When I was a teenager my father and I used to go walking at Murrundindi, Toolangi, Mount St Leonard and the surrounding Mountain Ash country and I fell in love with that environment with its prehistoric flora and distinctive earthy, cool scent. It was once home, and inspiration, to the poet C J Dennis.

Year by year, week by week, VicForests rips out more of this treasured, dwindling habitat. Toocas at the Toolangi Castella blog sets out beautifully why we should not be clearfelling this forest at all. Most of the points raised apply to all cool temperate or “wet” native forest in SE Australia. (Contextual links are mine):

Summary of perceived issues:

1 – The area to be logged covers 2 large coupes, in forest that is high conservation value, mixed age and botanically diverse.

2 – This is an unburned area where surviving native wildlife have a precious refuge, following the Black Saturday destruction.

3 – The BAER Report (Burned Area Emergency Response Report), which was commissioned by the previous Government immediately after the bushfires, recommended preserving such areas for biodiversity recovery. It also called for caution and restraint in any proposed salvage logging.

4 – The forest block concerned is adjacent to Sylvia Creek Rd, and is intended to be clearfelled, right up to the roadside, thus despoiling a beautiful section of the forest drive to the popular Murrindindi Falls camping and picnic area. The cost to future tourism values of the area seems to be of no concern.

5 – Within this forest block is a treasure trove of different forest types, including senescent Mountain Ash old growth, mature Ash forest, cool temperate rain forest (a rare and threatened habitat in this region) and maturing regrowth Mountain Ash forest of varying ages – from pre-1900 to post 1939. Mountain Ash Eucalyptus regnans, is well known to be the tallest flowering plant in the world, but there is a strong argument that they are the tallest of all trees when given the centuries (and conditions) they need to grow to maturity (we still have a few remnant trees that are up to 500 years old). The giant trees of the 1800s have all gone, but leaving their progeny to grow on to maturity (instead of logging them for woodchips) may provide future generations with an experience of truly majestic old growth forest.

6 – The ‘understorey’ contains several plant species that live to a great age (centuries) if undisturbed, but are currently in significant long term decline in abundance after clearfelling and increased fire frequency. The species include:- Tree Ferns – Cyathea australis and Dicksonia antarctica, Musk Daisy Bush Olearia argophylla and Forest Geebung Persoonia arborea, small trees found in wet forest and cool temperate rainforest environments. The Geebung is locally endemic, and is peculiar in taking decades to reach reproductive maturity. Thus it is susceptible to being wiped out by clearfelling and elevated fire frequencies, in combination.

7 – The region is habitat for a range of native wildlife species including – Leadbeater’s Possum (our highly threatened State Faunal Emblem), Spotted-tailed Quolls (our largest, and very rare carnivorous marsupial) possums and gliders (including the now threatened Greater Glider) and the great forest owls – Sooty Owl and Powerful Owl. All of these species were hard hit by the 2009 bushfires and are now only remnant populations in the Central Highlands. Logging is destroying their remaining habitat.

8 – Climate change is beyond debate, and because of rising temperatures and reduced rainfall in south-eastern Australia, threatens the future existence of Mountain Ash forests. These trees are dependant on a narrow band of temperature, altitude, rainfall and soil structure factors for their continued existence. Clearfelling is drying out the region and contributing to regional climate change – thus further threatening the survival of this forest ecosystem. In turn, this tall and complex forest is a powerful modulator of local and regional climate. Consequently, logging it is a double negative that not only destroys forests and defaces the environment, but also adversely affects the future climate, water supply and fire security of regional towns and the greater Melbourne community.
[Details of a trip to Sylvia Creek road edited]
Remember, this is Melbourne’s own environmental treasure, only a bit over 1 hour’s drive from the GPO. So why should we not value it as highly as Sydney-siders value their adjacent National Parks?

If you have time this weekend, Victorians, please contact your local MLA, local MLC, and/or the AGE or your preferred newspaper editorial, to voice opposition to this slash and burn policy towards our irreplaceable Mountain Ash habitats. We’re told they’re replaceable, but they’re not. Not in their present form, unless you’re prepared to wait a couple of hundred years, and probably – given our drying impact on the surrounding environment – not even then.

One reason the Ramage case has been in the news so much is that it was the last time the defence of “provocation” was used in a court case in Victoria. That was the reason for the derisory sentence, and since the case exposed the enormous injustices flowing from that defence, the law was changed. The law moves slowly, but social mores change more slowly still.

The silencing argument that women of the Anglophone “Western Civilisation”, or whatever you would like to call it, are completely liberated, done and dusted, and have no business complaining about anything, has continued unabated lately. In such a cultural climate, a few people were rocked back on their heels when Phil Cleary and Julie Ramage’s sister Jane described her murder as an “honour” killing. But you know what? They’re right.

A couple of years ago I heard Germaine Greer reply to a question from the late Pamela Bone, as to why we (meaning anglophone “western” feminists) weren’t doing more to liberate our sisters in the Muslim world. Her answer was in two parts, and the first part was about our absence of standing in that world. The second part was that we haven’t yet cleaned up our own back yard. There is a pervasive myth in our “western” society that harsh and primitive crimes of misogyny only happen There, perpetrated by Them, those Others. Therefore, Western feminism is a hobby for genteel and well-off middle class women who enjoy perfect equality in their world. It’s false. Let’s not let them get away with it.

If Julie Ramage’s killing had been some kind of rare aberration it would still have spoken volumes about gender related violence in our society, but in fact it was just a very high-profile instance of a common and repeating pattern. Here’s the thing: Women are most at risk of being killed by an intimate partner when they have just left the relationship, or when they are planning to leave and the partner becomes aware of it. Think of the number of times you read “estranged husband / boyfriend / de facto husband” when you read about murder cases in the news.

Sure, there’s cultural differences aplenty between our anglocentric killings and the honour killings in other countries which we, rightly, deplore when we read about them. But they’re still about “honour”, a notion of honour which has been twisted and deformed by patriarchy until it looks like its opposite. Sure, the manifestations differ. Here in our more individualistic society we don’t have “but she can never get married now!” or “Shame on our family!” excuse. Instead, we have the “He just loved her too much!” “If I can’t have her, no-one can!” or some shit. But it’s the same thing, different continents; Control of women under patriarchal norms, whether it’s out and proud – as they are in the countries we finger-wag at – or flying below the radar, as in Australia, UK and US.

Instead of a ritualised, family mandated killing involving brothers or cousins or fathers – and how painful that betrayal must be to the victims – we have more individualised, but still family centred, killings where the betrayer is the person who has promised to love and cherish the woman; not the same in every detail, but still a horrible betrayal, the killing of a woman for a warped notion of “honour”. Not, here, the family-based “honour” but something more modern, the man’s ego or self worth. It’s the same thing, dressed in modern, individualistic clothes. Also, it hardly needs to be said, it involves the concept of the woman as property, which we’ve supposed to have left behind but which seems to just be thinly buried. As with everything else – our remotely controlled weapons, our Guantanamos and detention centres – we really excel, in the West, at disguising the aggressive impulses of our society to make our harms look more civilised or justified. In this case, we pretend that wife-killings are random acts of aggression rather than a repeating pattern.

This affects women of all classes, indigenous women, transwomen, up to and including women at the top of the income and status tree, like Julie Ramage. Privilege won’t save you here.

If Australians want to be smug about the fundamentalist fringes of Islam, we should take a harder look at the rising fundamentalism in the Christian churches in our society. Around the time the Victorian justice system was getting ready to release Ramage, it was jailing John McDonald for the murder of his wife, Marlene McDonald. Again, power and control was front and centre. Marlene had left the abusive relationship and was working at a truck stop north of Melbourne, where her husband believed she’d formed a new relationship with one of the customers. But it went further than that. “Ms Ritchie told the hearing McDonald had confided in her that she had been attacked by two masked men in her home one night but she knew they were her father and brother. “They both started punching and kicking her. The father was very religious and was saying over and over that she had sinned, that she had committed adultery … whilst her brother was calling her a slut and a whore,” she said in a statement tendered to the court. They continued dragging her by the hair to the laneway … when they got outside, her brother started using a baseball bat … She thought they were going to kill her.” She was right.

So, commenters on “western” blogs and news sites, let’s not pat ourselves smugly on the back and vilify feminists on the grounds that we’ve achieved absolute equality (I wish!), while they, over there, commit atrocities in the name of honour and therefore have to bear all the opprobrium. Our honour killings may appear different in detail from the ones those Others perpetrate, but in the end, the women are just as dead.
 
 
 
Crossposted at Hoyden About Town

A week ago, something terrible happened to a member of our family, and so I had occasion to visit the new, you-beaut Womens Hospital in Parkville. I walked up the wide, easily accessible ramp (tick!) to the beautiful, spacious lobby (tick!) where an information section was easy to find (tick!) and found the person I was looking for in minutes.

It’s really a stunning building, and although, to me, the Women’s will always be about the staff, they now have the comfortable and beautiful working environment which they deserve. The patients and the friends and relatives who wait anxiously there benefit, too.

It’s just a shame about all the artwork. Not hanging pictures, which I was too preoccupied to notice, but the stuff that’s right up in your face: Environmental graphics, I think, is the correct term for what I’m talking about.

The new RWH features giant frosted-glass murals on the large exterior windows as you walk towards the entrance. This mural shows a younger blonde woman and a slightly older blonde woman. This is hardly a serious effort to fulfil the contractors’ brief, to portray a “broad demographic of age and culture”.

There were smaller murals on the wall facing the lifts, which were impossible to ignore for anybody entering or leaving any part of the building. These murals featured new mums and dads holding babies. Happy, happy, happy.

Although these murals are lovely and fulfil the diversity brief a little better than the one at the entrance, they completely fail the requirement to be “sensitive to the individual needs of patients and their supporters.”

Not everybody leaves the RWH with a live birth. Our family member would have had to walk past those murals as she left the hospital for the car park.

Women come to the hospital to have babies. They also come there to lose their passionately wanted babies, to have abortions, with cancer, with gynaecological troubles, with infertility.

Abstract, rather than figurative, environmental graphics would seem to be the way to go for an environment like this. The new RWH is beautiful and comfortable, but as triggery as all hell.

It’s not published on line, so what the hell, that touch typing I learned at school has got to be good for something. Right?

With a vocal comfort zone that in past performances has seemed to swing with ease from melodic balladry to twangy country, what’s new about everything on Tess McKenna’s stylish and thoroughly satisfying fourth LP is that it’s all fallen into place. Recorded in Melbourne with Barry Stockley joining her at the controls, she’s got the mix just right between acoustic singer-songwriter and plugged-in band material. Gentle strummers such as the title track, Pancho Style [should be Poncho style] and Down By the Sea serve to perfectly set up the electric guitar crescendos of numbers such as Fill me Up. Love is Gone, a sinewy blues number, could have come from a hot’n'sweaty Mississippi juke joint, smouldering for nearly eight minutes without ever quite igniting. Better still is energetic rocker Hummingbird, with strategically placed harmonica lines. Rumbling bass and driving drums give Tidy Town a heavier, ominous feel, then it’s back to the blues on nine-minute closer Still our House, which is also the closest she comes to Tamworth on this set of songs. McKenna launches The New Everything at the Northcote Social Club on Sunday at 2 PM.
Jeff Glorfeld
The AGE, EG 18.2.2011

Tess McKenna’s fourth album, The New Everything, was recorded over a year in the low-fi setting of Fatsound Studio, with Barry Stockley & an ensemble of long time playing pals including Ash Davies on drums. The New Everything eases in between barefaced folk and dirty bang bang blues to sonic rock overdrive. This is singer-songwriter McKenna at her best – authentic, soulful & intimate.
Tess has toured her music extensively, supporting artists such as Nick Cave & Lucinda Williams; has played her music from as far as the Woodford Folk Festival to the East Coast Roots & Blues Festival in Byron Bay, from the Melbourne Concert Hall to Austin’s SXSW Music Festival in Texas, USA. Tess McKenna & her longtime band The Shapiros will be joined by special guests for an afternoon of pitch-perfect harmonies and shimmering guitars to launch The New Everything at the Northcote Social Club 20th February 2011. [Doors open at 2 PM - $12.]

The New Everything is out now on HEAD RECORDS & is distributed through MGM.

Ashley Davies, who plays drums on the CD, is off touring with The Dingoes. So I’m occupying the drum seat for the launch, and thereafter. Which is a huge honour, and an exciting day to look forward to.

Come and celebrate with us.

AND!

Tess’s latest CD The New Everything is available now from Head Records or superior music purveyors.

In stunning vocal form Tess McKenna steps up as producer-singer-songwriter of her enticing album #4, The New Everything.

Barefaced folk and dirty bang bang blues to sonic rock overdrive McKenna’s sultry voice pulls you into a thrilling musical journey. Listen to her incredible sweetly styled vocals on the title track, through to hints of country pop on Photograph and new folk twists in Poncho Style; this style is pure Tess. Authentic, soulful and intimate.

Just in time for your Xmas shoppingz!

Sadly (for me), I’m not playing on this one, because I rejoined after it was recorded.

The CD launch is delayed until February – watch this space.

Tess McKenna and the Shapiros
Union Hotel
109 Union street. Brunswick

Saturday October 30, 5 – 7

…and on Saturday December 4, 9-11

We’re also playing a short set between Aintree Sweet‘s sets at the Lomond hotel on Sunday November 14 I got the date wrong, it’s the 12th, and T mcK is cancelled for that night. It’s still well worth going along to check out Aintree Sweet, though.

Tess’s new album The New Everything is out on the Head label in November. Get yer Christmas orders in early!

“Drink Think” a play performed by a group of young women will be held at The Substation, Newport on Thursday October 14th at 7.00pm. This FREE, not for profit event has been organised by students from Victoria University’s Sport and Recreation course as part of their Event Management class.
The play focuses on the dangers of teenage binge drinking and is an educational yet entertaining play that is followed up with question time after it. On the night there will also be a special A-list guest speaker and free meals and beverages for everyone who attends.
We strongly encourage our Year 9, 10 and 11 students to attend this performance and welcome all parents and teachers along as well. It has been recommended however, that children of a young age do not attend as there is strong language in the play.

Well, how could that possibly end up as “”Hey, “Girls”, think before you drink because you’re the one responsible for not being raped!” Yes, happy to be proved wrong.

We’ve all been talking quite a lot about victim-blaming and slut-shaming failure in the way we talk to our girls and boys about sex and safety. Just look at the comments thread on any article on the topic of s8xual assault and r8pe in bloke culture: if a woman is dressed counter to current standards of virginal modesty or present in a vulnerable situation after hours, they assume men have the right of access to her. The same people, on another thread somewhere, will be condemning immigrant societies for their medieval attitudes to womens’ dress and freedom of movement (you know, because of our superior Western Civ and all, in which women are completely equal). Excuse me while my head meets the desk.

I’m sure the subject of drinking and driving will be addressed as well, which is good, as long as the young ones listen.

I’m just wondering whether, as a study of binge drinking, this play is going to reflect the new call for male responsibility (and refusal to treat men/boys as animals who can’t control their primal urges), or whether it’ll be just more of the same exhortations to women not to get themselves raped.

Anyway, if any Melbourne femmobloggers and allies are reading this and are not too busy on Thursday night, I encourage you to get along to the Substation in Newport (if you like cool architecture, and Melbourne’s old substations are Victorian classics, that’s another reason to go), and participate in the Question time. I have a feeling that if it’s another “ThinkUknow”, this bunfight might be needing a feminist voice.

You never know – my low expectations might be totally unfounded. I’ll report back!
 
 
 
Update: OK… Debrief!

It was a student play. “Drink Think” was the name of the group. The play itself was called “West Side: My Story”. There were six or seven young women acting and only one man, who was played as a dead-set sweetie. It passed the Bechdel test. It did not slutshame. Because the only male role was kind-of modelling ideal behaviour, well, there’s that, but they bypassed the toxic dynamic we’ve been talking about by not addressing it at all. In a way, perhaps, that allowed them to present binge drinking as something that damages everyone (car accidents, death, losing sight of important life goals), and get the male actor to demonstrate being a good human being rather than the predator. I’m not sure how many hardcore entitled douchebags it would really convert, but they’re taking it around the secondary schools and apparently it’s shutting year 10s up stone cold on their lunchtimes, and that’s got to mean something.

It was supported by the Victorian Womens’ trust, which does some wonderful things. I didn’t offer any questions at question time because the slut-shaming and “personal responsibility! For girls only!” stuff really wasn’t apparent, and to introduce a big new (sub)topic didn’t seem appropriate.

Kudos to the Victoria University students who put the event on and gave us free sandwiches, choccies and coffee!