Vegan options at summer hill hotel

Friday 19 June 2015 

I had a pretty funny experience at the Summer Hill Hotel last night, but it didn’t have anything to do with their ‘comedy’ trivia. My girlfriend and I went along with her brother and two of his colleagues, and finished up at a respectable third place. Afterward, when it had emptied out a bit, we got talking to one of the bar staff who was coming around to clean the tables. While he was hanging around, Tilly noticed a sign saying they do veggie burgers on Mondays, and asked him why only on Mondays. We’ve been to the pub a couple of times and they only have two vegetarian options, neither of which can be veganised, so the only vegan option is a bowl of chips (almost certainly fried in the same oil as the chicken schnitzel). Keep in mind that this is in Sydney’s inner west, possibly the most vegan-friendly place in Australia outside of Melbourne, where just down the road I could ask for no fish sauce or oyster sauce in my stirfry at the Thai place or no cheese on my pizza at the Italian and get the response, ‘Oh, you mean vegan?’ 

‘Good question,’ he answered. ‘I don’t know. I assume all the ingredients are there right now, but we only sell it on a Monday.’ 

There was a bit of a back and forth where he bitched about his evangelistic vegan ex-girlfriend and her hypocrisy in drinking non-vegan wine and wearing leather shoes, and then Til volunteered that I was vegan and he started interrogating me about wine and shoes and honey, absurdly insisting that bees have no use for it (!?!?). Then he said, ‘It’s funny, ’cause we actually got this loooong email a while back from some vegan who wanted more options on the menu. And for the first few paragraphs I was on board; I was like, yeah, mate, I agree, but then he got to the part where he started trying to preach and stuff and I was just like ‘Nup.’’ 

Then he talked a bit about how he ‘gets’ people who do it for the health reasons, and that he’d do it for the health reasons but he loves chicken, but he doesn’t get people who say it’s for ethical reasons. 

When he walked away, I turned to the rest of the group and said, ‘Yeah, so the guy who sent that email was me,’ and everybody lost their shit. No one could believe that had happened. I hadn’t said anything because I wanted to hear what he had to say honestly. It was like being able to eavesdrop but he was talking straight to my face – quite a rare opportunity, really. 

Not that it particularly helped. After the encounter I dug up the email and read it back to myself to try and see where he was coming from. Obviously his reaction is not the desired one for my cause. I know that people often respond negatively to any discussion of veganism, so that was nothing new, but in this case I thought I’d tried to be particularly non-threatening and polite because I was trying to effect a concrete change. But see for yourself! I’ll copy and paste the contents below, with a little commentary. 

Firstly, I guess the email was pretty long – four paragraphs in total, but I’m just a longwinded, thorough person and that probably won’t ever change. I didn’t want to just send a three-line email asking for vegan options, I wanted to make a case and give some suggestions, too. 

My first paragraph was basically just sucking up to them and setting up the situation: 

     To the management of the Summer Hill Hotel/AHL Group 

     My girlfriend and I have just moved into the area, and we'd heard great things about 

     your establishment, so we decided to try out the hotel for our first lunch after a big 

     morning moving in. We loved the atmosphere and service at the hotel, but were a bit 

     disappointed that there were no vegan meal options available at your bistro, and the 

     two vegetarian options were unable to be 'veganised' because they were pre-prepared 

     and contained fish sauce and dairy products respectively. 

Nothing to see here, right? Pretty tame? 

Next I got to the point of the email: 

     We're eager to make your establishment our new 'local' for drinks, trivia, and lunches

     and dinners with friends, but obviously we'll have a hard time if there's nothing we 

     can eat there! So I'm just emailing to ask if there's anything you can do to 

     accommodate vegans in your meal options – whether it's enabling one of the 

     vegetarian options to be altered for vegans, or even adding a new menu item. 

Again, pretty reasonable, I think. 

My third paragraph was about establishing common ground in case they were thinking ‘Jesus, no meat, dairy or eggs – what the hell does he want, then?’ (a common reaction). I explained what veganism actually is, which, in retrospect could’ve sounded a bit patronising, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t actually know, so I had to explain it to be sure. Here I also gave some suggestions for actual meals, because it’s generally good practice not to just point out a problem, but  also to arrive with a solution, and I think a lot of classically trained chefs and cooks have just never contemplated cooking something without meat, dairy or eggs, so I wanted to show that there were viable options:

     I come from a family of chefs, so I know veganism can sound prohibitively 

     restrictive at first. We essentially don't eat (or use) any products that involve 

     harming animals, so no meat, dairy, eggs, honey, etc. But there are actually so many 

     inclusive, delicious vegan meals that anyone can enjoy, even staunch meat 

     enthusiasts (if they give it a try)! At other pubs in the past I've had wonderful veggie 

     burgers; simple mushroom, tomato and herb pastas; open pies of roast veggies in 

     (dairy/egg-free) filo or shortcrust pastry; falafel and hummus pitas with salad; nachos 

     with beans; and vegan pizzas. Often other pubs go to the extra length of making their 

     vegan meal gluten-free as well, so they always have at least one option that anyone 

     can enjoy, whether they're vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, lactose-intolerant, 

     gluten-free or whatever else! 

Okay, there, bud. Calm down with the exclamation marks. 

'Anyway, I was just reading your final edit, and um, there seems to be an inordinate number of exclamation points ... 'It was a damp and chilly afternoon, so I decided to put on my sweatshirt!' ... 'I pulled the lever on the machine but the Clark Bar didn't come out!''

But still, maybe just annoyingly nice, right? Not exactly raging preachy vegan yet? 

But these were all still the paragraphs that he’d been ‘on board’ with. It was the last one he said he had an issue with. And I can definitely see why. The last paragraph was where I raised the issue of ethics. It wasn’t in my original draft of the email, but then I found this pamphlet on their website that was basically fifteen pages of them bragging in poorly written copy about their commitment to ethical food sourcing and sustainable environmental practices and I thought, ‘Well, then I’ll bring up how maybe offering a SINGLE vegan option on your menu might fit in with your dedicated passion for ethical food and environmental sustainability’: 

     I was interested to read the ALH 'Our Sustainable Kitchen' brochure available on 

     your website and glad that all your meat seems to be procured as ethically as 

     possible. 

Okay, not really, but a bit of flattery couldn’t hurt … 

     As a company 'committed to ethical food sourcing and supporting environmental 

     resource management now and in the future', I hope you guys will look into 

     accommodating what I and many other people are increasingly finding to be the 

     most healthful, ethical and environmentally sustainable lifestyle choice available. As 

     you may know, growing crops to feed livestock around the world is the biggest cause 

     of habitat loss and deforestation, and raising animals for consumption contributes 

     more to greenhouse gas emissions than all our transport needs combined. 

     Thanks for your time and hope to hear back from you soon. 

     Cheers 

     Mr L Phillip Lucas, BA, BCA 

     Freelance writer and editor 

     lphilliplucas@gmail.com

     lukewarmmanifesto.blogspot.com.au

     

So, what? Is it that ONE sentence he took issue with, then? Merely making a claim about habitat loss, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions? Claims the UN itself has validated by urging the world to move towards a vegan diet? To me it seems that people are just so sensitive on this subject that you literally can't say anything without being written off as ramming your ideology down people's throats. I think this ties back to a realisation I had the other day that I posted on my L Phillip Lucas Facebook page: 

     Shouldn't the real indicator of self-righteousness be the belief that all of our actions 

     are beyond reproach, that no one has the right to criticise our behaviour? As a 

     society, our fixation on 'judgement' is reaching phobic levels. In a world where most 

     of us never really think critically about our lives, it becomes easier to dismiss any 

     form of criticism as rude, judgemental, self-righteous, sanctimonious, holier-than

     -thou or preachy than to make sure our ideas and actions can stand up to criticism. 

They never did write back to my email. Apparently they just passed it around to all the staff, had a laugh at my expense, and now they bitch about it (to other vegan patrons???). I'm not really sure what I should've done differently, except not mention the ethical side of things. Obviously, in a way, I did get ‘preachy’ at the end there, but only to hold them to their own professed commitments. I wouldn’t have brought it up if they hadn’t done so first, bragging about their obviously bullshit passion for sustainability. 

Maybe you can write a more successful one than me. If you’d like to send them an email asking about adding a vegan option to the menu, that’d be amazing. If they hear it from enough different people, they might actually consider it. Their email is: SummerHill.Hotel@alhgroup.com.au 

Thanks for reading 

LPL

Sydney writers' festival 2015

Tuesday 26 May 2015

I had an extremely limited, though, nevertheless, incredibly rewarding, experience at the Sydney Writers' Festival this year, mostly revolving around interactions with one of my favourite authors and the subject of my thesis, David Mitchell. Before the weekend was over, I would hear him speak at three events, meet him at two book-signings, and have my photo taken with him. 

Walking to see Mitchell a second time at the Theatre Bar at the End of the Wharf for Coffee and Papers with the Sydney Morning Herald and David Mitchell.

Mitchell and I after his third appearance (and my second book-signing) at the Roslyn Packer Theatre for 'Imagined Futures'.

My favourite interaction, however, was the first: Friday night at the City Recital Hall Angel Place event 'David Mitchell: Bending Time', where he was interviewed onstage by Kate Evans. The night had a number of highlights, including when Mitchell claimed to be, in fact, a novella writer rather than a novelist, an assertion Evans rebutted with a single heft of his latest 595-page behemoth, The Bone Clocks; when he revealed that the tea he was drinking was made accidentally with sparkling water (it happens to the best of us); and when he suggested that the key to avoiding the dystopian though all-too-plausible near future he depicts in The Bone Clocks is to 'vote in more idealistic politicians who will need to pass things that cause us some financial pain' and not to 'listen to demagogues that says, 'Vote for me and I'll scrap the carbon tax', met, of course, by enthusiastic applause from the predictably assenting literary festival audience.

Kate Evans interviewing David Mitchell, sparkling water tea in hand.

Two questions before the end of the interview, Evans invited audience members to start making their way to the microphones positioned around the hall. As she asked her final question, I noticed they were all still vacant, so I plucked up my courage and seized the opportunity. When I got to the microphone, Mitchell was still making his way through his answer. I felt conspicuous standing there, ten or fifteen metres away from where they were seated onstage, blocking the view of the audience members behind me with my not inconsiderable height, so I decided I would crouch in the aisle, which also felt somewhat ridiculous, but the best choice under the circumstances. 

Then came my moment. 'Now, is anybody going to make their way to—' began Evans, before I sprung up from my position like a Jack in the Box.

'Hello!' said Mitchell jovially, before assigning me seven years good luck for being his first questioner and offering me some of his (nearly entirely in tact) block of Cadbury's vegemite chocolate.

'That's actually kind of relevant to my question', I began. The whole event was recorded and broadcast by Radio National, and you can hear our full interaction from about 37:45 here (look for number 7. 'David Mitchell – The Bone Clocks'), but here's a summary, starting with my question:

'So, I just wanted to say thank you first for coming and speaking to us and your wonderful work. Cloud Atlas actually really changed my life ... mainly through kind of clarifying my personal ethics, just by thinking about it a lot and the ethics that I find embedded into it. One of the main things was that it kind of removed the last ethical blocks that I was putting up into vegetarianism and now veganism. So I couldn't take you up on your offer to eat the chocolate.' We laughed. 'You were talking before about how, you know, we make ourselves feel better by dehumanising those that we exploit. And I wondered if you have any feelings about the way that that would apply to eating animals and farming animals and killing animals.'

'Yeahhhhhhh ...' he said in a long, thoughtful sigh. 'Not a contentious question, then!' he added, eliciting a round of laughter from the audience. 'Uh, thank you. Yeah, you're right. Thin ice, because I'm not a strict vegetarian. I'm an occasional guilty lifeform-eater. I'm riddled with hypocrisies and this is one of them. I don't eat mammals any more, though, um, because—because they love their mums, and they don't wanna die.' 

We all laughed at this. 'I'm glad to hear it!' I enthused.

'And their mums love them as well', he added. 'I'm sort of working towards where you are, I suppose.' For some reason this struck us all as hilarious as well. Perhaps the incongruity of it all – that I had hijacked the event to talk about animal rights and, unexpectedly, I suppose, for many omnivores in the audience, Mitchell was agreeing with me.

The best response I could offer, as an aspiring writer speaking to one of his literary idols was, 'I'm working towards where you are as well,' which the crowd loved – the round of applause that followed is clipped from the Radio National recording, but it was there!

From there he discussed his progress in slowly crossing birds off the list, and then fish, and how it's interesting to think of the shock that would ensue if it became part of the syllabus to send secondary school students to abattoirs to learn about the process. He concluded his answer by saying something that took me quite by surprise:

'You seem incredibly healthy. You sort of radiate health,' he said. 'You're a walking advertisement for veganism,' prompting another burst of laughter. Personally I'd attribute any glow to the fact that I was talking to a literary legend and he was speaking positively about veganism, but I'll take it. 'You just seem one of those healthy people. You know sometimes you see someone and they're looking a bit "uhhhhh"' – here he made a groaning zombie noise. 'You had an enormous slab of cow for lunch, didn't you?'

For the rest of my interactions at the festival this question gained me some sort of notoriety. Immediately afterwards several people congratulated me on asking it, and everywhere I went afterwards people would say, 'You're the one who asked that question!' It also meant I stuck out in Mitchell's mind, so that he had some personalised messages for me when I got my books signed. I couldn't be happier that the man who wrote the book that set me on my current path, and who continues to delight me with his fiction, is of a similar mind to me, and is on his way to fully embracing the ethics that he so talentfully depicts in his work.

Helen Razer and Bernard Keane at the only non-David Mitchell event I got to attend.

My haul from the festival – all signed!

Thanks for reading!

LPL

'What's the creator of damo and darren up to now?'

NOTE: Since Bullshit Blog is now defunct, I've taken the liberty of reposting the original article in full here.

The cool kids at Bullshit Blog were kind enough to publish my first web article! It's a short introduction to 'Lucas the Magnificent', a parody persona crafted by the genius behind Damo and Darren. Go check it out!

And just some background, in case you're interested: I usually do this thing where, instead of building my writing CV up by putting my time and effort into articles that can be published on actual websites, I just occasionally waste an entire day writing three thousand–word diatribes to languish here unread because this is an obscure blog and no one would ever want to read a random,  unstructured, meandering three thousand–word diatribe that contains all the opinions I could possibly ever express on one topic. (And yes, that was all one sentence).

The last couple times I've started writing a blog post I've thought to myself, 'Wait a second. Is there anywhere else I could publish this? Should I be pitching somewhere instead?' But then I always talk myself out of it by thinking I don't want to restrain myself to the extent necessary for a published article, or no one would be interested in the topic I'm talking about enough to publish it, or whatever. 

But this time, when I saw Lucas The Magnificent pop up in my feed and spent the next hour reading every tweet and post he'd ever made, I realised it would be the perfect subject for one of those little link repository articles you see on pop culture websites, so I scrambled down a couple hundred words, and here we are! Next objective: publish a serious article somewhere ...

Thanks for reading

LPL

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Rosie, queen of the streets

Tuesday 20 May 2014

In my post 'The worst kind of emergency' I wrote about the importance of giving. One of the ways I've been doing that for the last couple of years has been working with photographer Ethan Mann on a charity project for Sydney's homeless, 'The X Book'. It's a compilation of portraits featuring Sydney personalities accompanied by biographies and it's been a Herculean task, strung together on favours and distant connections during spare moments in the busy lives of some of our participants. Now we have an opportunity to gain some funding and exposure through Canon's 'Shine' initiative.

Click the image to vote for us (if it doesn't take you directly to the picture just select 'Leaderboard' from the 'Sort by' dropdown menu on the top-left and look for Rosie at the top)!

Meet Aunty Rose, 'queen of the streets', a familiar and friendly face to many in the heart of our city. So many people have connected with Rosie, but few like Ethan. On a stormy night in 2012 he took his mission to help the homeless to the next level when he set out to spend two weeks sleeping rough on the streets of Sydney to try and gain an understanding of this way of life. But we who live in the comfort and warmth of our homes have lost touch with the survival instincts it takes to navigate such a wild and difficult lifestyle. He would've been lost if it weren't for Rosie, the angel who took him under her wing when he brought his obsession into her world.

Rosie is a beautiful and wise old soul who made the streets her home after the deaths of her family two decades ago. She's got equal parts book smarts and street smarts, and a hearty dose of kindness that makes her willing to impart her knowledge, her time, and even her money, to anyone in need. She taught Ethan where to eat, showed him the safe places to sleep, gave him a handful of change when he had nothing, and schooled him in the vital practice of 'cold-biting' (what the rest of us might call 'begging') so he could make it on his own. Without her hr wouldn't have even the beginnings of understanding that he has now, so when he heard about the Canon Shine initiative, it was an easy choice which photo he wanted to submit.

The competition is all about reminding us of the power of photographs to effect change in a world where selfies, food shots and Snapchats might seem to water it down, so of course The X Book had to get involved. We submitted a mugshot-style portrait of Rosie that depicts how the stories of the homeless are sentenced without trial to silence, how their complexities are flattened into tales of guilt so we can justify ignoring an outstretched hand.

The winner will have the benefit of all the considerable exposure Canon can offer when they make a documentary about the journey that led to the picture being taken. This is a story that needs to be told. If you believe in us and you believe in our cause, please get behind us now so we have the best chance of winning the competition, getting our story out, and making a difference to the lives of our city's most vulnerable.

Vote for our image by clicking on the photo above, and share this page far and wide. Alternatively you can send me your name and email and I wil register you. Once you verify the account by clicking on the link in the email they send you, you can vote from there, or just let me know and I will vote on your behalf! There's links on my Facebook and Twitter pages (see below) for you to like and share and retweet to your heart's content. 

Thanks for reading

LPL

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Little garie and the hidden shack communities of sydney's royal national park

Tuesday 22 April 2014

For someone whose entire life can be characterised by migration back and forth between Wollongong and the Sutherland Shire, the obstacle that separates these two places, Sydney's vast Royal National Park, is a constant presence. In my nearly twenty-five years I've made the move on no less than five occasions, each time leaving behind friends and family who needed visiting, so I must've taken the hour-long journey around and through the park, by car or by train, thousands of times.

In the original sense of the word, then, the park has been geographically pivotal for me: the central point around which my whole life has swung. So in the spirit of 'writing what you know', this 16,000-hectare conservation area seemed the perfect space in which to hide the hermit protagonist of my inchoate novel 'The Innocuous Death of Irving Crabbe'. It wasn't until I was voicing this idea to my nan, though, that I was informed of the extraordinary fact that the world's second-oldest national park already secretes within its depths a handful of isolated shack communities.

But apparently I wasn't alone. Surprisingly few locals, whether Shirefolk or Wollongongers, seem to be aware of the four micro-communities of Little Garie, Era, Burning Palms and Bulgo, each accessible only by walking track, which have been established in the park now for over a century. It only took a little investigation to reach the conclusion that I needed to incorporate these idiosyncratic little colonies into my book in some way. I was sold.

And so it is that at 10am on an inclement Sunday, just over a year after that initial discovery, I find myself on the wind-blown grass of Garie Beach in the heart of the National Park, accompanied by a fittingly representative mix of friends and family from both its Sydney and Wollongong ends. My nan brings three other family members from the south, while high school friends and fellow Sydneysiders Charlene and Alexandra (who accompanied me on my first excursion to the communities a year earlier) drive in with me from the north. They have all kindly agreed to join me for the annual National Heritage Trust Festival walking tour of Little Garie (the most accessible of the four communities and therefore the only tour not to have been cancelled due to the weather), where I'm hoping to learn more about the lives and history of the shackdwellers.

The glorious view from Garie Beach on our previous (much more temperate) visit.

We huddle against the wind and I make my introductions as my filial and social worlds collide, milling about a picnic table while we wait for all the attendees to arrive. We are surprised by how many people show up, perhaps a couple dozen: active middle-aged couples in hiking gear, a young migrant family with an adorable baby, and the various other pleasant, solitary grey-haired oddballs you find at such events, enthusing politely and asking earnest questions like garrulous mature-age students at uni. My friends and I are conspicuously the youngest adults there, later earning us the moniker of 'the young ones' from the event coordinator Kerry, who soon makes herself known and leads us on a narrow path towards Little Garie nestled between the cliffs on one side and the beach on the other.

Family: Nan, Eddie, and great aunt and uncle Christine and Stewart bringing up the rear. The 'most accessible' though it is, all the materials that comprise and fill the shacks of Little Garie would have to have been carried along this narrow path, including the heavy old kerosene fridges and cast-iron fireplaces.

The view from the track, with the rocky plateau where the shackholders meet for elevensies in the foreground and some of the Little Garie shacks beyond.

Warm and quick to laugh, Kerry strikes me over the course of the day as the most socially conscious of the guides, trying visibly to keep speeches from her fellow guides on track, forewarning us of the more notoriously loquacious shackholders and hurrying along any groups that linger too long in any one dwelling. She guides us up a steep hill, which she assures us is the only one we will need to contend with, to the characterful Little Garie community hall and chapel, where we are to meet the rest of the guides and residents: Tim, Peter, James, Gary, Tony and more. I didn't take any photos on this occasion, but I did take some during the 2013 visit:

Kids playing with a kart outside the hall.

In the hall we learn that the first shacks in the area were holiday cabins built from 1910 onwards on land rented from the owners, forty years before its incorporation into the National Park. Later during the Depression, the communities swelled as unemployed miners from nearby Helensburgh moved into the area. Once the land was resumed in 1950 after lobbying from the shackowners to protect it from property developers, no new shacks were permitted to be built. The existing shacks could, however, still be bought and sold until the mid-1960s when the land came under the governance of the newly formed National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), whose policy was to remove the shacks once their owners died. This led many families to just continue paying rent under the pretense that their deceased relative was now a decagenarian. Nevertheless, the NPWS succeeded in demolishing around 50 shacks during this time. Apparently the removal of the shacks ranked in the top two things former NSW premier Bob Carr wanted to get rid of during his time in office, during the same time heritage authorities were clamouring to protect them.

Today the shackholders are council workers, medicos, PhDs, engineers, sugarcane farmers, coal miners and all manner of other professions. Indeed, one of the most distinctive shacks we would see, brimming full of fantasy novels and half built of stones that leak when it rains, is cared for by a kindly Woolooware High School science teacher/archaeologist/Egyptologist. Each shackholder pays circa $3,000 a year in rent, and they are entitled to have up to four names on their leases. Very few of them live in the shacks fulltime, but they visit frequently on weekends and stay for long periods over summer and during winter holidays. The custodians of such a prized coastal idyll might be expected to guard their closed community jealously against outsiders, but the open day shows their attitudes to be the opposite. In fact, it is due to their efforts to the contrary, largely exercised through the Royal National Park Coastal Cabins Protection League (RNPCCPL), that the NPWS' policy of shack removal has latterly been overturned. The communities' demonstration and celebration of their unique cultural heritage has led to its recognition by several various heritage authorities, and the open day itself, we are told by bright, eloquent RNPCCPL president Helen Voysey, commemorates the listing of the communities on the State Heritage Register in 2012.

The promulgation of the shack communities' culture being one of the goals of the day, the shackholders are eager to impress upon us the importance of the shacks in their lives. 'We're very heartfelt. These aren't just some place we come and have fun, stresses Kerry. 'These are a part of our structure, our DNA.' She also emphasises the intimacy of the Little Garie community, noted among the four for its closeness, citing how quickly secrets spread among the shackholders, and their daily ritual of elevensies. Another community member adds that there are regularly five generations in a shack, and Helen concludes that 'Heritage is not just your big stone buildings and your government houses; it's your little shacks where people survived the Great Depression and where people carry on a kind of holiday recreation life.'

Another point to which the shackholders continually return is the effort involved in maintaining their seaside escapes. Possessed perhaps of an ingrained sensitivity from the parlous state in which the shacks existed for such a long time, they seem to want to prove that it's not all just the bucolic retreat and pleasant weekends surfing and fishing in the sun that visitors might think, that it's not only through the luck of birth or marriage that they come to enjoy their shacks, but that they have earned the privilege through their hard work preserving and maintaining them. Peter characterises the task as a fulltime job, battling the wind, storms, and vandalism. Their $3,000 a year is the price for the location alone; it doesn't buy them the amenities, roads, pathways, infrastructure the ordinary taxpayer expects, nor the community services ratepayers enjoy, nor the upkeep on which ordinary renters can depend. The shackholders seem to do most of this themselves. They constructed the stairway we trudged up to reach the hall, Kerry told us, when the NPWS wouldn't pay for it and visitors kept injuring themselves. My friends and I happened to be there that day on our previous trip as the men sweated, heaving rocks up from the river to sink into the earth as platforms to stand on. I even recognise some of the shackholders in the hall as the smiling faces of people who greeted us and wished us well as we passed through that day, giggling in their swimmers with champagne glasses in their hands.

One of the shackholders carries a stone up the hill to use in the construction of the stairs.

Throughout the day we would be regaled with such tales of the shackholders' diligent ingenuity and resilience, from the construction of the stone shack from boulders rolled down from the hills above to its more recent repair when the roof blew off in one piece. Fences have been erected to prevent rockfalls and protect and hold back plant species. Days have been spent clearing the brush of the decades worth of shattered glass from the beer bottles of the shackholders' antecedents. An agreement was made for the community to take over the upkeep of any shack whose owner grew too old to maintain it themselves. And then there is the shacks' most persistent enemy: whiteants.

Some of the shackowners of years past were more creative in their bottle disposal methods. Each of these show their brewing year on their base, some dating back to the forties and fifties.

We are informed the floor we are standing on in the hall has just been replaced for fear that it wouldn't hold up underneath us after whiteants (or termites) had been at it. The first shack we are led to in our smaller group, in fact, is a thoroughly comfortable and modern-looking, caravan-style dwelling which owes its contemporary feel to its previous degradation by the voracious little insects. The shack belongs to Tony, a friendly bloke jokingly referred to as a 'blow-in' for his measly two decades in the community who was invited in when the former owner of his shack was no longer able to care for it and had no willing heir to take up the responsibility. Tony restored the shack and, in the process, added a few mod-cons. The internal bathroom is tiled, the walls are smooth and a TV plays a DVD about shack life in the background.

Tony speaking to us in his 'beach shack'. Many of the shacks feature these little signs, which in another context might be considered tacky – cheap, mass-produced knick-knacks hawked by imitation-high end homeware stores to ironically adorn the holiday homes and beachside investment properties of affluent city-dwelling bourgeoisie. But somehow I think the shackholders are more entitled to make use of them than these usual purchasers.

The contemporary style of Tony's shack represents another theme that permeated the day. Kerry has encouraged us to ask questions of our guides, saying, 'They're passionate about their shacks and their ideas'. In the way of so many people who lead eccentric lifestyles, who harbour some desire to retreat from ordinary life, whether innate or bred into them by a lifetime of shack holidays, many of the shackholders seem to have eccentric or strongly held views. Of course, I only had a few hours contact with them, but even in that time I feel I was able to detect a few of these unguarded opinions, which seeped into the conversation at any opportunity, the way we vegetarians wait for any vague allusion to meat-consumption to pounce on. Kerry and the others hint laughingly a few times at the strife that arises between community members occasionally, as with any family, saying she thinks it's what makes them so close. One of the divisions I pick up on is between those who have updated their shacks and the purists who 'don't like the modernisation of the shacks' and prefer 'to keep them as humble as what they were when our parents had them', in Kerry's words.

Tony, I think, may be omitted from this mild resentment because his was a restoration of necessity, but when she takes us through her shack, passed down from her husband Gary's parents, Kerry remarks that some shacks even have Foxtel, adding, 'We ain't going down that path!' Later in the last shack we'll see we are astounded by the decorations. Books line every ledge and splay over every surface (I'm impressed by the presence of Winton and Dawkins). Entire walls are covered in patterns formed from wine corks, which seems a local fashion, while others are plastered with photos depicting festive evenings on the grog with not a few bared breasts and bottoms. Snake skins and cicada shells dangle from the rafters, dead sea animals hang in the windows, along with paraphernalia of every other kind scattered everywhere: a Navy sailor's hat that washed up on shore, artwork by the grandkids, ancient photo albums, a telescope. Awed as we enter, the owner says pointedly, 'Yeah. This is a shack. A real fisherman's shack', as if in distinction from the less authentic modern shacks that surround it.

This shack was the most exciting to me because my hermit protagonist's shack is similarly brimming with the objects he collects, and ideas were rich for the harvesting here.

All this conjures the image of a secret Little Garie cabin elite who behind closed doors thumb their noses at the unenlightened shackholders turning their abodes into the holiday-home equivalent of McMansions, and I tend to sympathise. Certainly the most unchanged old shacks are the most fascinating, both for my friends and me as a window into the past and as nostalgia for those of the older generation in attendance. Nan lights up when we enter one old shack with a hand-wound laundry wringer out front, still furnished in the old style within. Other people seem more interested in these older-style shacks as well – this shackholder proudly shows us the magazine article in which he featured, and Kerry tells me a Tropfest film was shot there last year.

Another strong and not-so-hidden view that pervades the community is a lingering contempt for the NPWS, understandable given the historical animosity between them. Helen describes the history as a pendulum swinging, and expresses a hope that one day it will eventually stop somewhere in the middle. At first the authorities liked the shacks, she says, because they wanted the revenue. Then the pendulum swung and the idea that national parks would be without people rose to prominence, before it swung back to recognise the value of human heritage. (It occurs to me that this is much more elegant and obvious metaphor for my 'stratigraphy of argumentation', which I later learned was an unconscious permutation of the Hegelian dialectic). Ever the PR liaison, Kerry speaks frankly about the rift but ends on a decidedly hopeful note, saying 'we're starting to get on an even footing now', only to be undercut by a more embittered community member who adds, 'Well, some of us are' in what is just one many veiled and unveiled digs at the (older) rangers and the NPWS throughout the day, and not without reason. In the hall after thanking us for our interest in the valley Kerry tells us it is 'important for us to get out our history, as in, the truth, let's say, not a skewed version.' We are told about one ranger who still works at the park who allegedly sunk an axe into a kerosene tank and, when asked why, reportedly answered 'So you bastards can't use it.' When bushfires swept through the region and the community evacuated, they came back to find the words 'Burn you bastards, burn' scrawled on their blackboard, supposedly by the same ranger.

The other strongly held beliefs of the community appear to be environmental. Kerry points out that the community has been forced to abandon their kerosene fridges for high-tech solar ones due to the unavailability of parts. We are introduced to at least one 'solar nut' and his solar-powered shack, as well as Peter, an affable 65-year veteran of the environmental movement, whose shack was one of the last legally bought Little Garie shacks . An engineering consultant by trade as well as a Landcare volunteer, Peter seems to be the resident historian of the community, claiming to have spent a lot of time researching to determine that the Royal National Park shacks are absolutely unique in Australia as non-road accessible coastal cabins built legally on freehold land. He distributes flyers about the communities entitled 'Living Heritage'. 

Peter's experience of the environmental movement is fascinating. It must be bizarre to have been in a movement from its inception as a fringe concern and watch it ascend to mainstream acceptance. 'I can assure you it was not very popular,' he says in the hall. 'You were considered to be a Grade-A screaming nutter'. This is a pertinent example of our tendency to underestimate how much things can change in one lifetime, and a reminder not to measure the worth of ideas by their extremity in relation to the current norm, but on their own merits. In sixty-five years there will likely be an entirely new norm that may embrace what once seemed radical. 

Peter's shack.

Peter.

Before Peter speaks in the hall we are jokingly warned not to ask him about climate change. He goes on to say that the environmental movement has been 'hijacked by radical nutters who really don't understand the issues'. He may have a point and his example of the protests against hazard reduction burning is hard to argue with, but I found myself hoping this friendly and knowledgeable figure wasn't a denier of anthropogenic climate change, although the warning not to ask him about it could be interpreted either way.

The tour over, the various smaller groups reconverge on the hall for the sausage sizzle the shackholders are putting on. Alexandra and I duck back to the car to retrieve our Eski full of a vegetarian feast and sit in the grass a short distance away, attracting gratifying comments from various passersby that they're jealous of our lunch. A Little Garien hawking raffle tickets offers me the 'lucky ticket' 69 (appropriately the one from the shack featuring the lewd photographs) and I purchase some giftcards featuring paintings, photographs and drawings by a local artist to add to the nascent wall collage next to my desk to inspire me. Meanwhile, Charlene prompts my nan to buy me a 'Shacks Forever' shirt by pretending I told her I really wanted one.

I thought myself lucky to find the two paintings of the swamp wallaby, as one significant section of my novel revolves around one such wallaby who lives in the park.

After that the weather finally gives out and the rain drives everyone back inside the community hall. Fearing that the locals would take issue with an outsider coming in to tell their story for them, I was hesitant to mention the novel to anyone. My nan, however, fearlessly informed both Kerry and Helen, who thankfully responded with nothing but polite enthusiasm, obligatory though that may. But I'm glad, because it got me both some tantalising traces of stories to follow up on, some regarding the real hermits who inhabit the national park, as well as some great contacts, especially Helen, who welcomed me to contact her when I needed more information, something I will definitely be doing when the time comes. I'll also, I'm sure, be making many more journeys to the National Park to continue learning about the extraordinary communities to be found in this place which is so central to the geography of my life. And maybe when I do, at Charlene's suggestion, I'll be wearing the shirt Nan got me. 

Shacks forever!

Thanks for reading

LPL

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Book review: terry goodkind's the omen machine

Wednesday 16 April 2014

(Source)

The following review contains mild spoilers from the early parts of the book.

Having neatly tied up his myriad loose ends in the final instalment of the Chainfire trilogy, Confessor, Terry Goodkind embarks on a whole new mess in The Omen Machine, the first in another series of Richard and Kahlan novels. Seeking, it seems, to torture his characters almost as much as his readers by keeping the spaces between novels (and cataclysms) infinitesimal, a new existential threat emerges during the celebrations following the defeat of the previous one, launching us on what is sure to be yet another protracted, poorly (i.e. not at all?) edited, banal adventure full of impossibly, ridiculously evil villains for Kahlan to be kidnapped or poisoned or otherwise imperilled by and for Richard to lecture us about. 

As an editor, reading Goodkind’s writing makes me want to prostrate myself before his publishers and beg them to allow me even a few hours alone with his manuscripts and a red pen, pro bono, before he is allowed to pollute the language with them. There’s none of the occasional moments of descriptive beauty sprinkled throughout Goodkind’s earlier works to be found here, no hint of his rarely exhibited though nonetheless surprising appreciation for detail. The prose is unwieldy and halting, repeated words clanking harshly up against one another and giving the book an overall careless, rushed feel à la the latter works of Raymond E Feist. It’s as though some of these B-grade epic fantasy authors work out that most readers don’t care how well-written their books are and they can just crank out sequel after sequel and make the same amount of money.

So, of course, it’s impossible to catalogue all the problems with a Terry Goodkind book in a single review, so I’m going to restrain myself to just one: his notorious monumental ego. Or rather, one way it manifests in his works. Possessed of a great number of opinions, ranging from morally reprehensible to innocuous, on any number of topics, Goodkind’s motivation in writing seems to be to embed as many of them in his books as often as possible, largely through the simplistic device of using his exaggeratedly perfect (in the world of the books, anyway) protagonist Richard directly to spout them for him. Plotting for Goodkind seems more an exercise in engineering various situations in which Richard can argue with and lecture other characters and the reader on one of these opinions than any conventional dedication to the integrity of the story or the gratification of the reader. Indeed, each novel is largely propelled not by action, but by argument. Revealing of their didactic impulse, the narratives largely turn on episodes in which different characters discuss events and ideas and try to convince one another of different positions in laborious exchanges that persist much longer than believability would allow.

The result is that the reader finds themself mired in perpetual, incessant exchanges between characters on subjects both mundane and esoteric, extended disputes over how best to organise and catalogue a library alongside lengthy treatises introducing abstract magical concepts that are never grounded in any previously established logic. These latter logomachies always reveal new concepts all at once, so the reader is never granted the chance to anticipate or share in the reasoning. It’s just Richard presenting some new element of the nature of magic that hasn’t come up before in any of the previous twelve overlong tomes, that completely explains what’s going on in this book, while everyone else disagrees that it’s possible until he is inevitably proven correct.

Goodkind facilitates this recurrent magical Deus ex machina at first by way of the charade of Richard’s ludicrous decision not to ‘depend on his gift’, even though he supposedly epitomises rationality and it is completely irrational for him to refuse to learn about an inescapable part of himself that could be so helpful to him, and later by making Richard a ‘war wizard’ whose magic is mysterious and able only to be activated by need and emotion, very conveniently giving it scope to work in any way the author chooses in future, failing to lock him in to any constraints. Such constraints are the very things that ordinarily make suspension of disbelief about magic possible in other series, the things that allow the reader to find any plots involving magic satisfying – that we know the way it works, that it has limits.

And I wasn’t kidding about the library debate, either. Just under an hour into the audiobook, an illustrative example of one of these monotonous, one-sided duologues occurs when we find ourselves in the royal library of D’Hara, the capital city of the eponymous empire ruled by Richard. After pacing for some time, Richard’s absurdly named grandfather, First Wizard Zeddicus ‘Zedd’ Z’ul Zorander, halts and proclaims that he’s ‘not convinced that it can work, Richard—or at least, work effectively.’ What follows is no less than six minutes of discussion over whether or not the classification of all the books in the library is a worthwhile pursuit.

What's more, this doesn’t even seem to be a point of any importance in the novel. I guess they came across a book that turned out to be important, but there’s nothing to say they had to do so while undertaking a reorganisation of the library. We can probably safely assume that it will come back in some way in future (I’m halfway through the sequel The Third Kingdom at the time of writing), but is there anything that could justify such a prolonged, mind-numbing argument over library classification?

It can only be Goodkind’s zeal to prove the veracity of one of his opinions that leads him to prolong these exchanges so unnaturally beyond the realms of credibility. He needs the discussion to go on much longer than it should so he has room to get out all of his profound thoughts. Would Zedd really try so hard to dissuade his grandson from such a harmless endeavour as trying to catalogue all the books in his library? And even if he would, is it really necessary for the reader to be subjected to it? So often does Goodkind deploy this device, it’s beginning to feel like Zedd never believes Richard about anything, no matter how many times he is proven right. All the characters, in fact, begin to appear obsessive and stubborn, overly concerned with debating minor details, unwilling to see the (diegetic) truth of their opponents’ assertions, their likeability in the eyes of the reader sacrificed at the altar of Goodkind’s ego. The debates depend on an endless stream of meaningless ‘But Richard …’ interjections from the protagonist’s interlocutors to interrupt the pages of explanation and prevent the diatribe from collapsing under its own weight. The characters are forever asking one another ‘What are you talking about?’ and ‘What do you mean?’ and regarding one another as though they are crazy because of all the insane propositions and profound misunderstandings flying back and forth.

Another illuminating instance of this propensity comes in another early scene in the novel. Shortly after a woman confesses to infanticide in order to spare her children the more gruesome death portended by a vision, and then attempts to murder Kahlan to spare her a similar fate, reformed Sister of the Dark Nicci shows up on the scene seeming to already know of the happenings despite her absence when they occurred. It becomes immediately apparent to the reader that there must be more than one instance of this going on throughout the city, but the characters on the other hand are not so fast on the uptake, positively baffled by the things they are telling one another, and we are forced to wade through 750 words of tortuous dramatic irony as the feeble-minded cast tries to determine what’s going on. It’s like the Abbott and Costello ‘Who’s on First’ skit (or the Animaniacs ‘Who’s on Stage?’ skit for you '90s kids) but without the witty paronomasia! See for yourself:

“I didn’t see you at the reception,” Richard said. “Where did you hear about her killing her children?”

Nicci frowned up at him. “Hear about it? I was there.”

“There? What do you mean you were there?”

Nicci folded her arms and stared at him as if he were the one who was crazy. “I was there. I was down in the market helping to get people organized and hurrying them along to move into the passages in the plateau and out of what is shaping up to be a monstrous storm. They need to move into shelter. Those tents aren’t going to protect them.”

“That’s true enough.”

Nicci sighed as she shook her head. “So, I was down there in the market when the first one hit.”

The creases in Richard’s brow deepened. “What do you mean, when the first one hit? First what?”

“Richard, aren’t you listening? I was there when the first child hit the ground.”

Richard’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“It was a girl, not ten years old. She came down on a log wagon, on one of the upright stake poles. That pole was bigger than my leg. She came down face-first, shrieking all the way. It went right through her chest. People were screaming and running around in confusion and panic.”

Richard blinked, trying to makes sense of what he was hearing. “What girl are you talking about?”

Nicci looked at all the faces watching her. “The girl that the woman threw off the palace wall, over the edge of the plateau, after she had her vision.”

Richard turned to Benjamin. “I thought you said you found the children.”

“I did. We found both of them.”

“Both?” Nicci’s brow drew tight. “There were four of them. All four of her children hit within seconds of one another. The first, the girl, was the oldest. When the woman threw them off the top of the plateau they all landed right there near me. Like I said, I was there. It was a horrifying scene.”

Kahlan seized a fistful of Nicci’s dress at her shoulder. “She killed four more?”

Nicci didn’t try to remove Kahlan’s hand. “Four more? What are you talking about? She killed her four children.”

Kahlan pulled Nicci closer. “She had two children.”

“Kahlan, she had four.”

Kahlan’s hand slipped from Nicci’s dress. “Are you sure?”

Nicci shrugged. “Yes. She told me so herself when I questioned her. She even told me their names. If you don’t believe me you can ask her yourself. I have her locked up in a cell down in the dungeon.”

Zedd leaned in closer. “Locked up . . . ?”

“Wait a minute,” Richard said. “You’re telling me that this woman killed her four children by throwing them off the side of the plateau? And you locked her up?”

“Of course. Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said?” Nicci frowned around at everyone. “I thought you said that you knew all about it. Her husband found out what had happened and was going to kill her. He was screaming for her blood. I was afraid that the guards who grabbed the woman were going to let him have her. I sympathize with his feelings, but I couldn’t allow it for now. I had her locked up, instead, because I thought you or Kahlan would want to question her.”

Richard was incredulous. “Why did she do it? What did she say?”

Nicci appraised them all as if they had collectively gone mad. “She said that she had a vision and couldn’t stand the thought of her children having to face the terror to come, so she killed them swiftly instead. You said that you knew about it.”

“We knew about the other one,” Richard said.

“Other one?” Nicci looked from face to face, finally settling on Richard. “What other one?”

“The one who cut her two children’s throats and then came to the reception and tried to kill Kahlan.”

Nicci’s concerned gaze darted to Kahlan. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I took her with my power and had her confess. She told us what she had done and what she intended to do.”

Nicci pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Wait, you’re saying that there was a second woman who also had a vision and killed her children?”

Kahlan and Richard both nodded.

“That would help explain why people are so unnerved and want to know what prophecy has to say about it,” Richard said.

“What’s going on?” Nicci asked.

JESUS CHRIST. YES. THERE WERE TWO INSTANCES. I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOD-DAMNED SEEKER OF TRUTH, ABLE TO MAKE GARGANTUAN LEAPS IN LOGIC IN A SINGLE BOUND. WHY DOES IT TAKE SEVEN HUNDRED WORDS FOR US TO ESTABLISH THIS? WHY GOD-DAMN YOU WHY? STOP THE MADNESS. WHY AM I READING THIS GARBAGE?

Thanks for reading

LPL

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