Thick skin

Me: Stop picking on Mum. You’re a couple of bullies.

Mum [pointing at ears]: Darling, it’s like the Trans-Siberian Railway in here.

Me: … What does that even mean? That it takes three weeks for a thought to pass through?

Dad: It’s like a wind tunnel.

Mum: Passes like a bullet.

Sister: Because sometimes conversations with you make us want to shoot ourselves?

Dad: It’s a vacuum in there, sucking thoughts through before they even touch the sides.

Me: It’s a tundra–

Dad: –where the landscape is so desolate no blighted thought can grow.

Mum: I have to have thick skin.

Alex Miller on Autumn Laing | Meanjin

Alex Miller. Image: The Australian

Novelist Alex Miller is one of Australia’s most successful, with two Miles Franklin awards under his belt for Journey to the Stone Country and The Ancestor Game. His latest book, Autumn Laing, began as a work loosely modelled on the life of artist Sidney Nolan, but quickly morphed into something different.

The heroine, Autumn, is a cranky, fiery woman of 85, flatulent and impatient, furious at the indignities of old age. She’s looking back on her life with no small measure of guilt. Autumn recognised the talent of artist Pat Donlon as soon as she met him, and they embarked on an affair that would mark the rest of her life.

In the novel, she continually casts back into the past, to Melbourne in 1938 and her circle of artists, poets and writers trying to tackle the establishment of the time.

I met with Alex to talk about biography, guilt, the masks of the confessional, and how Sidney Nolan came to change his life.

Listen to the audio as broadcast on 2SER’s Final Draft, or read the longer transcript after the jump, which is up on Meanjin’s blog.

Ivan Sen’s new Australian film, Toomelah | 2SER 107.3

Daniel Connors plays Daniel in Toomelah. Image: Curious Films.

Aussie filmmaker Ivan Sen has built a name for himself as a maker of thoughtful, moving films about indigenous Australia.

His newest film, Toomelah, screened at Cannes Film Festival in May to an extended standing ovation that had the non-actor cast in tears.

The film was shot on the mission Ivan’s mother grew up on. The story follows a young boy, Daniel, who drops out of school and gets caught in the crossfire between two gangs.

Ivan dropped in to the studio and had a chat with Kate Aubusson and me about making films as a one-man band, the blurring of fiction and reality, and Aboriginal rom-coms.

NV: Why Toomelah, of all places? What was it about that area that drew you back?

IS: Toomelah, it’s an indigenous community in north-western NSW, and it’s pretty isolated, but I always had a connection there because my mother grew up there and all my family are there. I always wanted to go out and make a film there but it took me a long time to work out how to go about it. I knew I wanted to go and do something that capturesd a slice of life, and not use a conventional approach.

NV: So how did you come up with this story of Daniel and his adventures and misadventures?

Initially I didn’t know what the story would be about. But one day when I was out there during the writing process, doing the research, a little boy walked into this yard and started arguing with these teenage boys. He had a bowknife in his hand and threatened to slice all their throats with it, one by one, individually. He was a tiny skinny little boy with a huge mouth and he had an amazing face, and I thought, wow, this kid’s got something. My only challenge was to try to harness it, and get him to work for me.

The Tall Man – life and death on Palm Island | 2SER 107.3

Image courtesy of Hopscotch Films

In 2004, Aboriginal man Cameron Doomadgee swore at a police officer in the street. 45 minutes later, he was dead in a police cell, having sustained injuries more typical seen in high-speed car crashes.

The man accused of killing him, Chris Hurley, was a police officer in Cameron’s hometown of Palm Island, a seemingly idyllic island off the coast of Queensland with one of the highest rates of crime and violence in Australia.

The investigation into Cameron’s death was politically charged as two very different elements of Australian society clashed over the tragedy of what had happened.

Journalist Chloe Hooper’s award-winning book on the case, The Tall Man, has been adapted into a documentary.

I spoke with the film’s producer about making a film when one of the main characters is dead and the other won’t talk.

Listen to our chat or read the transcript after the jump.

Will the police crackdown stop the Occupy Movement? | The Wire, 2SER 107.3

Protesters in New York. Image: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer (salon.com)

The Occupy Wall Street movement this week in New York reached a turning point when a judge evicted protesters after several weeks of camping.

Occupations across the world have clashed with authorities, and organizers are now faced with the task of reevaluating how the movement will go forward, if at all.

Neda Vanovac reports the future of the movement in New York and Sydney.

Listen to the audio or read the transcript after the jump.

Diane Armstrong’s 1948 Sydney in Empire Day | 2SER 107.3

Image courtesy of Harper Collins

A child survivor of the Holocaust, Diane Armstrong migrated to Australia from Poland in 1948 during the postwar boom. With a long career as a journalist and novelist, in her new book she’s returned to that time.

Empire Day follows the lives of the residents of Wattle Street in Sydney, as the locals try to adapt to the unfamiliar ways of the immigrants escaping Europe.

I met with Diane to talk about how she transported herself back to the 40s, the things she remembered and the ways her characters took on lives of their own.

Listen to the audio or read the longer transcript after the jump.

Kim Barker’s Taliban Shuffle – Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan | 2SER 107.3

American journalist Kim Barker turned up in Kabul not long after 9/11 without much of an idea what she was doing.

She was swiftly swept up in the maelstrom that is the life of a foreign correspondent, doing the Taliban Shuffle between Afghanistan and Pakistan for eight years for the Chicago Tribune.

Her book chronicles the existence of journalists in war zones – always on the edge and about to crack, careening along on an adrenaline high. Along the way she gives readers background on the region and lets us peer in on a life that saw her close friends kidnapped, her relationships broken down and all the while, relentlessly hit on by senior Pakistani government officials.

She spoke to me from New York about the importance of telling the story you see, being a woman in a war zone, and bluffing her way through some very bizarre situations.

You can listen to the interview on Podomatic (or the whole Final Draft episode on travelling women which I hosted on Monday night), or you can read the transcript after the jump.

Sri Lanka war crimes claim | 2SER 107.3

This week an Australian citizen filed charges of war crimes against the Sri Lankan president before a Melbourne magistrate.

The Federal Attorney-General stopped the motion, citing President Rajapaksa’s “diplomatic immunity” as he visits Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week.

Listen to the audio on Podomatic, or read the transcript after the jump.

‘The working poor’ – United Voice industrial action | 2SER 107.3

The Working Poor.mp3

Shopping centre cleaners have lodged an application with Fair Work Australia to take industrial action against employers refusing to negotiate better pay and conditions.

With an hourly rate of just $16 many of these workers find themselves employed on a full-time basis yet barely scraping through above the poverty line.

I was at Fair Work Australia to hear their side of the story.

Full transcript after the jump.

Light the Nitro with Cold Chisel – an interview with Ian Moss | Luna Magazine

Image: Tony Mott | The Australian

There was once a time when they shunned talks of reuniting, but Cold Chisel have grown up and are back in the business.

Undisputed Aussie legends despite their breakup almost thirty years ago, they’re still kicking and are gearing up for their Light the Nitro tour of the country from this week until December.

The reason for their comeback?

“Supply and demand!” laughs guitarist Ian Moss. “It was about whether we were actually prepared to play again, and we always thought it we were going to do it we wouldn’t do it half-arsed, we’d do it with commitment.”

To be fair, the band have been dipping their toes in the comeback pool for a while with one-off shows, but this is their first tour since 1983.

Says Moss: “We’ve grown up and realized that business is business and after all these years we feel so lucky to still be so popular.”

In their heyday the band was known for its wild antics, Jimmy Barnes screaming into the microphone in one hand while swigging vodka from the other; smashing up their guitars and the set of the Countdown music awards after winning all seven prizes they were nominated for. There were punch-ups, refusals to play together, solo careers, but they’ve never been quite able to let each other go.