Tag: Canberra

An Inheritance of Trees

I want to tell you about making friends. I have made some good ones in the past few weeks and knowing them has enriched life immeasurably. I implore you to meet them too.

On a charmingly sunny Saturday – bring out your favourite autumnal adjectives; it was crisp, it was clear, the sky was like a glass chalice – I dressed in green and brown (on purpose) and took myself up to City Hill. There were a few of us; some of us strangers, others profound friends, and we all braved the ankle twisting rabbit holes to assemble under the flagpole to meet our lead dryad of the trees; Sarah St Vincent Welch. She was to spend the next two and a half hours leading us through these trunks and branches for a poetry workshop as part of the Poetic City festival in Canberra.

Well let’s start with the setting. The workshop’s whimsical title was the same as this very review. Glorious! However, I wasn’t sure City Hill, garrotted by Vernon Circle from the rest of the city was what I had in mind when presented with such a dreamy nomination. Can’t we go to Haig Park? What about some grand old eucalypt on Ainslie, spreading limbs out like dancers to get the old similes going? No? That funny, oversized roundabout it is, then.

And thus arose the first in a long line of what seemed to me to be incongruous details that were in fact so meticulously and thoughtfully planned. To give an overview, every discussion, every shared piece of information, every picture was just so positioned so as to illuminate a unique perspective of our city that few people ever cross the spluttering traffic on Vernon Circle to actually see. It was a slow awakening, a dawning. Let me show you: our dryad poet begins, naturally, with introductions. It’s nice to create a safe space, make some connections. We all had to share a tree memory – very apt, and there were some crackers, from the poignant to the raucous. We also had to say something about our names. This left me a little dazed – I couldn’t work out how that was pertinent to trees. But hey-ho, it’s making connections, isn’t it? and, goodness, we have two and a half hours to fill, so that’ll do! Then Sarah began her gentle lecture which was more of a dream of story-telling; about Cypress, beloved of Apollo who killed a graceful deer and so bitter was his grief that he wept and begged to weep his regret forever until Apollo turned him into one of these; a Roman Cypress. They weep sap. Then through the metamorphosis of classical mythology, more names insinuated in through the mists of tellings; Monterey Pines, and I am lost in Kerouac’s Big Sur driving up and down the coast to Monterey, Pinus Radiata offers its image of children spinning in floating skirts with arms flung wide. The black locust tree. Do with that what you will.

So that was names. Into the poetry samovar they went and bubbled away in our unconscious. Then came the history, who planted them, and why, good ol’ Walter and Marion’s visions. We were led up and around the hill and shown how the trees (and unbelievably, I never actually knew this) are planted in six crossing avenues. Through the centre of that hill – that roundabout – cross every geometric line drawn out on the Griffin-Mahoney plan. One view draws you along Commonwealth Avenue all the way to Parliament with the blue hills floating beyond, another revealed diminishing Northbourne, another; Constitution Avenue, lost in trees, next Mount Ainslie’s reassuring hump. Huh! Who knew? I had always thought City Hill was clustered randomly with these bizarre, pointed trees; odd, constrained growths. In fact, those trees form corridors like a Hellenic temple, their green Doric columns guiding the eye to visual revelations.

Into the pot that went. Along with warnings to not stick your face in a pine or a possum might have it off, with cockatoos eating Monterey pine seeds, associations of ceremony, memories of the red and yellow boxgums that would have stood there and the tension between native and European, a dry, hardy Mediterranean that flourished with Roman myths, long graveyard shadows, the desperate crying of ravens and stillness ruffled by flitting wagtails.

And then we were sent off. Off, off with you all, you have fifty minutes, here is a sheet of prompts, now go and stand in front of a tree, or sit on a bench in the sunshine, swivel in the centre like a compass between the views and write. And we did. I wrote a heap of nonsense, poet-t(r)ea (can I get away with that?) takes a while to brew, but we had a warm and beautiful final hour sharing touching thoughts and memories and words which the ravens had no respect for and wailed over. Magpie larks came to see what the fuss was about, and seeing that it was Anzac biscuits, hung around for a bit. With many COVID-safe hugs, we reluctantly skidded down the hill slopes, in six different directions, to our cars, our homes…the nearest public convenience.

But the strangest and most wonderful part of this workshop was the effect, the afterwards. For the next fortnight as I made my way through town, those pines peeped over the Sydney building, leaned round the courthouse and I am left with a strange and distinct feeling we are trying to catch sight of each other. And now a new part of the city is alive to me, is magical, somehow, is known, is recognised. It raises its green arms over the bridge, and waves – I lean over my balcony wall and wave back. It is a lovely, affectionate feeling that comes from quiet, from listening with patience, from watching and engaging all your thoughts to strive for the exact metaphor to describe this thing. I now regularly tramp across its green and brown slopes (research completed so you don’t have to: it’s less fun in the rain) and I have that same physical feeling of enrapturement that I feel when I behold huge mountains, or the sea. I am poetic in tendency, so these extremes must be forgiven. But I carry these pines now in me as I walk through town, and in the corner of my eyes, and feel the strange power of those ley lines. They have created in me since many more poems that I actually like, quite a lot. And I feel as if I have been given a marvellous gift, wrapped up in everlasting green and lit with Roman candles that nothing can ever take away.

An Ironic Homage to J A Baker, from Canberra

18th September

Up early but headed out late, after the commuter lull. The morning was white and limpid, flushed blue at the edges of the wide sky. The light green of new trees glows even when there is no sun upon it and makes the stomach curve upward, glad. Plover thrum on the lake like engines turning over in tense indecision and rosellas smear their beaded blood red on the branches. I creep by, trying to sidle up close enough to see them without frightening them away in ghastly animal misinterpretation. But they can read no benign intentions in our looming forms. Even the magpie that learns to recognise the human that scatters it seeds and swoops to collect them, will eat as if in spite of us. No terror outweighs the of the death scent of man.

The strange metal poles of parliament squat beyond the lake like a deformed giant spider. I think of the tercel then, where it eats its prey somewhere there, manipulated by man to scare away magpies and ducks and keep the seat of order and coal policy clean of bird shit. What its golden eyes see of the territory from the gold zenith higher than the geometrically incorporated hills – thousands of feet higher in the stillness of air above undulations of clouds and wind stratospheres. I fling myself up with the peregrine then, where the human taint is bleached out by the burning purity of nuclear white light.

Down to the lake and dawn floats on the tides. This place is wide and exposed, with its lake, rivers and tree shrouded hills in silver mist trembling away into the hot heart of the centre. An incomparable wideness that lifts off the top of the head then slams it down again with the weight of space. The lake throws the violent blue of the sky up and swells the chest and arms until the land is the sky and everything is birds flying on it, our atoms scattered on the wind of so much room. On the edge of the lake I find the first kill. A grey pigeon at the side of the manicured path on a dark smear of blood; a mess of white and grey feathers haloed around. It has a perfect hole in its stomach cavity, a gaping cave. The scolding pee-wees wing clear of its omen. I look up to the flag of parliament again, my eyes sewed to the sky like buttons straining against the bulging desire to see the peregrine. He did not come.

If Food be the Music of love…Eat on…

I have already written in passing of the beautiful food in Canberra. That was in the summer and the brightly coloured, sharply felt descriptions make me smile now as I nestle by a fire in the middle of winter. Banish thoughts, dear chaps, of cosy small stoves and feet on the hearth. This is Canberra, and my fire is a somewhat peculiar pile of stones in the middle of the room three metres away circled by a chaise longue style of cushioned stone bench in a swanky hotel.

I ain’t complaining.

I have always judged the sophistication of an eating establishment by the prevalence of nouns or adjectives in the description of a dish that I don’t understand. Back in 2009, I was impressed by the promise of initiation into the secret, sensual world evoked by ‘jus.’

So when I sat down for breakfast last month at Industry Beans in Melbourne, I had to re-evaluate. Contemplating between avocado smash with beetroot dust, or juniper berry sous vide salmon with Japanese (please) seaweed, edible sand and sea foam, it was clear that cuisine poncery had aggressively ratcheted up a notch.

To date, I still have no idea what most of that means. But I can tell you that it, and surprisingly, toasted black beans and puffed quinoa (what?), are bloody lovely.

There is a book by Richard Glover; The Land Before Avocado that explores Australia in the seventies; debunking some of those nostalgia myths about ‘the good old days’ (poverty and inequality are always shit, even when you’re young), and tracking the country’s modernisation in culture, transport, leisure and style. And as the name suggests; starting with a reflection on the ubiquity of iceberg lettuce (there was no other kind – sound familiar, countrymen?), it charts Australia’s education and debutante ball into the world of flavour appreciation. But if there indeed is a bad cooking skeleton in Australia’s closet, it’s more repressed than whatever Aunt Ada Doom saw in the woodshed. Australian food has had its therapy and has sprung into the world fully adjusted, and open armed to wonder.

I don’t know if it’s the company I am lucky enough to keep. Let’s not forget Brook who freestyles Ottolenghi; chums who genuinely fight over Swedish moss in world class Danish restaurants, and creative Morris friends who make their own sauerkraut and kimchee. But there is a real appreciation of ingredients, of cultivation and origin that I’ve not seen since Italy. But with a real love of multiculturalism that is treated as a specialisation. In Britain, I think of our multicultural cuisine. Where your Thai is a plate of beige fried stuff, outdone in colour and vibrance by the blue and white crockery it’s served on. Your Indian has been sanitized; new dishes like Tikka Masala invented to appease the bland British palate. And any restaurant you go to, you know exactly what you’re going to get.

In Rice Paper Scissors (huh!), a charming Vietnamese restaurant on Melbourne’s Brunswick street, I got food that blew my mind and changed my life. From now on, all I ever want to taste is lime, coconut, chilli and coriander. I have found perfection – why go back? And paired with beautiful white wines. Wine pairing is a fancy unreachable thing in Britain; only comes on taster menus that are £100 a head and you’ve been meaning to do it for your birthday for years, but never got round to it. Here, it’s standard, and your young, trendy waiter will be able to tell you which will go best with what. A far cry from being asked what a courgette is by your checkout kid in Tesco. They’ll also accurately memorise the entire order from a table of five, while I twitch and reach for my notebook, imploring them to write it down. Young people here snack on rice paper rolls for lunch, dosas and banh mi (it’s a filled roll, it’s a fucken roll) in the way that the average teenager back home clings to Gregs for comfort and familiarity. I’m not saying Australian kids are better than British ones. Just that they have better palates. Sweepingly. In Canberra. Probably.

Yates and I have eaten in Taco Taco. These are also amazing. It is now the year of the Taco in London (I know because Daily Mash told me), but I agree with the satire of the article, that being three months ahead of the food-fashion curve don’t justify the house prices, and I reckon it’s better here anyway. And it’s cheap. We’ve also had a wonderful evening at Terra (which is very helpfully next door to Taco Taco), with the help of its ‘taster’ menu. Yeah, I dig that. I’ll pay you, and you just keep bringing me out dishes of your choice and I’ll trust you. Because you can here! Yates loved that. Great charcoal cooked meats, eggplant salad, roasted cauliflower, seared greens. And a charming shiraz to wash it all down. We also had a less successful, but very delicious, meal at the unpronounceable Mocan and Green Grout, which prides itself on having local artisans hand make the plates they serve ya food on and that sort of shit. It’s beautiful; all wood structures, snuggly little corners and fun metal coat hooks in the shape of little hands. We ate miso eggplant; crisp, fresh zucchini with pickles, cous cous and tahini yoghurt dressing, pork belly, roast quail. I had an oyster. It was wonderful. In my birthday joy, I turned smiling to Yates, lyricising on the flavour of fresh, sea air. He looked at me sardonically and sighed a rabbit sigh. Yes Chris, that’s exactly what I don’t want from my food. For it to taste of fresh air.

Which is what pretty much summed up the evening, because despite five eye-wateringly expensive tapas plates of delight, we left feeling a bit peckish and Yates got up to eat Weetabix at four in the morning. We grimly reflected on the part of Good Omens where Famine gleefully watches a fabulously wealthy (and hungry) model enjoy a first course of lavender scented air. Was a bit like that. There are plenty of places about that will serve you Yates-insufficient quantities of very delicious food.

Then there’s the other side of it all. Maybe this is a throwback from the pre-avocado times. Surprisingly, Australia is the country of pies. Everyone raves about ‘little bakeries’ in ‘little country towns’ where people queue out the door to buy pies for lunch. I have literally seen this. I waited in that queue. It was a really good pie! These country towns are fucken weird; they remind you of pioneer frontier shit out of wild west films; square buildings with corrugated iron roofs and a rickety veranda that surely ought to be filled with red petticoated prostitutes or something. And in the local bakery (it’s not glamorous or anything), you can get hearty, no nonsense little pies of pretty much any meat and combination. And they’re bloody good! I’ve never been a pie fan, really, but as a sort of developed-and-more-nutritious-sausage-roll, they’re pretty damn sufficient. I mean, Australians gotta do weird shit like eat it with ketchup and argue over the best way of applying it, but you know, they got good hearts.

Adoption of European words for food is also as interesting as it is utterly random. Rejecting the Italian term ‘Milanese,’ any breaded food product is ubiquitously a schnitzel, or ‘schnitty.’ Which is charming. But in an obscure reversion to Italian, there is your pub grub classic; the ‘Parma.’ Its full name is ‘Parmagiana’ but there is not a fecking melanzane in sight. Imagine my dismay when spotting it on the menu and thinking ‘oh, how lovely,’ to be warned by an Italian heritage friend; ‘oh no, Chris, it’s not what you think.’ So what is this? Well if you’re used to a charming lasagne style layering of sugo, melanzane and mozzarella, get to destination fucked because this is an abomination. It’s a chicken schnitzel (see above), with a layer of tomato sauce, then a slice of ham (what now?) and cheese.

Right.

Why it persists in being called a parmigiana is utterly mysterious. And apparently, your choice of abbreviation to either parmA or parmI says a lot about ya. Quite what, I don’t know. It doesn’t come up because I don’t eat the fecking thing. But you must understand that’s only because I was expecting the delicious construction that Raffa makes me, not chicken and ham. But if that actually sounds delicious to you, then you won’t be disappointed because there’s always a lot of it. So go forth!

So if you’re a poncey eater, like me, or you dig the more bog-standard no nonsense of meat and chips, you can get it all here in Canberra. But what unites us all is wine.

I’ve been lucky enough to go on two wine tours. They are glorious heady trips of joy, unmatched anywhere. I know Piemonte advertises itself as a wine region, but I just don’t think you can jolly about it drinking in the same way. There were some fantastic tax laws in wine making which may have led to the prevalence of purpose built ‘cellar doors,’ where the wine maker is always on hand (who the hell is harvesting or making the stuff then, remains a mystery) to pour out dribbles of wine to half drunk, smiling enthusiasts who then part with huge sums of money to take it all home. But a day out wine tasting is wonderful. The first time, dear Ed drove and I always go back to the charming vision through the window of ‘Helm’ wines; Ed and Paul striding purposely through the vine bowered garden to set out a glorious picnic with deliberation. We ate smoked trout, pate, breads and cheeses, stuffed peppers, tempura. The second time, lovely Amy drove the fun bus (put your seatbelt on Yates, it’s not that fun) and we drank wine all day, finishing for food in a cosy old restaurant with roaring open fires. All day, drinking wine and smiling and talking about the soils and the climate, and the grapes and the flavours.

So if you want to get on any of this shit, come and visit.

Secret City (hiding the Secret of its soul)

I have, of course, joined a book club. And our first book is the above titled Secret City; a thriller about political subterfuge and scandal in Canberra. I imagine the Brexit equivalent would wilt in comparison. The verdict? In a nutshell: pile of wank.

There is a Foxtel series based on this book. And no doubt it’s very compelling; I’m looking forward to watching some of it myself. Because by watching scenes of Canberra, filmed with well timed lighting, with real people to represent characters, you can engage your own emotional responses where the writers’ choice to not really bother describing anything frankly failed to do so.

Canberrans who have seen bits of this show do find it a bit of a chuckle. It portrays our small little town (beautiful and remarkably well designed, but little nonetheless) as somewhere glossy, sophisticated and impeccably suave. Which from what I’m gathering has about the same impact on a native as a show about the suave and imperatively important life of a bunch of people working in Chelmsford local council would. The writing does the same; name dropping places with the carelessness of a toddler with lego, adding adjectives to help you out because no one really knows Canberra – ‘prestigious,’ ‘stylish,’ ‘sophisticated,’ ‘exclusive.’ Which conspires to kill your very imagination and effort to find a bit of soul in the place. The descriptions of places are done without heart, without love, just bland one-worders that create a half-hearted image of somewhere cool and interesting. Like when you walk past an All Bar One after a long day at work, and think it looks all fun and stylish with people drinking cold wine in nice shoes and there are fairy lights and warm wood surfaces…but it quickly passes because you remember the atmosphere is about as barren as a salt field and you congratulate yourself on a lucky escape; nice shoes and tall wine glasses are not for you and you retire thankfully to your local that smells a bit and get a pint of warm ale. Because it has soul.

Soul in a place is important and I am worried this book has killed my poetic imagination of soul in Canberra.

I like to read about places. I like to immerse myself; building a construct, a sense of beauty and wonder about a place that I can romanticise is half the anticipation of travel. It’s how I connect to place. These two writers; ex political journalists, must have been excellent headline writers with their sassy verb and adjective choices, but they are not great writers. Miles Franklin, Kim Scott, even fucking Lawrence (and as you may know, I have a lot of opinions about D.H. Lawrence, but damn me, at least he creates a sense of place) actually bother to inspire you with a bit of love in a setting. These two didn’t. And to be great literature, writing must do that, as people and place are tied intrinsically, constantly referring to the other to create the human experience.

Perhaps I’m totally over thinking the thriller genre. Great Literature is not its scope. It just makes me cross that good writers wouldn’t bother. And Henning Mankell made a better job of creating atmosphere and engendering the whole scandi-noir genre, so there’s no excuse. Now: the nitty gritty. The book was hideously formulaic. Every new character introduced had a one paragraph fecking CV; description of their degree and previous ten years, peppered with adjectives like ‘high flying,’ ‘razor sharp mind’ and ‘holy roller’ so you get the idea that, you know, this guy’s a big deal. After that, nothing else they either did or said did a damn thing to develop that one dimensional character any further. Sloppy. So imagine my surprise when I read the blurb for the third book (yes, it’s still not fucking over) introducing ‘loveable journalist Harry Dunkley.’ He wasn’t loveable!! He was a bland bloke whose love of ‘chasing down a good yarn’ and ‘getting the papers in the morning’ was described at least four times in exactly the same goddamn way as if that sufficiently constitutes a personality. An effort to give him depth was the throw away mention of his estranged daughter who occasionally he’d miss a bit but couldn’t be fucked to do anything about it for 784 pages. If anything, he was a bit of a dick. He had a girlfriend, right, which was supposed to be a bit of a tension riser isn’t it, because now he’s got something to lose as he closes in on stuff he’s not supposed to know, and he could never get over the fact she was twenty two years younger. He mentions it three times. It must have been written explicitly for screenplay because there were these periodical recaps and I’m like, Harry? Have you forgotten you told me this already, 300 pages ago? I know, it was a long time. *It felt like it for me too.* Then when the young girlfriend goes off in an unconvincing childish strop and the inevitable attack happens (we saw it the minute he got with her, chaps), she dumps him, and later she tries to ring him, and he ignores her call!! She’s taken a knife to the throat for him, and he gets a bit wrapped up in himself and is now too busy for her, despite being gutted about being dumped and ‘racked with guilt’ as he kept saying. Well, not that guilty.

The Pencil of Rage came out with the portrayals of China and the Chinese. I’ve been reading books on China since these two journos turned up in Canberra as green little reporters twenty five years ago; you know, there’s a lot there what with thousands of years of culture and history and a billion people and I’ve never read such boringly obvious portrayal of a Bad Guy. A character defects, overcoming a life time of carefully tuned ‘education’ because….ooh, we need something emotional to make it convincing…er….fuck it, dead mother. Again, not developed enough to suggest why this character would defect in this circumstance when thousands of others wouldn’t. Lovely bit of world building in ‘Beijing’ ‘a Chinese melody drifted in the background.’ Who needs research eh? And a Chinese woman was described as ‘delicate’ no fewer than three times on one page, confirming all negative stereotypes about the submissiveness and mutability of Chinese women.

Then there was the needless transvestite. I don’t really understand why one character had to be trans. It added nothing to the story. But it was made a big deal of, so it’s not just a general diversity of some characters are black, some are Asian, some are trans. In fact, apart from a couple of Chinese, conspicuously painted as sinister or subversive, there was a complete lack of diversity. And this is the point for me.

Because all these people, swelled with power, feeding their greed and arrogance by dashing about the city at high speed were essentially dicks who demonstrated, despite all their qualifications in economics, no understanding of the real world and its struggles at all. The effects of poverty. Mental health (despite the ‘Mental Health Plan’ the fictitious government unsuccessfully tries to get through the house of representatives, mainly to show the Prime Minister is ‘a good guy,’), the ostracization of first nation people. As an immigrant outsider whose qualifications seem to count for shite, having daily battles with getting out of bed and the wine, it was quite depressing reading. Like I should have tried harder in my career to be important high fliers like these dudes. More assurance from Australia that I’m not good enough, from terribly constructed not-real people.

It is fascinating ear-wigging conversation in this town. Walking past people on their phones or those strolling in pairs (invariably young, athletic types in brown shoes and blue trousers; no blazers) you do catch snippets of Very Important Sounding Things. But is there a disconnect between them having coffee and important conversations (soooo different from teaching where you GET in your classroom, STAY in there, DON’T come out for seven hours, BE inspiring, NO you can’t leave to piss) and the real people they serve?

Look, like the aboriginals. The big elephant in Australian society who are miraculously unrepresented in this city. I have never seen such a white city. Lots of young east Asians at the university and, it seems, applying for hideously boring accounting systems jobs, but apart from that, very little diversity. And this troubles me. Before finishing the crap book, I read a great one about Noongar people of western Australia; struggling with their disenfranchisement and the bad choices they make based on their…lack of choices. Drugs, alcohol, abuse. How to reconnect with an ancient past that is spiritual and beautiful, solace against the modern world that probably many also want to engage with; combining success in modern Australian society through education and inclusion with celebrating traditions. These people were returning to their homeland as traditional owners, but now there are fences, a certain area is a holiday caravan park and the owners don’t have much sympathy for their free movement. After visiting the aborigine exhibition at the national museum, I was quite appalled and upset. How can white people live on the land, daily staring in the face of those they stole it from? Even in America, they wiped out most of the first nation peoples so used the place as a blank canvas to construct their national identity. Which is something Australians struggle with – a sense of belonging, constructing their identity out of ANZAC day – bloody violence and war. That’s not a cultural identity. I’ve had many discussions about this with Morris dancers, who feel connections with the village of their ancestors in England (I did mention this was merely inbreeding, and not meaningful), who know more about regional dances than I do and sort of sometimes miss the point of it being ‘folk;’ of the people, who change and grow. Australian identity is something that is still growing. And I think it should. Because, being a remainer, right, I’m quite into immigration. I am one. And after considering, then rejecting the idea that we can’t send all the white people in Australia back (I would revolt if someone said the reverse in England), there has to be a way for first nation and immigrants to unite over their love of this land. Because we do love it, I love it. I love beaches and emus and kangaroos! Anyone who doesn’t has no soul. And that is something that can bind us. Love, of course.

Which brings me back to finding soul. Apparently the hill where Parliament sits is a significant site for the Ngunnawal people – it is a woman’s mountain and important for their rituals. Not so easy to wander up there anymore and continue your culture. It’s like there was soul here, but perhaps nasty politicians took it all. And in looking for soul, I see it more in the trees and the hills than I do in this city. So I’m still looking for it. I’m finding it in odd little alleyways, cluttered with parked cars, murals painted on the wall and a load of bins…which is the secret entrance for a funny little windowless cocktail bar. I’m finding it under the trees at a cheap taco place round the corner from my flat, where they always seem to have secret meat you can just ask for. (Not a euphemism.) And I find it in the brilliant Smiths Alternative bar and music venue that doesn’t get a look-in in that stupid book because its ripped up, weathered sofas that render the pavement a hazard under the arcades of the Melbourne building is the sweet home of the Lost. Students lie on sofas all day, homeless men and women take their rest and drink the free water, smoking and reading the books; hippies resolutely not wearing shoes will play the piano and there is a particular smell. And, marvellously, good wine.

There we go.