Preface

The end is nigh. That much is clear. NASA gives us fifteen years before human life downright no longer exists. We might find the Doomsday Preppers rather funny, but deep down, we know they’re right. Dehydrate those bananas and stock up on tinned beans cuz we’re in for a wild and stormy ride.

This is a guide for good people. If you are an arsehole, only interested in the survival of yourself and your immediate family, go fuck yourself. Go join the Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other insular sect for taking care of one’s own.

This guide is part comedy, part tips on community organising to keep your apocalypse bunker free from arseholes, part practical tips on sustainable living, and (since my friend Mev convinced me that my young life has been so interesting, I should write a memoir), part self-indulgent instruction of how I will survive the apocalypse.

This is a guide for creating a modern system of autonomous self-governance where equity and freedom are the name of the game, where people are welcome regardless of race, gender binaries, physical abilities or age. So yeah, this book is actually about building a really, really, giant, fuck off massive bunker. In fact the bunker will be so big that if NASA says we’ve only got fifteen years, well, you’d better start diggin’ boys and girls, cuz it will take you that long to dig a bunker big enough to fit your whole community.

Your time starts now!

A Word About Me

I am 38 and have always spent my time doing some kind of organising for social justice or the environment. I spend my days working at a local government agency engaging with community members to encourage sustainable living practices, and my nights wrangling two pre-school age children. I try to ensure my family has as tiny an ecological footprint as possible, but I know that capitalism and industry have a way more negative environmental impact than my family will ever have. The five minute showers of all my family members, neighbours and friends are never going to have as much impact on our water supplies than the mining industry.

A previous incarnation of myself once believed that bringing even more white-fossil-fuel-vandal children into the world was a heinous crime. But it’s lucky we change our views. Imagine if we all just stayed the same and no one ever developed their views? It’s called progress. And I for one am pretty happy that my family of four is pretty much only leaving the environmental footprint of two average Coburgians.

I’ve done loads of weird jobs and lots of other weird things for fun. I’ve played in loads of all girl rock bands. I’ve been a stripper. I spent seven years living in squats, the cleanest and most well organised squats you’ve ever seen. I’ve travelled extensively and now I’m pretty much ready to calm the fuck down just be as effective as I can be at bringing about a better situation than the pending apocalypse.

On Arseholes

Seen The Walking Dead? What exactly did you learn? I learned that it’s mighty easy for arseholes to take over when the State falls. But if we agree there’ll come a time when we can no longer rely on any semblance of social democracy to support our schools or to regulate our food production, we’ll need to challenge that popular trope that “chaos and anarchy” are the inevitable consequence of government disintegration. We’ll need to out-organise the arseholes!

Seen Zombieland? What did you learn? Aside from always buckling up before accelerating, and when the end of the world really does come, please try a bit harder to keep Bill Murray alive, even people who seem like arseholes like Woody Harrelson’s character Tallahassee can actually be won over as life circumstances rapidly change. Arseholes might just find it’s in their self-interest to support the regime of mutual aid and solidarity.

So yeah, how’s about that apocalypse, huh?

The ecological footprint of the human race is now so ginormous that even if we completely shifted out dependence on fossil fuels to one hundred percent renewables by 2030, we’d still be staring down the barrel of a 2 per cent global temperature increase. You know it, I know it. The 2007 Black Saturday fires, the 2015 Christmas Day fires on the Great Ocean Road, coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, the loss of five of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, now completely submerged with residents forced to relocate, the prediction that sea levels will rise between 3-6 meters. And these are just the extreme so called “weather events” that we know about let alone the ones we don’t.

Let’s face it, we’re pretty much rooted and it’s not as if we’re going to stop using fossil fuels anytime soon. People are living in denial. If anything it’s like a race to the finish line. We’re building more brand new, pre-fab, disposable McMansions, built to last just thirty years or so, because despite the massive environmental waste, people will want to knock it down and build a new house by then anyway. We keep building new freeways. Ford moved offshore because the Aussie market is too small for their desired profits and they want to sell millions more cars per year than they could pump out from Broadmeadows or Corio. And Ford is not about to slow down car sales and go into bike production anytime soon.

As far as having kids is concerned, three is apparently the new two and five is the new four, and we can read all about this in the newspaper articles titled “Children: the ultimate status symbol”. So all those masses of kids can grow up and buy their own disposable McMansions and imported Fords to drive on their new freeways to their beach houses that will soon be engulfed by rising sea levels, or their bush blocks that will soon be burned by some kind of “freak” fire that won’t actually be a freak fire at all, it will be a totally predictable fire that some people refuse to acknowledge as predictable. What’s not predictable is how we will respond to the coming events. Some people used to say it’s all about prevention and precaution. But the arseholes are currently ruining it for everyone, so it’s all about preparation and adaptation.

 Community building, or how to make friends and influence people, and why we shouldn’t let arseholes take charge any more

Remember how the arseholes ruined it for everyone? Well fuck them. Why are you letting them be in charge anyway? I’m not about to advocate taking a baseball bat to the skull of every driver of a Toorak Tractor to curb the population (carbon credits anyone?) It seriously doesn’t need to be that kind of apocalypse. Well… not yet anyway.

The secret of your success will be that people will like you. No one likes a baseball bat wielding psychopath, even if they know there’s a way more insidious class war being perpetrated by the drivers of that Toorak Tractor, involving criminally low wages in some work sectors such as fruit and veg pickers and packers, seven eleven workers, childcare staff and taxi drivers. I’m sorry but at this point in history, baseball bats are just not a vote winner.

You will deliberately lead by example and distinguish yourself from politicians like Bill Shorten, who pretty much nobody likes, not even in the union movement. He has really close friends who are genuinely arseholes – Kimberly Kitching and Andrew Landeryou, the wanna-be up and coming power couple of the ALP whose rampaging antics include defacing Greens and Liberal Party billboards and lying under oath to the Industrial Relations Commission about the misappropriation of union membership dues. In fact, I recommend using Kitching and Landeryou as a benchmark of how not to behave. In your journey to be the type of community leader who will get us through the apocalypse, you can regularly ask yourself, “What would Kitching or Landeryou do?” Then, do the exact opposite.

Being resourceful with food, or why cool people eat weeds

DISCALIMER: Know your weeds, make sure they don’t kill you. Although pretty much no Melbournian weeds will kill you.

My cool mate Adam “Grubby” Grubb is one of the coolest people I know. He co-authored a book called The Weed Forager’s Handbook. In the words of Molly Meldrum, Do Yourself a Favour and buy a copy! Not only will this book help you be cool like Grubby, it will also teach you the difference between a weed that will be delightful to eat, and a weed that might make you sick, but probably won’t kill you.

My cool mate Grubby eats weeds because they provide all the nutrition that your home grown, over-priced, Diggers Club organic spinach plants provide, except there’s no risk you’ll run out after they wilt and die in the Aussie summer sun, because these little buggers are everywhere, and they’re FREE. If you’re time poor, which you probably are, or at least think you are cuz that’s how most of us seem to role these days, you should pretty much just stop growing leafy greens and just head down to your local park / weed factory for your daily intake of folic acid.

Cool people eat weeds because they have better things to do than grow stuff that’s already growing in the park. Cool people eat weeds because in the pending apocalypse, we will actually really be time poor.

On Escape to the Country, Having Kids And The Clarity of Wacking Up Stillnox

So I’m not the only one to look at real estate online in search of an escape to the country. Exhausted commuters on the evening trains seek comfort from the drudgery of their nine-to-five routines.  Realestate.com.au has the highest number of hits of any website and it’s people like me and you with our house-porn fantasies.

My fantasy is to provide stability for my young family so we don’t have to keep moving in a rental market where security of tenure often doesn’t extend past 12 months. I fucked up by having a life in my twenties. After Uni, while me mates were working full time and buying their first apartments, I wanted more out of life. So I travelled constantly, worked in bars and played in bands. I lived off the smell of an oily rag (good life skill by the way, pending apocalypse and all. There’ll be plenty of oily rags to go round, that’s for sure).

Now that I’m 38, I’ve finally conformed to full time work and paying my bills thanks to the realisation that unless I create some kind of financial buffer, the economy is going to totally fuck up my kids’ lives. By the time they’re of age, there most likely won’t be a Newstart or an Old Age Pension for them to fall back on.

It took a while for this realisation to kick in. About 8 years before I had my first kid, my junky boyfriend at the time (who knew I was better than that) had just wacked up some Stilnox and was busy hallucinating in the middle of Brunswick street at peak hour. I wrangled him on to a tram and for my efforts he very publicly and very convincingly tried to break up with me, dozens of tram commuters as his witness.

“Liz, what are you doing with your life? Get a job. You’re lost. (Yes, the irony of it all). You need Superannuation because neoliberalism is going to rip the privilege of the Pension right out of the economy. You’re going to have kids, and based on your choice of romantic partners that I’ve seen, you’re going to choose a dud Dad for them. So they will rely on you to run the household. Those kids will have no Newstart. Get your act together”.

And with that, he stumbled off the tram and back into oncoming traffic. By some fluke of luck (and some good driving on behalf of City of Yarra commuters), said junky ex-boyfriend lives to see these economic changes taking place.

Thanks Junky Ex-Boyfriend, and thanks to your dodgy choice of intravenous drugs. If you’d found heroine that afternoon, I highly doubt you would have hallucinated and imparted such jems of wisdom that have helped my family.

I can proudly say that I have just purchased my own Escape to the Country, mud brick, hippy extravaganza and yes, you can all come over.

 Local power generation and distribution

Got solar panels and storage batteries? Together let’s learn how to pool and store our power. Let’s read Murray Bookchin and talk about this later. Right now I have to smash out some more words for the 10pm Gunnas Masterclass Posting deadline, and the kids only just go to sleep.

So what do we actually need as opposed to want? (don’t worry, instructions on brewing beer will be included in this chapter at a later date).

When the economic crisis hit in Greece, suddenly there was no work and no money, and people had to learn from the older, wider folks about bartering and swapping. I hope you like making preserves and can use a sewing machine, because your community will surely need these skills! Or do you know how to teach maths? Because Mrs Brand’s five children will need to calculate their prediction of just how long their Paradise Beach holiday house on the Gippsland Lakes will last before it’s swept into the sea. And better for them to be one step ahead of the insurance company!

Stay tuned for the next instalment of the People’s Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse, titled, “Will there be sex work after the revolution? Or That Time I Was A Stripper”

I have this memory which has stuck with me, I think it always will really. I was walking up the stairs and as I walked up I could hear another argument, this one involved Mum, Dad and my brother.
My brother just got sent home early from camp because he injured himself quite badly and was wearing a cast. Dad was away on camp too and he also had to come home, obviously to care for his son. He wanted to stay at camp and was unhappy that he was sent home and that they wasted the money on the camp and they don’t get the benefit of being there now. It was all his fault!

Mum was trying to stop and intervene and then I heard my brother, he sounded scared. There was a big sound, like a thud and crashing but kind of muffled and when I got to the top of the stairs I saw my father standing over the top of my wounded brother, who had his arms and legs up in the air as defence, and he was really distressed. He said “stop” weakly and was crying silently.

My dads face was red and fierce and he hit him some more. Mum said to him to stop and that he was scaring the kids, but that didn’t matter to him.

I just walked down the hall, and into my room. I sat on the bed and pretended to read.

Later Mum managed to help my brother to his room where they both stayed and talked quietly for most of the night. Too quietly for me to hear.

One morning, weeks later we had run out of Vegemite, which was a disaster and we all wanted some toast so dad volunteered to go to the shops and get some then come back and we can all have our toast. We didn’t like jam or p nut butter so it HAD to be Vegemite.

I wanted to go for a car ride, so I asked if I can come too and I will just sit in the car and mum said yup you can go, dad didn’t want me to come cause it would slow him down and he just wanted to be quick. But I insisted that I will be good and just sit in the car n wait, I just liked to ride in the car so wanted to tag along with him.

So I got my way and I remember on the car ride he was very quiet and annoyed , I picked up that he didn’t want me to come pretty quickly. He said to me how come you wanted to come with me? And I think I just said I like riding in the car or some lame thing, I really just wanted to hang with him and have him all to myself for a little while. My sister knew this and was jealous that I was going on this car ride. She knew I wanted him to myself for a bit and wanted for me to admit that is what my plan was, but I would never admit it.
On the way to the shop dad said to me “now I am going to make a stop off for a little bit and I won’t be long, you are to wait in the car for me to get back n then we will get our Vegemite for brekkie.”

I asked where we were stopping, we were driving in a street with houses on it so he must have wanted to visit someone. He said “never mind that just sit n wait here.”

So he was gone for a long time after walking inside someone’s house. I don’t remember how long. But I do remember that it was long enough for me to find there was a new unopened jar of Vegemite sitting in the car, it had rolled out from under the drivers seat into the back seat floor.

When we got back home we had breakfast and then were pushed outside to go play so we did. We spent most of the day outside, either on the trampoline or mucking around with ant nests or lizards or visiting our friend over the back fence. Sometimes we’d hang in their house if we were sick of being outside. This was most of our days really. We sometimes got locked out of the house during the day. So we just went for walks or bike rides or just sat around in the yard with skipping ropes or the trampoline so we went and busied ourselves with our important play tasks.

So later on mum and I were talking and I think I brought up the house visit in the morning to her and said “who did he go see?” (Or something) and she was all confused. So I explained that “we drove to a house, we parked in the street and he went inside for a while and I waited in the car and who’s house was this mum?”

Well she had to go speak to him to find out about this so I was sent outside again with everyone else.

At some point, I can’t remember how soon after this if it was the same day or the next, but mum asked me to go and get my brother from his room, he spent a lot of time in there to get away from the aggression and the yelling, anyhow he was completely outraged and scared all at once and said to me he said “I haven’t done anything wrong!?”

I said that “mum said to come get you and that we are all in the lounge room.”

We had never had a family meeting before, I didn’t know what they were all about really. Until today.

Mum looked very cold and hard at dad and,
She said to dad “well why don’t you explain to them what’s happening” or something like that my memory of the exact words have faded a bit.

He, was totally flummoxed and had no idea what to say, it was like he thought that mum was going to explain everything to us like how she handled everything else related to us kids lately because he was hands off, hands raised and no longer felt obligated to deal with us or even speak to us apparently, unless it was for a smack. I think he even said, well … I thought that you would… we all looked to her like we always did and she tensed up even more and clenched her jaw.

But after he could see that she was leaving this task up to him he sputtered, and he blurted and cried. And held his hands out in front of his head ready to brace his head in them, then grew the courage to say “we just can’t live together anymore!” And buried his head in his hands and became a shivering quivering mess in front of us all.

I didn’t understand what was going on, why he was saying this and what these words meant once they had been spoken in terms of how our lives would all change. I was about five years old at the time all this happened.

I just saw my father, quivering and crying and needing something. So I shuffled over close to him on the couch to try to hug him. I was sitting nearest to him so it seemed like it was right.

He didn’t respond or move or even look at me and then I looked over at mum and she looked at me with fierce eyes, that said to me “how dare you attempt to comfort him” I was so confused and upset now also because well everyone was upset, I didn’t fully understand and I would not for some time. That was the first time I saw her hate. I remember it so well.

Soon he was packing his things. I wanted to have a bit of time with my dad again so I went downstairs to see what he was doin.

He was loading the car with his belongings, one by one. T-shirt rolled up into a ball and projected forward into the open hatch of the car. The same thing with each item. A book, a jumper. Stuff was breaking, and just everywhere. Some stuff didn’t even make it into the car, but maybe he didn’t see it or maybe it didn’t matter. Once the car left there was still stuff everywhere.

I don’t remember the first time that mum spoke to me of the reasons why they split, but I do remember my sister telling me.

And it wasn’t until then that I understood the hurt that I had added to her (Mum) when I slid over to him and tried to reach out and make his hand hold mine. But I finally understood the distance and the tension that now always seems to fall between me and my mother.

She was so hurt and I had only inflamed that hurt further with my naive gesture of comfort or support or whatever it was that I instinctively was doing at the time. It is almost as though she associates me or my presence with that hurt inflicted on her by him. Like my silly gesture made an imprint on her subconscious where anything disagreeable that I now do or say becomes an opportunity for her to vent a backlash on to me and then recruit others in the family to join in also, which they did/do. It comes across as lighthearted and half joking, but that isn’t how it feels to me. That isn’t how she treats them.

We never really speak about him. When I have asked her questions about him, I can see that it tears open a vicious wound and so I just never bring him up anymore.

Tony watched his father stroll across the schoolyard when he should have been focusing on his maths equations.  He was staring out the window because it was maths that he was meant to be doing, and he hated maths.  He hated numbers.  He hated that there was always some trick he was meant to know, a trick that made sense to everyone else, a trick that made it easier for everyone else, except for him.  So because it was maths and it was hot, and he never really needed much of an excuse to get lost in his own thoughts whilst doing maths, he found himself staring out the window.  And noticed his father.

His father looked happy enough strolling along.   Strolling?  No.  Striding.  His tall figure was moving purposely across the searing asphalt.  Tony knew it was unusual for his father to be walking around in the middle of the day, yet he hadn’t seen him for a few weeks.  Why would he be walking through the school?  It was a bit of a thoroughfare for the locals on their way to the strip of shops.

Why wasn’t he at work though?

All Tony knew was that he worked for the ‘Tramways’.  He wasn’t a tram driver, he wasn’t a conductor but that’s where he worked.

An 8 year old can make sense of even the strangest situations and he returned his dad’s wave with a cautious flick of his hand, and that was acknowledgement enough for his father to continue on his journey through the school grounds.  Tony knew his mother would be working at her Aunt’s deli and his father was heading that way.

That was all the thought he gave to an unpleasant scenario whereby his feuding, and now ‘estranged’ parents would have some kind of ugly interaction.

Tony turned back to his maths book and concentrated on the task at hand.  Should that 1 be carried?  Where did it go though?  He popped it down in the middle, immediately questioning its position.  What was the 1 even worth?  Why was it just 1?  He was positive he’d counted past ten.  Maybe it was ten?  Should he have written a ten then?  It was all too confusing.  He wondered whether he’d been ill the day they were taught why it was just a 1 that got carried over, and to where.  He had been sick a lot.

Tony had suffered from asthma from a baby.  His mother told many stories of him turning blue and her fear she’d lose him, wheezing in her arms. He couldn’t recall the last time he missed school due to an attack though, so it must have improved.

‘Emotional Asthma’ was his grandmother Ussy’s diagnosis.

Tony now lived with Ussy.  Her name wasn’t actually Ussy.  It was Alice.  She would refer to herself as ‘Us’ when he was a very young child, “Come inside with Us”, “Have something to eat with Us” that he had thought that her name was Us, and because he was very young he called her Ussy.  It stuck.

She was Grandma to his much older brothers.  She wouldn’t have accepted any nicknames from them.  She didn’t care for them.  Nor did she care for their wives. Tony was her firm favourite.

Tony was his mother’s favourite too, something he’d known all his life.  In eight years time, when doing Matriculation he would reluctantly read D.H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, and become uncomfortably aware that he and his mother were similar to Paul and Gertrude.  It was the only thing that he would connect with in the story, and thankfully allow him to compose a half-decent response.

He hadn’t turned blue with asthma for a while.  And he quite liked the new living arrangements with his mum, Ussy and Grandpa in the cozy two bedroom fibro.  Their old house, the one he had lived in as a family may have been bigger but it wasn’t a house Tony remembered with any fondness.

When was the last time he’d spoken to his father?  He gave it only the briefest consideration as he glanced out the window, confident the “one” was in fact, “ten” so it needed to go in that area…column?  Was it a column?  He should know that, but he was on a roll to complete his equations so returned his attention to getting them done.

Tony scanned the street for the imposing figure but he’d vanished.

His thoughts were interrupted by his teacher, suddenly demonstrating something on the blackboard.  He watched as Mr. Wilson explained the process once again and was relieved that he wasn’t the only one who had initially been confused.  Mr. Wilson was good like that.  He never made anyone embarrassed when they got something wrong, and tried to make sure everyone understood, explaining things in a different way if that’s what they needed.  He was the youngest teacher he’d ever had and the only male teacher he had known.  Tony suspected he was around the same age as his brothers.

Energised with a renewed conviction Tony went over his first answers, corrected a couple then returned to working on the rest.  Perhaps maths wasn’t so bad after all.  It was making more sense to him now.

“Hey, Keogh.  There’s your dad.”  Charlie Murphy motioned to the playground and Tony once again watched his father re-cross the asphalt, this time with even more assurance in each long stride.

Tony waved and his father grinned broadly, waving back rather enthusiastically.  Tony was uneasy.  His father wasn’t the grinning kind.  This public demonstration of delight encouraged Tony to watch him leave the school grounds with great suspicion.  He returned to the maths and tried to put his father’s strange behaviour out of his mind.

After lunch the Headmaster appeared at the door and beckoned Mr. Wilson out into the corridor.  They spoke in hushed tones before Mr. Wilson returned and quietly asked the students to continue with something they’d begun in the morning.  Tony had observed the situation with the interest an eight year old would usually take, that being not much.

“Keogh.”  Mr. Wilson announced as the bell rang and students began to dart out of the classroom.  “Anthony Keogh, bring your maths to me please?”

Tony groaned internally, yet obediently took his maths book up to his teacher’s desk.  Charlie Murphy laughed.

“I just want to go over some of your sums with you so I know you completely understand, Anthony.”

They sat there and completed sums together in the furnace of a classroom until the Headmaster appeared and gave a reassuring little nod.

“Goodo, Keogh.” Mr. Wilson sighed, “Off you go then, and go straight home,” he paused, “not to the deli.”

Tony thought he glimpsed pity in the young teacher’s eyes.

“Yes, sir.”

Competent, not rehearsed but revisited numerously

From a time of stand up as humorously

Confident, not overly but from experienced bravely

From a time of grand staging

Hurt, not openly but felt as deliberately

From a time of a hand as silently

Honest, not questioned as seen mentioned posturally

From a time of demand grown balanced remarkably

Giving, not withheld but found in expendable gesturing

From a time of extend with kindly

Capable, not misguided but thoughtful as presided

From a time of sensible to integral

This life today confided

For others as ability of hers provided

Well here I am, the last excercise of the day. Sitting here trying to think of something to write about. All the this random stuff is bouncing around in my head trying to make it’s presence felt. Which one do I choose?

Gee these dessert plates in front of me smell delicious. A residual scent of strawberry lingers tantalising, distracting the senses and what little attention span I do possess.

So it’s quite a novel experience being permitted, nay encouraged to let my mind wander. When this happened prior experience taught that this would normally be met with retribution.

So here’s my mind wandering around without adult supervision searching for something appropriately witty and clever when in reality my topic is about the fact that I’m struggling to find a topic. In an unexpected case of cosmic serendipity the video presentation playing in the background features a young writer undergoing the exact same problem. A story needs a Beginning, Middle and hopefully a satisfying Ending. This kindred spirit also suffers from procrastination and has used the same tricks to distract herself from the task at hand. Also the “conversations ” her dog had with her were at  least politer than the scornful disdain that is imagined in my direction from my Superior Siamese. 

The most amazing thing I learnt from this Class is that all the random crap I put myself through is perfectly normal.

So it was a very happy chappy hooting homeward down the highway rocking on to a peculiar mix of Happy Hardcore, Nostalgic 80’s , Trippy Trance with a little Alaniss Morrissette angst thrown in to keep it real. Little brain happily ticking away processing all the new concepts and tools that he can now apply to the frantic scribbling that escapes his brain on random occasions. 

So happily armed with his new Mantras of Sit Down Shut Up and Write, a dash of Suck it Up Princess. Also permission to wear a Tiara and pearls whilst creating my masterpieces makes it an unexpected adventure. I now get to happily share the incoherent ramblings of my brain with an unsuspecting but hopefully receptive audience using a new found sense of purpose and discipline. Yay me!!!! 

I don’t cook. My version of MasterChef involves the following tried and tested steps: remove packaging, pierce film, microwave, let stand and eat. If I’m asked to bring dessert, I’m thinking ‘pack of Tim Tams’ possibly opened and partly consumed.

People think I’m joking when I proudly proclaim my non-cooking prowess but I am only mildly exaggerating. In the last twelve months I have cooked on three occasions – and that’s me happily done for the year. In this era of eating clean, nation-wide bake-offs, high drama kitchen competitions devoted to finding home cooks worthy of Michelin stars, I sense the looks of disgust when I describe my anti-oven status. I assure you it is not just a lifestyle choice born of laziness and circumstance, although as a one-person, professional household I feel wholeheartedly entitled to such a slothly option. My decision to be gloriously inept in all matters culinary is an act of rebellion against the damagingly sexist dinner table politics of my childhood (politics which persist for my mother and continue to haunt me).

I am the product of a stay-at-home mum and white collar dad. Without question: I love them, they love me. There were many advantages to having a home-based parent who capably managed our household affairs and another parent who was a well-earning, generous, fiscally gifted contributor to the family income. The privileges I enjoyed I count as blessings and I don’t believe there need be anything inherently wrong with this achingly traditional arrangement if it is born by choice and nurtured by mutual respect. Unfortunately, especially for my mum, this wasn’t the case for us.

Food and cooking seemed to throw an unforgiving spotlight onto the significant gender injustice that was implicitly and consistently communicated in our home. By looking at the way meals were planned, prepared, consumed and cleared it was clear that my father’s needs, time and efforts superseded (by far) my mother’s. By example, they showed me that “men’s” contribution and time was more valuable than a woman’s. There is a deep sadness when I think of the disservice done to Mum whose worth has been crushed into shrinking portions with the passing of the years. There are deep scars she carries and I have inherited some of this wounding.

In our household Mum would wake at 5.30am every weekday morning in order to prepare a fresh fruit salad (lunch) and vegemite crackers (snacks) for Dad to take to work. He would trot off with decades-old Tupperware and dutifully prepared sustenance ready to begin his workday before 7am. Without fail, he would call the house at the completion of his day, sometime after 5pm, to let Mum know he was on his way. As a child I believed this phone call to be a romantic gesture, a reconnecting after a day apart but, in reality, it was the cue for her to have dinner on the table for shortly after his arrival home.

When dinner was dished up there was a specific sequence to the serving which reflected the family pecking order; Dad first, the brothers in order of age, then me (the only girl), and lastly Mum would serve herself. On finishing, Dad would take only his plate and only his cutlery into the kitchen, the rest of the cleaning up was left to Mum and ‘the children’.

There is a pocket of my heart reserved for a long-held, simmering rage this food-based injustice helped to stoke throughout my childhood and teenage years. Interestingly, my parents sent me to a school where “Girls can do anything” was a much used call to inspire students (you could even buy it in sticker form) and although that message was a loud and clear part of my education and encouraged by my parents, the home experience provided a distinct sub-clause; “Girls can do anything…as long as it doesn’t disrupt their men or interfere with the services they provide at home like making the meals and cleaning up”.

Tattooed on my memory is an occasion when Mum was out at choir practice (she has a beautiful voice), a rare opportunity to do something she loved and take time for herself. She assumed Dad would fix himself something for lunch, maybe not soufflé but possibly a straightforward ham and tomato sandwich. Much to her chagrin she returned home to an unfed and barely watered husband who was aghast she hadn’t been available at the expected time to prepare his food.

On another occasion I asked why, even if she must prepare Dad’s food, the fruit salad and vegemite crackers couldn’t possibly be made the night before so she could enjoy some more well-earned sleep. Mum told me: “Your father doesn’t like the crackers soggy”. On hearing this I didn’t know who deserved more of my anger, a father whose demands were unreasonable and insulting or a mother who accepted them and earned a black belt in passive aggression in the process. In all honesty, they each own sizeable real estate in my little pocket of rage even if Dad’s is bigger and comes with a view.

In response to this exasperating unfairness I couldn’t resolve, I railed against learning to cook and decided to be vocal about the gender inequalities at home. I would pipe up and ask whether Dad thought the salt, pepper and other condiments magically made their own way back into the cupboard when he continued to clear his (and only his) eating implements. I pretended my eyes were laser beams of fury when the men in my family would casually sit about chatting or watching sport happily oblivious as I laboured in the kitchen with Mum. I was clear and vocal in asking my dad and brothers to participate in the kitchen duties to be mostly ignored and sometimes even scolded for a lack of ‘graciousness’ (because the problem is how I asked, not that I had to, right?). I provided statistics from my high school feminism modules about the ongoing gender imbalance in household chores and the estimated monetary value of women’s unpaid contribution to the economy (it’s huge by the way, think billions). Nothing penetrated; from cajoling, well-researched stats, snarkiness to pleading and screaming. Dad’s routine to this day, even as a mobile and fully functioning retiree, does not include food preparation or cooking of any kind (he doesn’t even make his own sandwiches or reheat meals). At a stretch he may help with drying dishes and this is considered significant progress.

I made a vow to myself that my future relationship arrangements would hold no resemblance to that of my parents’. I would like to tell you I kept that promise but it seems that the silent lessons from my childhood home grounded out the empowering mottos of my schooling. Thankfully, I have divorced the husband who, as soon as we married, would await me coiled at the front door ready to berate me for not being home to cook him dinner. The fact that my high-paying, managerial job meant I needed to be in the office much longer hours than his academic post (which paid around half of what I was earning) seemed to have escaped him, as had the notion that he could take on the cooking duties.

When I took a part-time role said husband sat me down, itemised our paid weekly working hours and announced the difference between his full-time hours and my part-time week would become the hours I worked for him. He has ‘Doctor’ before his name but I think ‘Dick’ would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, this unintended and much regretted reneging on the commitment I made to my teenage self to avoid men like him and relationships like that means that I too am a plot holder in my pocket of rage.

So, when I say I don’t cook, it is a statement of liberation and something of a two-finger salute to the frustrating gender imbalance of my childhood home. When I say I don’t cook, I am reminding myself and telling you no man, no one, no relationship will ever write over my heart again and again, day after day, until my heart is a haggard, shrivelled barely beating pulp, “you are not and your time is not as valuable as the people with whom you share space and life”.

Should you find yourself with an invitation to dinner at mine expect Dominos and Tim Tams (well, half the pack maybe) and wine, a lot of wine.

Adolf Hitler said he liked his women young as they were like malleable candle wax.

Teenage years are a very important time for forming the foundations of who you will become as an adult. My advice to young teenage girls would be not to have a steady boyfriend in those years, so that you can grow yourself without input from one prominent, or dominant, person. But I know as a teenager I would have never listened to that advice from anyone so my wisdom is superfluous and I’m not sure I’d bother trying to impart it.

I had my first boyfriend from years 13 to 15.   I broke up with him because his jealousy was stifling. Then I was alone all of a week or something before I met my next boyfriend. He was six years older than me and we went out together for 7 years. And boy did he fuck with my head in those formative years. It was impossible to shed his thoughts and opinions even though I did manage to summons up the wherewithal to realise that he was controlling me. It took years and years of professional therapy, DIY therapy – which for me was exorcising the crap through writing and creating, and an eleven-year stint of being single to dispel the particularly damaging ideas that had been planted in my mind by him. I can finally accept, for example, that it’s not the worst thing in the world that my boobs droop after bearing four kids and getting old.  And now with that sort of negativity pushed away I am able to embrace the positive residue left from that relationship and others.  

When I was 15 that controlling boyfriend taught me to drive in a V8 1960 Ford Fairlane on a 3000km round trip from Brisbane to Kynuna. My head still swivels when any vehicle pre-1970 crosses my path and my idea of a good weekend or even an annual holiday is a road-trip.  Last year my current partner and I spent our annual leave driving 4000km’s. I put that holiday right up there with my couple of overseas trips.

Since I was 16 I have owned five Mk2 Cortina’s. I bought my most recent one about 3 years ago when my sad and addled son wrote off my practical but boring Camry. It was a horrendously stressful phase of our lives and the thought of replacing my car with yet another predictable lady’s car made my stomach and heart churn. Scouring the classifieds I jumped to the classic car section, maybe just maybe there would be a Mk2 up for sale. I could get excited about that and I really needed some joy! I set myself a price limit and if there was one listed I would go for it.

Next year, Blanche, my 1967 Mk2 Cortina turns 50. I decided I would like to celebrate her birthday in some official way. I asked my daughter if she would make some fancy little cushions with Blanche and 50 embroidered on them and hot pink pom poms as a trim. I would then put under the back window for all to see. And then I thought, why stop at that? When I throw a party I like to throw a party!

They say write about things you are passionate about and it’s really only dawned on me in the last few years that old cars are a passion for me. The 50^th celebration plans for Blanche have grown into Old Girls on the Road. Before I did the Gunnas workshop with Dev (Friday 30 Dec) I had a lot of ideas on how I was going to go about producing Old Girls, but I’m very thrilled to say many of those ideas have gone out the window of the scrumptious Continental Cafe. Before, I was excited but a little bit daunted. Now I am still excited, but it’s all feeling very doable and I just can’t wait to start doing.

So, I have been a university student for 20 years now. Not what I intended, or wanted. What I wanted was a new job. You know, like universities promise in their advertising. One that was a bit more substantial than the job my parents had planned out for me from childhood. And I wanted to be finished before I was 40. Ha. I’m 52 now and I am reaching, desperately, for the light at the end of the tunnel.

What had my parents planned for me? My parents wanted me to be a little music teacher – yes, a ‘little’ music teacher. A little music teacher is a music teacher who works from home. This would be with their grandchildren running around my legs, of course, primed and ready to take care of their every whim in their dotage. And so I played along, all the while planning how to make my escape.

I knew from an early age I would not be going to university after high school. My family didn’t and doesn’t do education. I am the first person in my family to finish high school, let alone attempt higher education. This includes uncles, aunts, and cousins. I wish I could tell you my family was full of happy diamonds in the rough. Truth is it is full of very unhappy people, some in prison, many on pensions, who like to tear each other apart at every opportunity. And I remain the black sheep.

Where did my hapless university career start? When I was 34, I auditioned and was accepted to study a bridging program in classical piano. I had planned this since I was 12. I had longed to play the piano since I was 3 or so. One of my earliest memories is being threatened by the kindergarten teacher that if I did not stop touching the piano I would not be allowed to go swimming with the rest of the class in the harbour – and then having to watch my peer’s bathing capped heads bobbling in the water from a seat on the shore. I loved swimming, but I loved that siren, the piano, more. But, as everyone knows, my father told me, classical music is for snobs and since he did not want me to be a snob I would not study piano. Naturally, since my parents did not approve, I was obsessed.

I carried my obsession for thirty-odd years. Now, to say my father became angry when I told the parental unit I had been accepted into the local conservatorium studying a bridging program as a classical piano major 31 years later would be an understatement. Apoplectic, livid, enraged – he told me if he had known I would eventually pursue this artsy fartsy crap, he would have dragged me out of school when I was 15 and made me get a real job. He reminded me they told me if I went to uni, they would never talk to me again, and they meant it. Yeah? Three guesses why I haven’t told you before this, dad – and the first two are duds. They meant it and I knew they meant it.   And except for a handful of family meetings where I was told what a major, major disappointment I was and how I had driven my mother to heavy doses of mogodon and other prescription drugs, that was it.

My friends laughingly call me a professional student. They, too, have never been to university. If they had they would know nothing could be further from the truth. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the idea of a professional student is a hangover from the era of free education where students could drift from one degree to another without the noose of HECS or HELP or any other government imposed fee scheme leaving them with tens of thousands of dollars of debt. There is nothing professional about my time at university. There has also been nothing aimless, just frustration.

Seeing as I have been at uni for 20 years now, you’re probably guessing my bridging year in classical music did not go to plan and you would be right, but that is a long story for another day. That along with all of the other times I have managed to get into trouble in higher education. These are many and they are varied and just one would be enough to turn any sensible person away, but not me. I thought all these years what was happening was my fault. If I just worked harder, if I was just smarter, if I studied more, then everything would be alright.

Then, three years ago, I was talking with an independent academic advisor at the university about my PhD woes and I had an epiphany. This ‘independent’ person was in the middle of telling me there must be something wrong with me and that I must do as I was told. And right there, at the age of 49 I realised it wasn’t me – it was them. I had heard this before. What a load of crap. The constant disapproval, the holding at arm’s length – university had become my surrogate parent.

Now at the 20-year mark, I am at the brink of submitting my PhD thesis. Problem is, I don’t see any reason to submit it. It’s not that I don’t love my research, I do, but there is absolutely no advantage to me in submitting. The university has shown me numerous ways they will crush my research and I am sure they will if I let them.   I don’t know how I feel about this. I should feel angry, but I don’t. What I feel is indignant. Why should this institution receive $85K from the government and the even more important completion data after the rollicking they have given me? My research will always be mine and it will always be something I can be proud of. If I submit and they bury it, it’s gone – and why would I let them?

The meeting with the independent academic advisor not only opened my eyes, but pointed me to a completely different path. I had been feeling like a victim. What had happened? Two days after our regular meeting, my principal supervisor had sent me a ‘Dear Jo’ email. He had decided he didn’t want to supervise me anymore and I would have to leave. I then spent 10 months trying to find a solution. I went back and forth between my supervisor and the dean of research with no hope of resolution anywhere in sight.

It turns out supervisors are not allowed to just dump students over email, or any other way. It’s the law, apparently. If a supervisor cannot continue to supervise they must find a replacement suitable to both parties. University regulations state this and my supervisor had signed a contract to this affect. That they continued to ignore this and acted with impunity, encouraged me to dig my heels in. This, and 10 months of not being spoken to by anyone led me to the meeting with the independent academic advisor.

How a university professor can be independent advisor to students remains a mystery, but thankfully provided me with my lightbulb moment. After the meeting I sat back and thought about what I am really good at. All the advice from university, family, friends, and colleagues was I should just leave. It was really stressful and it was even more pointless. And then, there is was – my talent, my skill, my gift – what I am really good at – getting into trouble at university. According to cognitive psychology (and I have a degree in that) it takes 10 years to become an expert, so I am an expert in getting into trouble at university twice over and as George Gershwin said, they can’t take that away from me. They can’t take anything away from me unless I let them, and since I have learned to say no in a loud, clear voice, my days of waiting passively for approval that will never come are definitively and categorically over.

Why stay? There are advantages to remaining in the system. It turns out that if you hang around long enough, you can get yourself into all sorts of situations – sitting on boards with the deans, for one. And when your goal is to understand what is happening and why, and you keep your ear to the ground you learn a lot. My goal for a while has been to find out why, and I think I am getting a pretty good handle on it. This isn’t just my story – and it actually has barely scratched the surface. This happens more than you would think in many forms to many students, both domestic and international. Just what to do about it…..more trouble on the horizon, that’s for sure. And I don’t think I would want it any other way.