White Australia day

It was rather a frightening Australia day. My former boss from my Ortega days invited Baba and I to her grand daughter’s first birthday party. We got a bus across to Lane Cove (actually technically Lane cove west but the young, upwardly mobile couple omitted the W word from their address on the invitation), and arrived on time as explicitly instructed. We were greeted by a sea of blond hair and toddlers. I’m still not sure if we accidentally walked into some secret eugenics society meeting. We had a lovely time chatting to my old boss, a friend who I’ve known for a number of years who has lost over 50kg and a woman who used to play cricket for Australia – who I think was quite possibly a lesbian. We also had a nice lunch. I smiled at the birthday girl who is a genuinely cute baby and baba sneered at a rather nasty, hyperactive 3 year old who was bashing up other 3 year olds. It’s actually quite a long time since I have been in such an exclusively white and hetero-normative environment. There were people there (all prim, composed, slightly overgroomed, private school educated Northshore types) who were giving baba and I funny looks. Perhaps it was just because we were the only people there without children (except the maybe lesbian ex-cricketer), or maybe we genuinely were a couple of dark-haired poofs who crashed a eugenics picnic.

Happy Invasion Day.

Bankstown…

…was the location and setting for the piece of theatre we saw last night. “The Last Highway” is a play/performance piece staged in a lonely, empty warehouse in the predominantly working class, high migrant suburb of Bankstown. The story revolves around half a dozen characters whose lives intersect late at night at a petrol station in this suburb which has traditionally had a reputation (merited or otherwise) of being exotic/dangerous/crime-ridden. There is the Indian guy with a secret cross-dressing fetish who works the graveyard shift behind the counter of the petrol station. There’s the Lebanese Kebab guy with undisclosed frustrations with his family life which occasionally overspill into violence. The Turkish taxi driver whose cab has broken down and who is grieving the suicide of his teen age son who was a strong clever boy. And three prostitutes each with their own stories to tell and demons to exorcise – whether it be through dance, heroin or symbolic washing with cold water, crouched under a tap beside the petrol station.

A significant part of the performance is the very fact that it’s staged in Bankstown. No doubt the vast majority of theatre-goers in Sydney live in inner-suburban enclaves and rarely venture outside our safe bubbles into suburbia. We simply accept the notion that places like Bankstown are places that “people like us” (i.e. the bourgeois left) simply don’t belong. Such places exist only when they’re on the news or feature in police dramas. Or to plaigerise the show’s program places we go for Food-pornography – i.e. to eat “authentic” Vietnameste/Greek/Thai/Chinese/Arabic/Lebanese/you-name-it-ese food, ala “Food Safari” (SBS Wednesday nights, brilliant program!!!!). If I ever go back to University to do postgraduate study in Anthropolgy or Cultural Studies, i’d love to explore Sydney’s tribalism and how we each view “the other” and also how we think “they” see us through the prism of “their” context and experience. I remember as a kid growing up on the North Shore thinking how dangerous the inner city must be. I was petrified walking down King st in Newtown for the first time (in broad daylight mind you!!). To this day i have no idea what that fear was based on. It soon disipated of course when i discovered a life beyond the white picket fence.

Back to Bankstown (and food-pornography), we had delicious Pho at Pho An – reputed to be one of the best Pho shops in Australia and got the yummiest Baclava and other assorted Lebanese sweets that I’ve ever eaten at El Bahsa. Seriously, this Baclava is incredible. Nothing I’ve eaten before comes even close. It’s not as sickly sweet as baclava often is. The pastry is crisp and light despite being layered thickly. Maybe the secret is in the quality of the nuts or the type of honey they used. I don’t know. But I’ll be trying to make the half kilo that we brought home with us last as long as I can….or eat it quickly for another excuse to head out to Bankstown and explore my own city in more depth.

The opera…

…on wednesday night was most enjoyable. Met baba down at opera bar a bit after six for a couple of glasses of Wine and dinner. Stonier Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay gets a big thumbs up – I’m loving cool-climate kardy at the moment. Mr riggs McLarenvale Shiraz Viognier was a bit kerosene-y on its own, but after 20 mins in the glass and the slight bitterness of the Asian greens that accompanied my (quite good) Pork Belly, it redeemed its self to a fair extent.

I was lucky to be able to get a couple of A-reserve tickets to La Boheme at the last minute. I’ve seen the opera a couple of times, but this new production was a first for me. The setting was 1980s Paris which was right up baba’s alley, as he’s having a bit of an ’80s obsession at the moment. Things I loved about this production were: Young soprano HyeSeoung Kwong singing the lead of Mimi (saw her last year in Turandot and fell in love with her voice), clever staging, flashes of humour – especially during Musetta’s aria, breakdancing(!!). Things that grated a little: Puccini’s typically clunky plots, coughers throughout the audience, rotton accoustics in the Opera Theatre.

Thankfully there’s talk of huge interior renovations at the opera house over the next few years. What that will do to Opera Australia’s revenue however is a bit of a worry; probably at least 50% of the audience on Wednesday were tourists….tourists who certainly wouldn’t buy tickets to the opera in Sydney if it was held at any other theatre in town. I secretly hope they can strike a deal with the State Theatre during the renovations…it’s such a gorgeous space.

Eternity Springs Art Farm

…is the name of the place baba and I stayed for 5 nights while on holiday to Lismore for new year’s eve. I can’t wait to go back.

The whole area of the hills behind Byron Bay is magical. The green, the trees, the rivers, the fresh air, the wildlife, the spirit of aquarius. Magic.

Eternity Springs is 5 minutes up the road from a little village called The Channon, which is at the bottom of a narrow winding road in a hidden valley. Accommodation is country-comfortable-simpe with a bit of an eccentric, artistic twist. What (or rather, who) makes the place so special is its owner Amanda. She is a wonderfully he bactry home with her guests. While many tropical fruits party goers were sinking in mud and rain at the camping grounds, we were enjoying fresh fruit salads and home-baked bread on the balcony for breakfast, hot showers and a comfy bed. Not to mention the feel good factor of staying somewhere that prides its self on eco-friendliness and sustainable practice and philosophy.

When can i move in?

Head Candy pills from London Underground REALLY work

OK, another blog entry about drugs…what better way to start the new year?

Baba and I went to Lismore in the far north of NSW for a wonderful, somewhat alternative, queer dance party called Tropical Fruits. We went up a couple of days early and volunteered to help prepare the site (Lismore showgrounds) for the party. Thankfully volunteering didn’t actually involve too much hard work and we got free sandwiches and cups of tea. All very C.W.A…..

That is until the party started. I alluded in an earlier post about discovering “legal highs” from a shop in Newtown – also Nimbin – called Happy High herbs. There, some time ago i bought a little packet of pills called Head candy from a company called London underground, now based (so far as i can tell) in New Zealand since their products fell foul of the law in the UK. This company has a range of party products. A few weeks ago we tried “Neuro Blast” pills on a rare Saturday night out on Oxford Street. They were duds. No better than guarana or NoDoz.

Head Candy on the other hand is a completely beautiful experience. This time we took one pill each at about 10pm when we arrived at the party. Prior to that we’d taken half a Neuro Blast Each to wake up a bit. The effects of the Head Candy came on around 11ish (only an hour after taking rather than the 2 hours it took previously, perhaps a combination of the small dose of the the other pills plus a small amount of alcohol). The initial feelings are a lightness in the limbs and the giggles….mind you we were looking at angry lesbian art in the Tropical Fruits art space, which to a poof is generally pretty amusing anyway…

Those feelings stay more or less throughout the whole Head Candy experience. Gradually there is also a feeling of wonderful content and satisfaction. Add to that the kind of e-rush that wells up from the top of one’s stomach and into one’s chest. We took a second pill each around midnight. We chilled out for a while in the caberet tent watching all manner of performances before the urge to dance got the better of us. My favourite DJ (Sveta) was playing an fairly hard, tribal-ish set which was irresistable. the effects of the second pil were very noticable by this stage (1:30 maybe??) and the feeling was strong and intense…at least as strong as having 2 good quality e’s but without the tight jaw and that chemical buzz behind the eyes and inner ears that eccies give. We then spent the next 4 hours or so dancing, chilling for a while and dancing again. Ben drayton came on after Sveta and played a fabulously twisted set. Again, the head space that these pills provided was perfect for slightly darker music. (Having said that, last time we took them, we were bopping at home to fairly commercial house from the eponymous Head Candy CD label. I think a lot depends on the head space you’re in at the time).

By 5am our bodies were starting to say that they’d had enough dancing. So despite feeling wide awake, it was time to leave. As fairly widely reported, sleep after taking head candy pills is more or less impossible, so we kept oursleves “otherwise occupied” for a few hours after we got back to the B&B. We then had some food, and managed a little bit of sleep.

We went to the “recovery” party that evening but didn’t take any more pills, knowing that we needed some sleep later that night. The DJ was a bit crap too, so we just chilled in the caberet space and chatted to a dear, dear friend who once starred in a gay porn film. That night we headed back to the B&B around 11ish, smoked a bit of pot (we were within sniffing distance of nimbin after all) around 1 or 2 am and slept reasonably well until the morning.

Fo me, Head Candy pills have no nasty come down like ecstasy, making them even more attractive. The high is slightly different, a little bit more “inward” and less huggy huggy, kissy kissy. But spending time later with the one you love, the love the two people feel is extremely profound. There is talk of them becomming illegal in Australia soon, so i plan to buy up big because unlike buying illegal pills from a dealer, you know exactly what you’re getting from these pills and I now know that 2 pills is a very strong dose only to be enjoyed for big parties. On an ordinary night out, one would certainly be enough. On some online forums, there is talk of people having bad experiences on Head Candy – but most if not all of them seem to be from people who mixed with A LOT of alcohol or other substances. Play cautiously first time and play safe.