that involve the use of ladders, it is prudent to reconsider whether these are essential in the short term.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgment: this article was co-authored by Dee Ninis, who works as an earthquake geologist at ESS Earth Sciences’s Seismology Research Centre based in Richmond, Victoria.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Quigley receives funding from The Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Seismology Research Centre in Richmond, Victoria, Australia.</span></em></p>
A largely hidden fault beneath the Victorian Alps has triggered a magnitude 5.8 quake that was felt as far afield as Sydney, Adelaide and Launceston. Here’s what we know so far.
Mark Quigley, Associate Professor of Earthquake Science, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167352
2021-09-20T01:43:08Z
2021-09-20T01:43:08Z
‘No other people popular like Franco Cozzo in Melbourne’: a new film explores his colorful, hard-sell life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421736/original/file-20210917-21-1yyg32r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4089%2C2152&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharmill Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Palazzo di Cozzo, directed by Madeleine Martiniello</em></p>
<p>Every Melburnian over 40, and many under, knows (or thinks they know) who Franco Cozzo is. He rose to fame through self-promotion aided by a little bit of associated fascination around a man who sold a product seemingly exclusively to a non-English speaking sector of the community — first-generation Mediterranean migrants — and did it in Italian (and, sort of, Greek).</p>
<p>This was radical at a time when some Anglo-Australians insisted (sometimes virulently) on only English being spoken in their presence. Cozzo’s success speaks for itself: at its height, his empire was three large outlets in inner-city Melbourne and a huge product awareness. </p>
<p>Many Italian-Australians also silently cringed, not at Cozzo’s speaking of Italian on television, but at the promotion of a baroque furnishing mode that seemed to signify a gaudy conception of success. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/403DuJMsfw4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>You didn’t have to be a second-gen Italian-Australian to regard the Cozzo phenomenon with embarrassment: not just because of all the jokes made by Anglo-Australians, but because he was a particular kind of Italian: a Sicillian — read “peasant” — with all the attendant stereotypes.</p>
<p>In 1985, when television still united the nation in water-cooler moments, Cozzo commercials were voted the most hated by readers of The Age. Whatever else this signified, it showed strong product recognition. Were Cozzo launching himself on the world today, he would not be compelled to appear on mass media just to reach his niche market. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Still of a vintage TV ad" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421740/original/file-20210917-13-11colpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cozzo promoted his empire by speaking Italian on Australian TV.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharmill Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In that regard, the pre-internet age did us all a favour, establishing a new awareness that there were other cultures hiding in plain sight amongst what was still an assimilationist environment.</p>
<h2>A gem of a documentary</h2>
<p>Madeleine Martiniello’s documentary on Cozzo, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11469884/">Palazzo di Cozzo</a>, was first scheduled for the Melbourne International Film Festival. Soon to show on ABC TV, it had its cinema premiere, ironically, in Perth.</p>
<p>There’s a lot more to the man than we could glean from the smooth, showy, handsome 50-something gentleman who addressed us from his 30-second spots with long strings of Italian, Greek and English ending in the famed accented pronunciation of “Norda Melbourne, Brunswick and Footiscray”. </p>
<p>Cozzo tells us, in this minor gem of a documentary, about his overbearing father, his beloved mother and his sister, Vincenzina, who died at the age of 12. The pictures of her atop one of the family horses are touching, as are photographs of youthful, directionless and somewhat resentful Franco and his “very tough daddy” arm-in-arm in an unidentified city street in the early 1950s. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421738/original/file-20210917-17-1sm3m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cozzo and his father in the 1950s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharmill Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arriving alone in Melbourne on Australia Day, 1956, Cozzo took his horse-trading knowledge and became a Fiat dealer, a reality which gives some context to his hard-sell approach to beds and wardrobes. </p>
<p>He embraced television the following decade, presenting the Italian-language variety show Carosello on Channel 0 and then, briefly, Channel 7. </p>
<p>(In Palazzo di Cozzo, he claims it lasted three years; television listings from 1968-9 suggest less than 18 months).</p>
<p>Cozzo’s delivery of his life story told to the camera drifts between Italian and English without missing a beat, English subtitles covering both. Now in his 80s, a father of ten, he seems unwilling to distinguish between the public and private persona, but is resigned to dealing with the rumours. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt=" Now in his 80s, a father of ten, he seems unwilling to distinguish between the public and private persona." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421754/original/file-20210917-25-i1y5d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cozzo is a father of ten.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharmill Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Firstly, there have been many regarding mafia connections (which he denies). Additionally, his divorce and remarriage — his second wife, Assunta, appears here but his first, Antonietta, is only included in archival images — were controversial in the Italian community; the scandal is addressed implicitly. Another controversy, eldest son Luigi’s <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/118164115">prosecution for drug dealing</a>, is the outcome, Cozzo suggests, of his own leniency as a parent (as well as Luigi being a “fool”). </p>
<p>Luigi, who was <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/furniture-king-franco-cozzos-son-luigi-cozzo-cleared-of-kill-threats/news-story/7d499be30707e808945edeec6b037b77">cleared of a charge</a> of threatening to kill his father five years ago, is not even mentioned by name in this film, let alone interviewed.</p>
<h2>Marketing a legacy</h2>
<p>There are two Franco Cozzo stores these days. The film concentrates on the purpose-built Footscray store and gives less time to the Brunswick outlet (North Melbourne, it seems, was lost in the divorce).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial shot of Footscray" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421743/original/file-20210917-21-1k3gk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Cozzo store in Footscray is now largely used for storage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharmill Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much of the Footscray property is currently closed to the public and used as a storeroom. Yet Cozzo insists he will maintain a shopfront presence to sell his stock. Which makes sense: why wouldn’t he continue to make as much as he can of his image and his legacy? </p>
<p>As the man himself says: “No other people popular like Franco Cozzo in Melbourne”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Palazzo di Cozzo is in select cinemas now.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Nichols does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This gem of a documentary explores the life — and furniture — of a Melbourne icon.
David Nichols, Associate Professor - Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167889
2021-09-15T05:05:08Z
2021-09-15T05:05:08Z
Victoria has announced extra funds for counselling, but it’s unlikely to improve our mental health
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421246/original/file-20210915-21-glbhvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yesterday, Victorian Minister for Mental Health James Merlino <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/more-mental-health-support-close-home">announced additional funding of $22 million for mental health support</a> in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>The centrepiece of this announcement was $13.3 million for 20 “pop-up community mental health services” with “around 90 dedicated clinicians providing 93,000 additional hours of well-being checks and counselling”.</p>
<p>This announcement is a small step towards overcoming some of the deficiencies in mental health service provision which were identified by the <a href="https://finalreport.rcvmhs.vic.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System</a>. So it’s not surprising the new funding has been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-14/pop-up-mental-health-clinics-announced-445-cases-recorded/13541128">welcomed by mental health advocates</a>.</p>
<p>However, is it likely to make a difference to the effects the pandemic is having on mental health?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1437608013037068289"}"></div></p>
<h2>Victoria’s mental health has worsened during the pandemic</h2>
<p>Early in the pandemic, mental health experts warned there was <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-flatten-the-other-coronavirus-curve-our-looming-mental-health-crisis-137170">likely to be a worsening of mental health</a> and perhaps even an <a href="https://www.ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness">increase in suicide</a>.</p>
<p>They called for increased resources for treatment and prevention of mental health problems to reduce this impact. The predictions of worse mental health have proved to be correct.</p>
<p>Fortunately, however, there has been <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1753-6405.13132">no increase in suicide</a>. </p>
<p>Recent compilations of data by the <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mental-health-services/mental-health-services-in-australia/report-contents/mental-health-impact-of-covid-19#emerging-research">Australian Institute of Health and Welfare</a> and the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/household-impacts-covid-19-survey/latest-release">Australian Bureau of Statistics</a> have shown depression and anxiety symptoms increased in Australia early in the pandemic, but then decreased back towards pre-pandemic levels.</p>
<p>However, in Victoria, which has been the state most affected by lockdowns, the prevalence of a high level of psychological distress remains much greater than in the rest of Australia (27% versus 18%). </p>
<h2>Demand for services is also up</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mental-health-services/mental-health-services-in-australia/report-contents/mental-health-impact-of-covid-19#emerging-research">Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data</a> also show demand for mental health services has increased substantially.</p>
<p>Victorians have received a much higher rate of mental health services funded under Medicare since the start of the pandemic. Some of this increase was facilitated by the introduction of telehealth services, which weren’t previously available.</p>
<p>There have also been increased calls by Victorians to support services provided by Lifeline (up 37% from 2019 to 2020), Kids Helpline (up 27%) and Beyond Blue (up 65%).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lockdowns-dont-get-easier-the-more-we-have-them-melbourne-here-are-6-tips-to-help-you-cope-161991">Lockdowns don't get easier the more we have them. Melbourne, here are 6 tips to help you cope</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Will the additional services make a difference?</h2>
<p>Given Victorians’ increasing demand for mental health support, the additional services will be welcomed by people who are on waiting lists and by hard-pressed clinicians.</p>
<p>However, it’s unlikely they will make an impact on the worsening of mental health seen during the pandemic. The reason for expecting no reduction in prevalence is that in recent decades Australia has had substantial increases in the provision of mental health services, but this has had <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30284914/">no measurable impact on people’s mental health</a>.</p>
<p>Rather, prevalence remained stable for the two decades leading up to the pandemic.</p>
<p>Australia isn’t unique in this regard. In other high-income countries where the mental health of the population has been monitored over many years, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28127925/">no reduction in prevalence has been found</a> with increases in treatment.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1392660868958097409"}"></div></p>
<h2>Why are more services unlikely to have an impact?</h2>
<p>One of the reasons increasing services has had no measurable impact is they’re often of poor quality.</p>
<p>In Australia, most people with depression or anxiety disorders who seek help <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25716600/">do not receive minimally adequate treatment</a>. In many cases, the treatment isn’t evidence-based and the number of sessions received is too few to be effective. </p>
<p>Providing more funding for services has increased the number of people with milder problems receiving help. But the people with severe and recurring mental illnesses who are most in need are still not getting adequate help.</p>
<p>Another reason services are unlikely to have a measurable impact is they don’t generally deal with the risk factors that underlie the worsening of mental health during the pandemic. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mental-health-services/mental-health-services-in-australia/report-contents/mental-health-impact-of-covid-19#emerging-research">Important risk factors</a> are loneliness due to social isolation, financial stress, and juggling the demands of childcare and homeschooling while working from home.</p>
<p>I have argued previously that <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-will-spend-48-million-to-safeguard-mental-health-extending-jobkeeper-would-safeguard-it-even-more-138778">income and employment support are more important</a> in addressing the mental health impact of the pandemic than mental health services.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-will-spend-48-million-to-safeguard-mental-health-extending-jobkeeper-would-safeguard-it-even-more-138778">The government will spend $48 million to safeguard mental health. Extending JobKeeper would safeguard it even more</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>While governments can take action to ameliorate these risk factors, the major impact is likely to come with the easing of lockdowns and consequent resumption of social contact, schooling and work.</p>
<p>These benefits require greater vaccination coverage and provide an important motivation for achieving this goal.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Jorm receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a Chief Investigator on the Centre for Research Excellence on Childhood Adversity and Mental Health. He is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Prevention United, Member of the Board of Mental Health First Aid International, a member of the Alliance for Prevention of Mental Disorders and a member of the Association for Psychological Science.</span></em></p>
Income and employment support are more important in addressing the mental health impact of the pandemic than mental health services.
Anthony Jorm, Professor emeritus, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165609
2021-08-09T19:57:23Z
2021-08-09T19:57:23Z
Don’s Party at 50: an achingly real portrayal of the hapless Australian middle-class voter
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415155/original/file-20210809-19-4jcntz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1599%2C898&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The play Don’s Party premiered on August 11 1971 at Carlton’s Pram Factory, home to the radical theatre ensemble, the Australian Performing Arts Group. </p>
<p>Established four years earlier in 1967, the group would nurture some of the most passionate Australian voices of a generation, including Max Gillies, John Romeril, Kerry Walker, Geoffrey Milne and Jenny Kemp. </p>
<p>Until this point, there was very little original Australian theatre. With the exception of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955), Australian stages were dominated by scripts imported from the UK and America.</p>
<p>This new generation was interested in creating a muscular, fiercely nationalistic form of theatre preoccupied with “<a href="https://www.currency.com.au/books/history-and-criticism/power-plays-australian-theatre-and-the-public-agenda/">staging the nation</a>”.</p>
<p>Hot off the back of The Removalists at La Mama, Don’s Party was the fifth play by the young, engineering-student-turned playwright David Williamson.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-australias-great-theatre-artists-trod-the-boards-50-years-of-melbournes-la-mama-theatre-80602">Where Australia's great theatre artists trod the boards: 50 years of Melbourne's La Mama theatre</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Williamson’s hallmark satiric naturalism sat outside the collective’s experimental and confrontational aesthetic and there was some early resistance to programming the play.</p>
<p>But the explosive zeitgeist energy of Don’s Party and — <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1433808/">as described</a> by Graeme Blundell, who played Simon — the “gasp of recognition” from audiences couldn’t be ignored.</p>
<h2>A forensic look at Australia</h2>
<p>Don’s Party is a slice-of-life satire, set at an Australian barbecue hosted by 30-something couple Don and Kath on election night 1969. When the opposition Labour Party takes an early lead, all the couples at the party are elated — except for the “ring-ins”, Liberal voting couple Simon and Jody. </p>
<p>As the election win slides away, the evening slowly descends into despair. </p>
<p>The long, beery night, with guests milling in front of the television and wandering in and out of the lounge room, is laced with the unfinished sexual encounters, fist fights and drunken accusations that fuel the plot. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415131/original/file-20210809-26-rf0m5q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Pram Factory theatre was at 317-337 Drummond St, Carlton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/238290">John T Collins © State Library Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Williamson’s forensic characterisation nailed the social construction of party affiliation at the end of the 1960s. A new generation of left wing, middle class voters were challenging the puritanical and conservative culture of Australian politics. Williamson and many of his collaborators were born just at the beginning of what would <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/542159/how-generations-named-baby-boomers-generation-x-millennials">become known as the Baby Boomers</a>, and the play captured the fears and dreams of their audience. </p>
<p>It’s not all politics. The comedy also comes from the permissive wife-swapping social milieu of the Australian middle classes in the late 1960s. Free love, swearing that would make your ears hurt, and detailed discussion of excretion were the hallmarks of the swinging Australian suburban sophisticate.</p>
<p>(In 2005,<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1433808/"> Williamson observed</a> this period of wife-swapping only lasted a few years, finishing “as soon as women realised that this was as oppressive as what had proceeded it”.)</p>
<p>The play’s reception was electric. In a few short years it would go on productions at Jane Street Theatre in Sydney (1972); in the newly created Melbourne Theatre Company (1973); and the Royal Court in London (1976), cementing Williamson’s international critical reputation. </p>
<p>Don’s Party signalled Williamson’s future as our most prolific playwright and king of the Australian middle-class, mainstream drama. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-australian-plays-williamson-hibberd-and-the-better-angels-of-our-countrys-nature-79332">The Great Australian Plays: Williamson, Hibberd and the better angels of our country's nature</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The brutality of film</h2>
<p>The real imprint of the play on Australian culture came from its adaptation into film in 1976 by director Bruce Beresford and producer Philip Adams, the pioneers of 1970s ocker <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/what-is-ozploitation/">Ozploitation</a> films. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O-l1lAH08CM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Although Williamson wrote the screen adaptation, the film has a much more brutal tone. In a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1433808/">documentary</a>, actor Susan Binney — who played “nymphette” university student Susan — says she still “shudders” when she recalls the filming of the pool scene where she was forcibly undressed and thrown into the pool by Don, Mal, Mack and Cooley. </p>
<p>Binney wasn’t warned she would be thrown into the pool during rehearsals, as the sexist machismo of the story bled over into real life.</p>
<p>Williamson has also shared his disquiet about that scene and some of the other additions to the film that brought the off-stage bedroom of the original play into graphic cinematic world. </p>
<p>Yet this bleed of 1970s ocker film genre into the more nuanced, gendered satire of Williamson’s script gave Don’s Party its enduring cultural impact. In its 50 years, the play has seen multiple remounts, a 2011 sequel Don Parties On (where the same friends gather on the night of the 2008 federal election) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfVKAc_MGrk">pop culture tributes</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TfVKAc_MGrk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>A capsule of Australian theatre — and Australia</h2>
<p>Contemporary theatre director Sam Strong <a href="https://www.mtc.com.au/discover-more/about-us/media/media-releases/emerald-city/">notes</a> how Williamson’s “enduring power is to speak <em>directly</em> to Australian audiences.” </p>
<p>This year, the film was released on Netflix and Amazon Prime. A re-watch proves how fresh the work still is as a time capsule of the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/theatre-research-international/article/abs/radical-visions-19682008-the-impact-of-the-sixties-on-australian-drama-by-denise-varney-amsterdam-rodopi-2011-pp-294-21-illus-86-pb/85201F42171A41F2548BFEB78C8189FD">Boomer generation preparing</a> to bring Australia into a globalised world, and a reminder of the often futile experience of the hapless Labour voter in barracking for what, in electoral terms, has been a long-term losing team.</p>
<p>Indeed, when I contemplate drinking my moderately-priced chardonnay on what is likely to be another sweaty election night eve sometime across the next eight months, I am haunted by the fear of enduring another Don’s Party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Set at a long, beery election night party, David Williamson’s classic play is laced with unfinished sexual encounters, fist fights and drunken accusations. It feels remarkably fresh today.
Kathryn Kelly, Lecturer in Drama, School of Creative Practice and member of the 'Creative Practice for Social Impact' Research Group, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165079
2021-07-27T03:58:08Z
2021-07-27T03:58:08Z
Public protest or selfish ratbaggery? Why free speech doesn’t give you the right to endanger other people’s health
<p>Thousands of demonstrators <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57952516">took to the streets</a> in major Australian cities at the weekend, to protest the rolling lockdowns that have formed a central part of the government response to the COVID pandemic. </p>
<p>In some cases, the protests were <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/nsw-police-arrest-multiple-people-at-illegal-sydney-antilockdown-protest/news-story/8447ecec5d20f6e0b927a805c3b5b458">illegal and in breach of lockdown orders</a>. More seriously still, the protests in Sydney took place even as the Delta variant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/24/anti-lockdown-protests-across-australia-as-covid-cases-surge-to-record-levels-in-sydney">spreads ominously</a> across New South Wales.</p>
<p>Commentators and political leaders <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/anti-lockdown-protesters-descend-on-downtown-melbourne-20210724-p58ckf.html">called out</a> the protesters, asserting they were “selfish boofheads” engaging in “ratbaggery”. </p>
<p>But what are the ethics of protesting lockdowns in a time of lockdowns? There are several issues to unpack: free speech, science denial, and the health threat the rallies pose to the public. And it’s the last of these three that presents significant ethical problems.</p>
<h2>Why should we protect protests?</h2>
<p>There are three important arguments in favour of giving people the right to free speech, especially when it takes the form of protesting government policy.</p>
<p>First, free speech is a human right. Article 19 of the United Nations’ <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> proclaims the respect we are owed as humans includes being able to speak out and share our ideas with others.</p>
<p>Second, speaking out and protesting are important parts of living in a <a href="https://jackmillercenter.org/cd-resources/alexander-meiklejohn-free-speech-relation-self-government/">democracy</a>. Just as we must all be allowed to vote, so too should we be free to come together in open and honest debate. </p>
<p>Third, as the philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill famously argued in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm">On Liberty</a>, if we don’t allow dissenting and unpopular views to be heard, we lose the opportunity to challenge and hone our own beliefs. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-protesting-during-the-pandemic-an-essential-right-that-should-be-protected-136512">Is protesting during the pandemic an 'essential' right that should be protected?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Do wacky and unscientific views also deserve protection?</h2>
<p>These three arguments are at their strongest when people are doing their best to think carefully and rationally. In fact, being “endowed with reason” is invoked in the very first article of the Universal Declaration, to support human freedom and dignity. As such, we arguably have a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/">duty to think responsibly</a>, alongside our right to speak freely.</p>
<p>So should views that seem to spurn rationality and scientific evidence be tolerated? There’s good reason to think the answer is still “yes”. </p>
<p>Even if we agree that science provides an extraordinary mechanism for unearthing truths about the world, scientists are still human beings, and their institutions remain vulnerable to mistake, bias, groupthink, corruption and (yes) even conspiracy. Indeed, scientific progress occurs precisely because its findings remain open to challenge, and are rigorously reviewed before they are published. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-anti-vaxxers-arent-a-huge-threat-yet-how-do-we-keep-it-that-way-138531">Coronavirus anti-vaxxers aren’t a huge threat yet. How do we keep it that way?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Moreover, public policy is never purely about science. Science can only tell us what <em>is</em>, not what we <em>should do</em>. Justifying lockdowns is also a matter of moral judgements about the importance of life and health, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/25/scott-morrison-defends-george-christensens-anti-lockdown-activism-but-labels-sydney-rally-goers-selfish">freedom and rights</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-reopen-protesters-really-saying-137558">livelihoods and fairness</a>, and more. Reasonable people can disagree about these matters.</p>
<h2>What about when protest is harmful?</h2>
<p>The above arguments imply we should be wary of outlawing political protest. But at the same time, they don’t imply speech can’t be limited to prevent harm. </p>
<p>The most ethically worrisome part of the protests in Melbourne and Sydney (apart from specific instances of violence, against both <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/anti-lockdown-protesters-descend-on-downtown-melbourne-20210724-p58ckf.html">people</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/25/anti-lockdown-protest-two-men-charged-with-allegedly-striking-police-horse-in-sydney">animals</a>) was the danger they presented to the community. </p>
<p>By defying lockdown orders, and masking and social-distancing requirements, the marchers created an opportunity for community transmission of COVID. In Sydney, in particular, there is every chance some protesters were infectious with the virus. </p>
<p>Besides risking serious harm to others, further outbreaks might force the NSW government to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/25/scott-morrison-defends-george-christensens-anti-lockdown-activism-but-labels-sydney-rally-goers-selfish">extend the current lockdown</a> — the polar opposite of what the protesters wanted.</p>
<p>Still, there may be cases in which harmful protests are justified. <a href="https://dailynous.com/2020/06/24/ethics-social-distancing-doesnt-rule-protesting-guest-post-travis-n-rieder/">Many ethicists</a> argued this was true of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, where the need to respond to racial injustice arguably outweighed the risks of spreading COVID. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534">Several</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/we-often-accuse-the-right-of-distorting-science-but-the-left-changed-the-coronavirus-narrative-overnight">commentators</a> observed the conceptual whiplash when public health officials who had been decrying lockdown protests suddenly encouraged the Black Lives Matter marches.</p>
<p>Perhaps the difference simply comes down to some grievances being <a href="https://paw.princeton.edu/article/tiger-ethics-protesting-and-mask-wearing-during-pandemic">more genuine, informed, and socially important than others</a>. But even if this rightly shapes how we morally judge the protesters in each case, it remains unsettling if official responses and arrests are based on how ethically worthy political leaders think protesters’ grievances are.</p>
<h2>Harm, belief, and the rule of law</h2>
<p>There is one key difference between the Black Lives Matter protests and Australia’s anti-lockdown protests that is worth considering. At least some of the anti-lockdown protesters seemed to behave as if they were entitled to decide what was or wasn’t harmful to the community at large, and to proceed on that basis. Many of the protesters evidently don’t believe the coronavirus is a serious danger, so they felt free not to worry about spreading it.</p>
<p>But this isn’t how democracy or the rule of law works. Citizens can’t act on their own opinions about the harms they are happy to inflict on others, precisely because we will all have different views on such matters. That’s why we need laws, and democratic processes to create them. </p>
<p>If that’s right, the problem isn’t just that protesters were “selfishly” putting their interests ahead of other people’s. The deeper concern is that they acted as if their beliefs could rightly determine the harms they were willing to visit on others. And that is a much more serious charge.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/many-anti-lockdown-protesters-believe-the-government-is-illegitimate-their-legal-arguments-dont-stand-up-146668">Many anti-lockdown protesters believe the government is illegitimate. Their legal arguments don't stand up</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Breakey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Tolerating political protest is an essential part of democratic life. But when the protests pose a genuine risk of harm to the community, that’s when they are no longer ethically justified.
Hugh Breakey, President, Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics. Senior Research Fellow, Moral philosophy, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Law Futures Centre., Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164548
2021-07-16T04:11:40Z
2021-07-16T04:11:40Z
Victoria’s 5-day lockdown may not quash Delta. Here’s what our modelling predicts instead
<p>Victoria has entered <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/victoria-awakes-to-its-fifth-coronavirus-lockdown/100296390">a five-day lockdown</a> to control its growing outbreak of the more infectious Delta variant.</p>
<p>Until <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-15/melbourne-snap-lockdown-covid-19-restrictions-pandemic-/100296392">midnight on Tuesday</a> <a href="https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/coronavirus-covidsafe-settings">restrictions mean</a> residents are only allowed to leave home for essential reasons, can only travel five kilometres away from home, and need to wear masks outside the home, among other measures.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1415814260081532931"}"></div></p>
<p>We consider the lockdown essential and we strongly support this rapid action. However <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.06.21260055v1.full.pdf">our modelling</a> predicts a five-day lockdown may not be enough. </p>
<p>Instead we predict at least 30 days of restrictions will be needed before Victoria reaches three days without community transmission.</p>
<p>That’s if we take into account current and predicted case numbers, the fact we’re dealing with the more infectious Delta variant, and with current levels of vaccination.</p>
<p>The good news is Victoria is more likely to reach these three “donut days” sooner if vaccination rates pick up, even modestly.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-delta-such-a-worry-its-more-infectious-probably-causes-more-severe-disease-and-challenges-our-vaccines-163579">Why is Delta such a worry? It's more infectious, probably causes more severe disease, and challenges our vaccines</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How did we come up with these figures?</h2>
<p>We built a mathematical model based on nine COVID-19 outbreaks across four Australian states (including Victoria) since the start of the pandemic. We posted <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.06.21260055v1">details online as a pre-print</a>. So our model has yet to be independently verified (peer reviewed).</p>
<p>Our model allows us to predict — given current case numbers, the particular variant in circulation and vaccination rates, among other variables — how long public health restrictions such as lockdowns need to last to achieve particular outcomes. Our model also allows us to predict how many cases an outbreak has at its peak.</p>
<p>Models are mathematical tools to predict the future, something of course no-one can do with 100% certainty.</p>
<p>However, our model differs from others because it considers the difference between mystery cases and cases linked to a known case.</p>
<p>It also comprehensively integrates the effects of various public health measures, such as social distancing, wearing masks, contact tracing and vaccination.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/scientific-modelling-is-steering-our-response-to-coronavirus-but-what-is-scientific-modelling-135938">Scientific modelling is steering our response to coronavirus. But what is scientific modelling?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What did we find about Victoria?</h2>
<p>When we plug data about Victoria’s current outbreak into our model, this is what we find.</p>
<p>Our model predicts the number of daily reported cases of community transmission will continue to climb over the next week or so. Even with the current lockdown we predict a peak of at least 30 cases a day over the next 7-14 days. </p>
<p>We predict the current outbreak will last for at least 30-45 days before Victoria can return to three days of zero community transmission.</p>
<p>Measured easing of restrictions can occur before this time, which Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/victoria-awakes-to-its-fifth-coronavirus-lockdown/100296390">flagged</a> might be possible for <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-15/regional-communities-glimmer-of-hope-early-end-to-lockdown/100297258">regional Victoria</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1415565682415063043"}"></div></p>
<p>However, given the fact Delta <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-delta-such-a-worry-its-more-infectious-probably-causes-more-severe-disease-and-challenges-our-vaccines-163579">is more transmissible</a> than the original Wuhan version of the virus, controlling Victoria’s outbreak will inevitably be more difficult and take longer than dealing with an earlier outbreak of similar size.</p>
<p>New South Wales knows too well <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/nsw-records97-new-covid-19-cases/100298196">how hard it is</a> to get a Delta outbreak under control, something our model predicted.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tougher-4-week-lockdown-could-save-sydney-months-of-stay-at-home-orders-our-modelling-shows-164483">A tougher 4-week lockdown could save Sydney months of stay-at-home orders, our modelling shows</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Back to Victoria, our model supports a hard lockdown that minimises the chance of ongoing transmission. </p>
<p>Strict lockdown (80% reduction in social activities) and mandatory mask use in public spaces and workplaces (90% coverage) — equivalent to what’s expected in Victoria’s current lockdown — have been effective in previous outbreaks in Victoria and other states. </p>
<p>However, we predict the same approaches may only have a 50:50 chance to contain the current Delta outbreak in Victoria.</p>
<p>This means the Delta variant is likely to linger, bouncing at a level of a dozen cases for weeks. This means public health authorities will find it hard to decide how and when to lift restrictions.</p>
<h2>Please give me good news</h2>
<p>In our favour is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-02/charting-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout/13197518">at least 25% of Victorians</a> <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/covid-19-global-vaccine-tracker-and-data-centre-20210128-p56xht.html">have received</a> at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.</p>
<p>Our model suggests even modest rises in the vaccination coverage in Victoria, by an additional 5% for example, would dramatically increase the chance of controlling the outbreak from 50% to over 80%. If an extra 10% were vaccinated the chance of controlling the outbreak is 94%.</p>
<p>This is because evidence is mounting vaccinated people are <a href="https://theconversation.com/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-this-work-160437">less likely to transmit</a> the virus to others. That’s in addition to the vaccines’ well known benefits in reducing your chance of severe disease.</p>
<p>So getting as many Victorians vaccinated as quickly as possible is critical.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-i-get-my-second-astrazeneca-dose-yes-it-almost-doubles-your-protection-against-delta-163259">Should I get my second AstraZeneca dose? Yes, it almost doubles your protection against Delta</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What do we make of all this?</h2>
<p>Our study conveys a simple message. The battle against the Delta variant in the latest outbreak in Victoria will likely be tough but going early has given us the best chance. </p>
<p>This lockdown will not be as effective as earlier ones in Victoria and coming out of this will need to be carefully managed. </p>
<p>So keeping to the health advice, and vaccinating more Victorians as soon as possible even over the next few weeks, are key to handling this outbreak.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lockdowns-dont-get-easier-the-more-we-have-them-melbourne-here-are-6-tips-to-help-you-cope-161991">Lockdowns don't get easier the more we have them. Melbourne, here are 6 tips to help you cope</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164548/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lei Zhang is also a professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University, China.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Fairley owns shares in CSL.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guihua Zhuang and Zhuoru Zou do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The good news is Victoria is more likely to reach zero case of community transmission sooner if vaccination rates pick up, even modestly.
Lei Zhang, Associate Professor of Public Health, Monash University
Christopher Fairley, Professor of Public Health, Monash University
Guihua Zhuang, Professor, Xi'an Jiaotong University
Zhuoru Zou, Doctor, Xi'an Jiaotong University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163012
2021-06-25T04:13:41Z
2021-06-25T04:13:41Z
A mining camp won’t cut it: Australia’s quarantine system needs a smarter design
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407365/original/file-20210621-35088-18jz92x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Screen Shot at am</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-records-no-new-cases-as-restrictions-ease-exposure-sites-grow-20210625-p5845r.html">announcement</a> that the Victorian and federal governments will build a 1,000-bed COVID quarantine hub at Mickleham in Melbourne’s north marks a welcome end, or at least a fresh chapter, to the finger-pointing over Australia’s quarantine saga.</p>
<p>Time is of the essence when protecting Australians from COVID, so hats off to both governments for setting an ambitious timeline that could see the facility up and running by the end of this year. </p>
<p>But in their haste to deliver an alternative to hotel quarantine, we believe the governments haven’t taken advantage of the newest available innovations.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/alternative-quarantine-accommodation-project-summary">plan</a> for the proposed quarantine facility produced by the Victorian government is, by its own admission, little more than a specced-up version of a mining camp, similar to the Howard Springs facility already in use in the Northern Territory. In turn, this type of construction harks back to the postwar quarantine facilities built from the 1950s onwards.</p>
<p>Part of the problem with the current proposal is the focus on the “hardware”, with almost no discussion of the “software”. By hardware, we mean buildings, physical structures, road layouts and infrastructure; by software, we mean how it will be used, the operational patterns and processes, and “softer” operational modes of use and their technologies. </p>
<p>This hardware-centric approach would be more reassuring if the hardware were the best and fittest for use, but unfortunately the proposal has reached for what it knows, and what it knows is around 70 years old.</p>
<h2>A smarter way</h2>
<p>We and our colleagues at the <a href="https://building4pointzero.org/">Building 4.0 Cooperative Research Centre</a>, funded jointly by the federal government and a consortium of industry, are developing a state-of-the-art design, called <a href="https://building4pointzero.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Building-4.0-CRC-Q_smart-Proposal-1.pdf">Q_Smart</a>, which we submitted to the Victorian government in March 2021. </p>
<p>In our proposal, building services, controls, sensors and management systems (alongside well-designed and efficiently produced buildings) all play a role in preventing the transmission of COVID-19. We might think of this as a correction towards a more “software-driven” approach, as it seeks to use a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-19-why-intelligent-healthy-quarantine-now-future-jeff-connolly/">range of processes, techniques and technologies</a> already available from our collaborators at Siemens to augment the work done by the physical structures.</p>
<p>In terms of the physical layout, our design avoids the large common corridors, inadequate air-tightness controls for rooms, or unhygienic air handling systems that have emerged as problems with current hotel stock. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Table listing design features of Q_Smart" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407364/original/file-20210621-35700-1lrqh3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://building4pointzero.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Building-4.0-CRC-Q_smart-Proposal-1.pdf">Building 4.0 CRC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As leading infection control experts have <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-how-we-should-build-and-staff-victorias-new-quarantine-facility-say-two-infection-control-experts-162157">already pointed out</a>, mining dongas may have worked well so far for quarantine at the repurposed Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory. But from an epidemiological point of view, the current design is concerning for the proximity of neighbouring verandahs, especially in cases where more than one group of quarantine residents is housed in a unit. </p>
<p>The government’s provisional staffing patterns for the new facility suggests that separation between residents will rely on strict protocols around staff movements and quarantine measures intended to slow and limit the spread of disease, should a breach occur.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-how-we-should-build-and-staff-victorias-new-quarantine-facility-say-two-infection-control-experts-162157">This is how we should build and staff Victoria's new quarantine facility, say two infection control experts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In contrast, the smart building management system we are developing would not “wait” for a breach to occur, but would aim to stop such contact ever being made. A door would not open, an airlock would have its contents automatically evacuated, and UV light would cleanse contaminated surfaces or air in ducting. </p>
<p>Some of these features, such as proximity authentication, are innovations that we routinely expect from our 20-year-old cars. If we turn to our now ubiquitous smartphones, there are yet further possibilities to safely and conveniently track and control movement in more humane way that would not need to reach for punitive ankle bracelets and the like. And, yes, should a breach occur, such systems could ultimately carry out near-instantaneous contact-tracing.</p>
<p>But such a system could only work if the “hardware” and “software” are fully integrated and planned together from the start.</p>
<h2>An eye on the future</h2>
<p>There are many ways to deal with quarantine, and although it may be too late to integrate our designs into the proposed Victorian facility, perhaps other states and territories embarking on building ventures might yet consider this advice.</p>
<p>In viewing the current proposed plan of closely spaced mining dongas, arranged in “mini-districts”, it is nigh-on impossible to imagine it being used for anything other than a quarantine facility, or perhaps a correctional centre. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Proposed layout for the new quarantine hub" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408309/original/file-20210625-17-k4rasx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The plan for the proposed quarantine hub makes it hard to imagine it being used for anything other than quarantine - or perhaps a correctional facility.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vic.gov.au</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hotel-quarantine-causes-1-outbreak-for-every-204-infected-travellers-its-far-from-fit-for-purpose-161815">Hotel quarantine causes 1 outbreak for every 204 infected travellers. It's far from ‘fit for purpose’</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Q_Smart, on the other hand, was designed to be flexible, reusable and adaptable to different sites, which, for example, may not necessarily have large amounts of flat open space. This would potentially allow facilities built for quarantine to be reused for other purposes after the pandemic. Transforming the building’s operational pattern would be a matter of simply flipping a few (virtual) switches. Depending on the use case, certain controls could be activated or deactivated, new patterns of movement through the buildings could be enabled or disabled almost instantaneously. </p>
<p>With more thinking and development, perhaps such buildings could also be used as affordable housing, or disaster relief accommodation or — how’s this for ironic — future hotels.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was coauthored by <a href="https://building4pointzero.org/people/dr-bronwyn-evans/">Dr Bronwyn Evans AM</a>, chair of <a href="https://building4pointzero.org/">Building 4.0 CRC</a> and chief executive of <a href="https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/">Engineers Australia</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163012/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Aitchison is CEO of Building 4.0 CRC, a Commonwealth Government funded R&D centre. The Q_Smart initiative was carried out in collaboration with Siemens.</span></em></p>
We can do better than building a village of glorified dongas. Smart quarantine can be much higher-tech, and more adaptable for future uses once the pandemic is over.
Mathew Aitchison, Professor of Architecture and CEO of Building 4.0 CRC, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157424
2021-06-22T20:01:46Z
2021-06-22T20:01:46Z
Smart street furniture in Australia: a public service or surveillance and advertising tool?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407173/original/file-20210618-17-15ai7v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4896%2C3239&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A smart light pole in the UK can also recognise faces and numberplates and detect speeding.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ekin_Spotter.jpg">Nazlika/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Smart street furniture – powered and digitally networked furniture that collects and generates data – is arriving in Australia. It comes in a variety of forms, including benches, kiosks, <a href="https://competition.adesignaward.com/design.php?ID=61809">light poles</a> and bus stops. Early examples in Australia include <a href="https://www.georgesriver.nsw.gov.au/Council/About-Your-Council/Smart-Cities/Smart-ChillOUT-Hubs">ChillOUT Hubs</a> installed by Georges River Council in the Sydney suburbs of Kogarah, Hurstville and Mortdale, and information kiosks and smart light poles in the City of Newcastle as part of its <a href="https://newcastle.nsw.gov.au/smarter-living">Smart City Strategy</a>. </p>
<p>The “smartness” of this street furniture comes from its new data and connectivity capabilities. The idea is that these can generate new products and services, and support real-time planning decisions in cities. Most offer free wi-fi in combination with other functions like advertising, <a href="https://segd.org/what-wayfinding#:%7E:text=Wayfindingrefers%20to%20information%20systems,educational%20campuses%2Cand%20transportationfacilities.">wayfinding</a>, emergency buttons, phone calling and device charging via USB. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sensors-in-public-spaces-can-help-create-cities-that-are-both-smart-and-sociable-93473">Sensors in public spaces can help create cities that are both smart and sociable</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404954/original/file-20210607-130403-puzf88.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ChillOUT Hub installed in Timothy Reserve, Hurstville, by St Georges River Council.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Chris Chesher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Smart, but controversial</h2>
<p>The promise of smart street furniture is that it will enhance public spaces and revitalise ageing infrastructure. By providing vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens with access to free connectivity services it can also bridge digital barriers. </p>
<p>Despite these benefits, some aspects of smart street furniture are controversial. In particular, its data collection and impact on public space have created concerns. </p>
<p>In New York City, the replacement of phone booths by <a href="https://www.link.nyc/">LinkNYC</a> digital kiosks has given rise to protest about <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/03/nyclu-raises-linknyc-privacy-concerns.html">data ownership and sharing</a> and <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/yes-linknyc-kiosks-are-giant-data-harvesting-surveillance-cameras-obviously">surveillance through built-in security cameras</a>. Other sources of tension are the kiosks’ physical footprint, visual impact and use for outdoor advertising with its double-sided 140cm digital displays.</p>
<p>In Australia, Telstra has been fighting a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/telstra-loses-battle-to-install-supersized-phone-booths-across-major-cities-20210416-p57jri.html">long court case</a> against the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane over plans to convert its phone booths into smart hubs equipped with digital advertising. Councils objected to these on the basis that they required local planning approval. Telstra argued the hubs were exempt as “<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2020C00305">low-impact facilities</a>”, but has had to delay installation. </p>
<h2>What can we learn from early adopters overseas?</h2>
<p>We don’t yet understand the public impact and value of smart street furniture, what service model is to be adopted at scale, or what kind of future it offers. To what extent are these facilities offering public services, or are they just enablers of more advertising and surveillance? </p>
<p>Australia can learn from the early examples of smart street furniture in other countries. Our <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/our-research/research-areas/literature-art-and-media/smart-publics.html">Smart Publics research project</a> investigated the design, use and governance of InLinkUK kiosks in Glasgow and Strawberry Energy smart benches in London with a <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/projects/smartpublics/">research team</a> at the University of Glasgow. (The final report is <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/corporate/documents/faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences/research/research-areas/literature-art-and-media/smart-publics-research-report.pdf">here</a>.)</p>
<p>We found the main users were those who were living rough, young people, students and gig workers. Smart furniture enabled these groups to stay digitally connected. They used these facilities to charge their phones and make free calls, which were especially valuable for those who didn’t own phones or lacked the credit to use them. (The InLinkUK kiosks offered free calls to any mobile or landline in the UK.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-stop-people-falling-through-the-gaps-in-a-digitally-connected-city-53810">How do we stop people falling through the gaps in a digitally connected city?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407366/original/file-20210621-35174-j5yk5g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An InLinkUK kiosk in Glasgow city centre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Smart Publics researchers</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who is funding these facilities?</h2>
<p>Even though kiosks and smart benches could be used for community service information, we found it was commercial advertising that drove private investment in this infrastructure. Advertising revenue paid for the services offered by the InLinkUK kiosks and sponsorship for the Strawberry Energy benches. Advertising agency Primesight was one of the three main partners in InLinkUK (with <a href="https://www.bt.com/">British Telecom</a> and <a href="https://www.intersection.com/success-story/link/">Intersection</a>, the company responsible for LinkNYC). </p>
<p>Because advertising was so prominent in their design, many people were unaware of their other functions. Asked if they’d noticed the InLinks, one person replied: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Er no, I haven’t […] what’s it for? Is it to make free calls to anywhere in the UK? […] I just thought it was like an advertising board, I guess!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>People recognised the wide public value of free wi-fi, device charging and phone calls. But we found the public as a whole didn’t understand the data-collection aspects. The marginalised groups who relied on these services were more exposed to corporate advertising, data collection and surveillance in public spaces.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-friendly-furniture-in-public-places-matters-more-than-ever-in-todays-city-83568">People-friendly furniture in public places matters more than ever in today's city</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Councils were also limited in their ability to leverage the benefits that came from the data. The Strawberry Energy benches, for example, collected environmental data such as temperature, noise level and air quality from inbuilt sensors. However, these data weren’t being used to inform planning or policy. </p>
<p>Reliability of the data was another issue. We found inaccuracies when we tested the environmental data.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404957/original/file-20210607-121132-1w1293v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Strawberry Energy smart bench in Southwark, South London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Smart Publics researchers</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where to now in Australia?</h2>
<p>These issues highlight some of the challenges councils encounter when embarking on smart street furniture initiatives with private companies. These include data-sharing contract arrangements as well as the need to upskill council staff to manage new kinds of data capabilities and systems.</p>
<p>The examples we studied in the UK had been rolled out in public-private partnerships. However, some of the models emerging suggest a different kind of civic implementation. </p>
<p>Local governments that have been early adopters of smart furniture in Australia have envisioned it as an extension of council services without added advertising or compromising heritage values. These have typically begun as experimental initiatives funded by <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/cities/smart-cities/plan/index.aspx">federal</a> and state government grants. The City of Newcastle, for example, is planning to integrate smart city technologies into regular council operations. </p>
<p>Smart street furniture is not going away. If anything, it will become pervasive as technology advances and becomes more integrated into our physical surroundings. </p>
<p>The issues raised by smart street furniture warrant close inspection and further research. It is crucial that governments and private actors are transparent about its use for advertising and data collection. To ensure the benefits of smart street furniture are realised, they need to:</p>
<ul>
<li>emphasise the public value of smart street furniture, including its use for community-based information</li>
<li>collaborate with the public on its design and placement</li>
<li>in the case of councils, take a pro-active approach to access, ownership and stewardship of data</li>
<li>ensure marginalised citizens are not exposed to increased risk of surveillance and data harms.</li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justine Humphry received funding for the Smart Publics research project from the University of Sydney-University of Glasgow Partnership Collaboration Award.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Chesher received funding for the Smart Publics research project from the University of Sydney-University of Glasgow Partnership Collaboration Award.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophia Maalsen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and for the Smart Publics research project from the University of Sydney-University of Glasgow Partnership Collaboration Award.</span></em></p>
Smart street furniture can do a lot of things at once. Some of these functions offer the public clear benefits, but the data collection and surveillance capabilities raise a number of concerns.
Justine Humphry, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of Sydney
Chris Chesher, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of Sydney
Sophia Maalsen, ARC DECRA Fellow and Lecturer in Urbanism, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/162157
2021-06-04T04:51:11Z
2021-06-04T04:51:11Z
This is how we should build and staff Victoria’s new quarantine facility, say two infection control experts
<p>Earlier this year, we visited the Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory, Australia’s alternative to the hotel quarantine system.</p>
<p>Now Victoria is set to build its own <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-04/new-quarantine-hub-to-be-built-in-victoria/100189846">dedicated COVID-19 quarantine facility</a>, with backing from the federal government, at a yet-to-be-confirmed location. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1400589060595326979"}"></div></p>
<p>There is much we can learn from what Howard Springs provides, in terms of how it’s staffed and its physical infrastructure. There’s a lot that’s working really well. </p>
<p>But if we were designing something from scratch, what could it look like? Here’s are some of our thoughts on how it could work.</p>
<h2>We want to minimise people interacting</h2>
<p>We want to minimise the number of unnecessary face-to-face interactions between staff and residents, and similarly avoid moving residents where possible. </p>
<p>We need to support and meet the medical needs of residents. However, where these or any other support services can be done remotely or through technology, this should be encouraged. By doing this, we reduce the number of staff at the facility. </p>
<p>We also want to prevent residents from physically interacting with each other. These measures reduce the chance of being exposed to the virus, and spreading it.</p>
<p>At Howard Springs, residents are right next to each other, in separate but neighbouring cabins. When they’re on their verandah, they can potentially come into close contact with a person on the verandah next to them. That’s not surprising as Howard Springs was designed to accommodate miners, not as a quarantine facility.</p>
<p>So in a dedicated new facility, we need to design to avoid these types of close contacts and to have clear separation of residents’ living quarters.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-may-not-be-possible-to-bring-all-australians-with-covid-home-from-india-but-we-can-do-better-than-we-are-now-161084">It may not be possible to bring all Australians with COVID home from India. But we can do better than we are now</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Howard Springs provides a separate cabin per person, in line with its original function as a mine camp. But in a newly-built facility we need to provide a variety of separate living quarters, such as separate units or apartments. For instance, we need to be able to accommodate not just single people, but family groups, especially ones with young kids.</p>
<p>There must be no communal areas, such as shared playgrounds, which can be challenging for young kids who want to go out and play.</p>
<p>There must be no shared kitchens or laundry facilities. This might mean designing units with a small kitchenette or simple laundry facilities, such as a sink and a washing line. </p>
<p>We don’t want anything too complex that will be difficult to maintain. Maintenance means people coming in from outside, which we want to avoid.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1398205839303843846"}"></div></p>
<h2>Well ventilated and easy to clean</h2>
<p>Each unit needs its own ventilation system; there must be no shared ventilation between units. In Howard Springs, there’s an individual split-system airconditioning unit (to allow heating and cooling) per cabin.</p>
<p>Windows need to open, for ventilation. Importantly, air flow must not create a risk to others, either in other rooms or people coming to the door.</p>
<p>Each unit should have its own outdoor area, such as a verandah. But it needs to be covered, to allow residents to be protected from the weather (particularly for Melbourne’s climate). </p>
<p>Sitting on a verandah also allows residents to see other residents across the pathway, and to safely talk to them, from several metres away. If safe social contact is possible through design, that would be ideal. </p>
<p>Verandahs are also where all interactions between staff and residents can take place, such as swabbing of residents for COVID testing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A graphic render of a room in proposed alternate quarantine accommodation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404406/original/file-20210604-23-qk6esa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All rooms should have a their own ventilation systems, and a verandah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graphic render supplied by the Victorian Government</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Units need to be easy to clean and wipe down. We need hard surfaces, like the ones we might see in a hospital, and ones that can be disinfected.</p>
<p>All up, the design of these units needs to be pretty simple. They need to be single-level, not double. That means residents can see each other, and staff can better keep an eye on residents.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A graphic render of a room in proposed alternate quarantine accommodation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404405/original/file-20210604-15-1of3p4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rooms should have hard surfaces that are easy to clean.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graphic render supplied by the Victorian Government</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>We need an on-site clinic</h2>
<p>We need a GP-type clinic on site. For example, there will be pregnant women who need antenatal check-ups and people with chronic diseases who need monitoring. Then there should be protocols for transferring people to hospital, if they need higher levels of care.</p>
<p>We’ll need health-care workers — primarily nurses but also doctors. While the level of medical care is not going to be particularly complex or high, health-care workers clearly need advanced skills in infection prevention and control. Auditing and monitoring compliance with infection control measures, including cleaning, will be important. </p>
<p>Like health-care workers, security staff and cleaners also need to be trained and tested in using personal protective equipment, such as masks and gloves.</p>
<p>All staff need to be fully vaccinated (with two doses) of the COVID vaccine.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-vaccinate-all-returned-travellers-in-hotel-quarantine-its-no-magic-fix-but-it-could-reduce-risks-160711">Should we vaccinate all returned travellers in hotel quarantine? It's no magic fix but it could reduce risks</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>We need to know who’s arriving and what they need</h2>
<p>We need a good understanding of who’s arriving. Do they have specific medical needs? Do they have dietary requirements? We need to ask them before they arrive in Australia, so staff can prepare.</p>
<p>We also need clear and consistent policies about infection control, COVID-19 testing, and transfers of residents, both in and out of the facility.</p>
<p>We are uniquely placed to build a dedicated, purpose-built quarantine facility, not only for this pandemic, but for future ones. Including suggestions like these will place Victoria and Australia well to meet these challenges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Russo receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has received research funding from the Rosemary Norman Foundation, Cardinal Health, Australian College of Nursing and the Cabrini Institute. He is the President of the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control, a member of the COVID19 Evidence Taskforce Steering Committee, the Australian Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on AMR, the Healthcare Associated Infection Advisory Committee to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, a member of the Australian College of Nursing, is a credentialed Expert by the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control, and was involved in a review of hotel quarantine for the Victorian Department of Health.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Mitchell has received research funding from the NHMRC, HCF Foundation, Medtronics, Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control, Nurses Memorial Centre, Senver, GAMA Healthcare, Ian Potter Foundation and Commonwealth (Innovation Connections grant). Professor Mitchell is a Fellow of the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control and a Fellow of the Australian College of Nursing. He has run infection prevention and control programs for hospitals and at a State level, and is a credential Expert by the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control.</span></em></p>
We have the chance to build a world class, dedicated quarantine facility. Here’s how we could do it.
Philip Russo, Associate Professor, Director Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University
Brett Mitchell, Professor of Nursing, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.