Well this is very exciting. I have been nominated as a finalist in the ACON 2023 Honour Awards media award for my collected writing about rural LGBTIQA+.
I am gobsmacked about the company I am in, including some of the giants of gay-hate crime reporting. I’m also extremely proud to be acknowledged for two decades’ writing about LGBTIQA+ issues.
It’s hard to explain the difficulty in getting work published about us. Certainly in my early writing career I had many bites, only for gatekeepers to get cold feet about the subject matter.
This was (and is) the era of #OwnVoices in which we are supposed to write what we know by lived experience. That’s all very well if the publishing and media industries have a tradition of publishing what you are… but in my case, they weren’t, so it was DIY or remain silent.
Change has finally come, although it’s still challenging to get agents, publishers and industry gatekeepers to have courage when it comes to platforming queer stories. Initiatives like the Honour Awards give our work a spotlight, thanks to media category sponsor NBCUniversal, which is a beacon of diversity and inclusion.
THE powerful benefits of taking time out to make decorative objects and art by hand are on offer at the upcoming Deepwater Art Show, with a range of workshops led by some of the region’s best artisanal practitioners.
Leading the way will be Ngarrabul/Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay/Kooma woman Adèle Waabii Chapman-Burgess of Glen Innes, who will host a traditional basket weaving session on Saturday April 1.
WEAVING YARNS Adèle Waabii Chapman-Burgess
“Weaving is a powerful way to embrace and preserve my culture,” she says.
“It’s like a visual conversation. I’m proud and feel it’s a privilege to have the opportunity to bring our stories to life through weaving and yarning using traditional knowledge with modern tools to promote and share my culture.”
Chapman-Burgess’s workshop will begin with an introduction to basketry using natural plant materials and where to obtain them. She will demonstrate how to create a woven vessel or three-dimensional object, from getting started, changing materials, developing structure, creating walls and finishing your piece.
“We will discuss various ways you can decorate your basket, how to dye the fibres and different materials that you can forage to continue your practice of weaving with the coiling technique,” she says.
“You will then learn about sustainable practices and online resources for when you’re creating your own pieces at home.”
Fabulous and functional felt
FELTED FUN hat created by Jo-Anne Barr
Currabubula milliner Jo-Anne Barr believes there’s a link between creative classes, personal development and good mental health.
“Workshops also provide all participants the opportunity to share their knowledge, skills and life experiences with others – and that often includes the facilitator – that helps shape artisans and their practices,” she says.
Participants at Barr’s wet felt hat making workshop on Sunday April 2 can expect to leave with a simple flower brooch and a finished hat, but also skills in wet felting and basic hat blocking and shaping.
“It’s a fun, productive day, with new friendships forged and skills obtained, along with the satisfaction of knowing they turned a bundle of Australian superfine Merino wool into a fabulous and functional unique hat to be proud of,” she says.
Immersive experience
VISUAL LANGUAGE Artist Carolyn McCosker
Artist Carolyn McCosker of Inverell often sees fellow creatives struggle to find ways to express themselves via visual art.
“While it’s wonderful to recreate someone else’s ideas, we yearn to find our own way of expressing ourselves in drawing and painting,” she says.
“As artists in regional areas, we are isolated from what’s happening culturally in the cities.
“I often travel to larger regional centres such as Moree, Armidale and Tamworth to visit the galleries and keep abreast with trends in new and contemporary art. I am always seeking to develop my techniques and expand upon existing concepts and ideas.”
Participants can join McCosker for a 2-day creative painting experience on Monday April 3 and Tuesday April 4.
“This workshop will prompt participants to explore how shape, form, colour and line can be employed to develop a personal visual language through which to convey ideas and feelings,” she says.
“Participants will be invited to consider their own art interests as they view images of work by historical and contemporary Australian and international artists. We’ll investigate ways of referring to source material without letting it dominate your finished work.
COLOUR & LINE Artwork by Carolyn McCosker
“There’ll be warm up exercises in composition, colour and design before moving onto your own work, which you’ll be developing from your own reference images and concepts.”
McCosker believes creative workshops provide an “immersive experience” of completely absorbing oneself in art and art making, “with other like minded people working collaboratively, sharing, exchanging and learning new ideas and techniques”, she says.
Also taking place across the 5-day Deepwater Art Show will be a native Australian flower painting session on Saturday April 1 with Indigenous artist Lauren Rogers, and two separate copper fold-forming jewellery workshops on Sunday April 2 and Monday April 3 with Deepwater’s own silversmith Richard Moon.
OPINION: They say timing is everything, but there’s a stark irony about World Pride happening throughout Sydney at the same moment as an inquiry into some of the harbour city’s darkest and most shameful years.
It’s been described as a world first, but this inquiry is unlikely to make global news right now. There’s no way to spice up hours of former and current NSW Police and academics being questioned about historical deaths that were possibly driven by gay-hatred, and the multiple internal police reviews around them.
A pragmatic process is called for, yet the monotony pervading the lengthy daily hearings is amplified by the sense that we’ve been here all too many times before. It would be easier to just file away all the evidence (some 220 boxes of paperwork and 77,000 electronic files) and head to the beach to enjoy what’s left of the warm weather.
North Head, Sydney Harbour
But we won’t escape it there. Sydney’s seaboard was the location of many of these untimely deaths, where mens’ bodies were either discovered at the foot of the sandstone cliffs standing like ramparts above the mighty Pacific Ocean; or they disappeared without a trace.
Were they pushed, did they fall, or jump? The question gets tumbled around by the white-topped breakers in a constant search for certainty. Adding to the lack of clarity is that many of these deaths happened in places where marginalised people were finding solace on the margins: the gay beats scattered around the quietest corners of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.
It’s partly why crime is often hard to discern from misadventure or something else, since such places are also where some go to end their lives.
Stunning escalation
Most compelling are the life stories starting to emerge from the gloom. Unlike others before it, this inquiry is allowing us to look beyond names on lists of cold cases by sharing details about the partners, families and careers of the long dead. We’re getting to see many of their faces for the first time.
A splash of case reviews earlier this year threw up an unexpected submission that evidence of homophobia had been overlooked by police investigating the brutal 1992 murder of John Gordon Hughes.
It was a stunning escalation in an inquiry that is yet to find a lightning rod of justice.
The commission has also tabled evidence that many men on the list of cases were likely not homosexual and probably didn’t die at the hands of others, yet had their unsolved deaths caught up in the ongoing saga of the gay-hate ‘crime wave’.
To its credit, this inquiry is not underlining the difference. As their cases come up for submission, the dead are being remembered equally regardless of sexual orientation or gender, insofar as these things can be ascertained at such a distance. Families and friends across the state have been waiting for answers regardless, and this inquiry is looking back to times when policing standards – particularly around homicide investigations – was very different to today’s expectations.
Wollongong newsreader Ross Warren, who went missing at Bondi in 1989
Relatives were not always kept informed about the progress of cases that proved difficult to solve. Some submissions have highlighted the lack of effective police communication with family and friends of victims. These connections might have been a source of leads and useful information, such as the sexual orientation of the deceased and thereby the possible context of the death, if only they’d been asked.
For other cases, sadly, there appear to be no family members watching. With terms of reference stretching back five decades, this inquiry sometimes feels like a litany of separation and rejection in which there’s little hope of snatching much from the jaws of time.
But one persistent parent can arguably be credited with bringing about the whole reckoning. Kay Warren, mother of 25-year-old Wollongong newsreader Ross Warren – who went missing near Bondi in 1989 – just wouldn’t let up about exactly what police were doing to investigate her son’s disappearance.
We should spare a thought for her determination and that of so many other family, friends and allies of the dead and missing, including the police who paid heed.
Once World Pride has left town, this inquiry will turn the spotlight on further unsolved deaths that we’re still waiting to know about; but commissioner Justice John Sackar doesn’t have long.
With a reporting deadline of June 30, time is of the essence.
Michael Burge’s debut novel Tank Water (MidnightSun Publishing) deals with rural gay-hate crime.
Michael Burge Media 