This photo of Matthew Mitcham was taken at the 2009 GLBT Mardi Gras. It has been picked up by the 2010 Gay Games and appeared in press around the world (Matthew is a spokesman for the games).
Behind the Cellar Door in Clare Valley
The Salon Rouge Gallery in Kapunda is pretty standard for these parts: off the highway, around a corner, down a lane of flaking houses, and patrolled by an affectionate dog. The owner is Jacqueline Coates, who is not aware of that smear of green paint across her nose, even as she offers up a bottle of wine she made last week ‘with friends.’ There is a small girl eating biscuits in an empty bathtub. There are several tipsy students, piles of pastels, a chandelier, and dozens of floral canvases. There is a glowing spirit of hospitality even more palatable than those famous Rieslings that hail from down the road. ‘Welcome to Clare Valley’ rings in the air, and nobody even needs to speak the words.
A flick through any guidebook will acquaint you with the Jesuit priests who planted the first vines here in 1851 for sacramental wine, a mere fifteen years after European settlement in South Australia. The same guidebook will then tell you about the internationally-acclaimed Cabernet Sauvignons and Rieslings; or about the myriad antique shops, farmhouse restaurants, historical watering holes, and boutique cellar doors which flavour the countryside two hours north of Adelaide. What it cannot tell you about is the elegant characters behind these places, the portraits hidden in the landscape. Salon Rouge and Jacqueline Coates are only the introduction.
The town of Burra, for example, is often described in terms of its historical interest. Credited with saving the young colony of South Australia from bankruptcy when a shepherd discovered copper near the Burra Burra Creek, it was, at its peak, more densely populated than Brisbane and Perth combined. Remnants of the tiny dugouts miners called home can be seen today in Blyth Street, where men crowded up against each other and disease in order to scrounge their meagre living. Among other things, visitors have the opportunity to descend into old brewer’s cellars, or stand high above the emerald green dam of the copper mine. Turn around and you’ll see the south of Burra nestled in the folds of the valley, a picturesque reminder of the industry it once embodied. The energetic staff at the information centre will lay all these offerings out on the table, and they’ll give you a key – literally. Many of the attractions are unmanned; a simple lock and a great deal of trust goes a long way in these parts of the world apparently. But the staff won’t circle everything on the map, and here’s where things get really interesting.
We stopped for lunch in the White Cedars Café on Commercial Street. In a forty-minute sitting we met the colourful proprietor and were told about a lush period cinema a short drive away. We were given drawn directions to a secluded restaurant. We were then invited to an art gallery opening later that afternoon, and all without being asked a single interrogative question. That glowing spirit of hospitality. Did I mention the café sold Balinese cuisine?
If you’re in a caravan or camper you can base yourself here perfectly for as little as $15 a night, or opt for Kapunda or the award-winning park at Clare instead. All parks have powered sites and are conveniently central. If you’re a camper, you’re given pride of place in the heart of town. But once you’re settled in, throw away the guidebook! Choose a direction, go for a meal, and trust the local knowledge and advice to set you on the trail.
Of course, because this is Clare Valley, that trail will inevitable lead you sooner or later to meticulously tended grape vines. And chances are the winery is boutique: less commercial than its big neighbour Barossa, Clare is home to a veritable bouquet of vintages you won’t find lining the shelves of BWS. One such trail is rather apted titled The Riesling Trail, and winds its way between Auburn and Clare and over twenty cellar doors. Hiring a bicycle or investing in some comfortable shoes is recommended for this one. The sheer space, clean air and views of harvesting between February and April are diminished in the confines of a car.
You might stumble across something like Mount Horrocks. Occupying the old railway station in Auburn, visitors can taste the award-winning wine while watching the rows of vines that seem almost to have pulled up alongside the platform and taken root. Winemaker Stephanie Toole restricts production to approximately 4,500 cases per year; all grapes are handpicked, all barrelled wines are held in the finest French oak. Here is the best Shiraz I’ve ever had, rich and spicy, all on the tip of a selfless stranger who shared stories of the region – operetta in the community hall, booms and busts, the tribulations of septic systems – over dinner and a bottle or two from a well-stocked cellar.
A well-stocked cellar is the name of the game at Sevenhill Hotel too, where patrons can descend to choose their own bottle while private parties turn the whitewashed rooms into a rousing shindig. The food is delicious, but once again it’s the off-menu experience that makes the evening special. A blank tomorrow is sketched in quickly by a well-informed waitress who encourages trips to Mintaro to visit her husband and his popular restaurant.
On the way you may pass a haystack with LIVE JAZZ burned into the side. You may pass a remarkable studio, Irongate, by contemporary artist Jen Penglase-Prior who greets you with a kiss and a private tour, describing with pride the eclectic town of eighty including ‘editors, prosecutors and scientists.’ Mintaro is certainly something to note, a State Heritage area with original Caltex pumps, a ruined flourmill, and a general store framed in brilliant autumnal red. Of course, there is that grand Georgian mansion just down the street. Featuring in the Peter Weir classic film ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock,’ Martindale Hall was originally (and incredibly) built for a 21 year-old, though it now plays host to overnight guests and costumed murder mysteries.
That waitress from Sevenhill had left a note on her husband’s pillow: lunch at his restaurant, Reilly’s Wines, was a memorable and affordable feast of roasted quail and seared lamb salad presided over by yet another gracious hostess. Following the general trend of hospitality, she toured us around the working vegetable garden behind the main building. Yes, that’s a wine leaf framing your rabbit terrine, and the garnish is freshly plucked. She also introduced dry land wines and the under-appreciated Grenache. A few years ago massive oversupply left the government paying growers to pull up vines throughout the region. Grenache was out of favour, and hit particularly hard. Reilly’s Wines resisted though, and their vine is now over 90 years-old and well worth the visit and celebratory glass.
The hands-on policy seems to be an unquestioned assumption here. Jen Penglase-Prior encourages visitors to touch the art pieces, and the current proprietor of Martindale Hall has banned barriers (and damaging stilettos), operating under a rule that might reasonably be summarised as ‘disuse equals abuse.’ All the antique fittings work and are routinely exercised. The billiards table is kept functional through constant use, and an alabaster night-light fashioned as the Taj Mahal continues to blaze away in the entrance hall around the clock.
The slower pace of the region also acts as a powerful attraction. Jacqueline Coates left Sydney and an enviable job to relocate her children and artistic ambitions; Rasa Fabian of Crabtree Wines made a similar shift with her partner Richard Woods, both former industry executives. Surrounded by her domesticated sheep, alpacas, cats and succulent figs, she loves the lifestyle even if she jokes that ‘Midori is considered exotic at the local pub.’ She then goes on to tell us about this man across the paddock we simply have to visit … and off we go again on another hot tip.
Perhaps it is this enthusiastic charm of the many who have taken up position around the vineyards that makes Clare Valley such an effortless detour on a road trip to the Flinders Ranges, or a trip all in itself.
After all, you don’t have to be a wine connoisseur to appreciate a warm reception.
Theatre Review - Gatz
‘Sometimes during gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair,’ deadpans Nick Carraway (Scott Shepherd), sitting across from a pink suited Gatsby halfway through the marathon Gatz by New York theatre ensemble Elevator Repair Service. Over seven-and-a-half hours Shepherd will speak almost every last word of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel detailing ‘that most limited of all specialists, the well-rounded man.’ The few lines he doesn’t speak will be gleefully snatched up by the brittle Daisy, or chauvinistic Tom, or that strange shuffling secretary who seems always to be in the act of falling forwards.
Gatz is not a traditional adaptation of The Great Gatsby, though given its beautifully-spoken verbatim text it could be accused of being the most faithful adaptation ever.
In a shambolic urban office an unnamed man sits down at his desk to find his computer unresponsive. Rebelliously, he picks up an old paperback and begins to read. Cue an inexorable slide into the luxury of the novel: office co-workers become co-conspirators, embodying Fitzgerald’s characters through a procession of breathtaking chapters from Myrtle’s New York party to the devastating bloody threads of Gatsby’s famous demise.
One quickly gets the impression of people who, having broken into the liquor cabinet for highballs and finding high literature instead, start up an elaborate dare of seeing how far they can push their game under the watchful stare of a voyeuristic audience. What results is a curious riff on the Great American Dream as child’s play, a mime of dress-ups and thinly veiled imaginations in which an office space is both infinite in its possibilities and utterly inadequate at holding down any sense of fixed and dependable meaning. The office is an interesting choice: when most people see the American Dream as realised through work, Gatz suggests that the work is the dream. That beat-up leather couch near the desks in the middle of the room is a grand piano and then a car and then a pool float, and finally the deathbed of all these things. Work can serve the purpose of propping up manufactured fantasies, which was part of Fitzgerald’s point.
And it is Fitzgerald who resounds as the most remarkable aspect of the performance. Shepherd’s voice is a marvel, his unflagging narration a staggering display of endurance. The supporting cast is also strong, even if certain comedic choices occasionally ring false. But all bow in deference to the cut-glass language, Fitzgerald’s ability to distill complexity to its most elemental features. Shepherd carries the novel around like its the Holy Bible, and if you can last distance you’ll walk out in agreement, amazed that such a perfect thing could have been written in the first place.
(Written for SameSame.com - here)
Mary and Max and Adam (and Oscar)
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely playdoh – or polymers, plastics, clays and metal, to be exact, if the world is that of animator Adam Elliot. And no six-day turnover here; this Mary and Max claytasia of Australian suburbs and New York tenements was five years in the making.
“I never wanted to be a filmmaker,” laughs Elliot as we sit down in the sleek and deserted interior of Zeta Bar late Friday afternoon. “I still don’t.” He’s been interviewing all day, rushing around town, fortified by pots of Earl Grey tea. He looks exhausted but speaks excitedly and waves away a publicist keeping an eye on the time. “I was always creative. My dad was an acrobatic clown and so that’s in my blood; my brother’s an actor and my mum’s a very creative hairdresser. I was always making things out of egg-cartons and pipe cleaners. I was always drawing.”
What did he aspire to be then, growing up on a prawn farm and later in the suburbs of Melbourne? “A vet,” he admits. “And I still want to be a vet because I can’t – I’m terrible at maths and science. That’s why there’s a lot of injured or dead animals in all my films. If this film makes me rich and famous my partner and I want to start up a pug farm out in the country.”
Irony aside, the question of fame is a pertinent one given Elliot’s successes. After graduating from VCA and producing a trilogy of shorts, winning two AFIs along the way, he stretched his talents across a 22-minute canvas called Harvie Krumpet (available here) and suddenly found himself on the stage of the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, accepting a less malleable little puppet called Oscar in 2003.
After that, he could have done anything. He did Mary and Max, with a team of over one hundred “anarchists”(his word). 212 puppets, 133 sets, 12 litres of water based sex lube, and 808 miniature Earl Grey tea bag boxes hand cut, folded, glued, wrapped and airbrushed. “If I’d known it was going to be this hard to make,” he sighs, unconvincingly, “I wouldn’t have gone down the path.”
Based on a true story, Mary and Max tells the tale of a lonely but imaginative Australian girl and her extended correspondence with a quiet New York ‘Aspie’ (a person with Aspergers Sydrome). It’s unconventional, to say the least – and unexpectedly brilliant. But why, I wondered, given the Herculean effort of claymation, did Elliot match this story with this medium? “Well, I think people are only just getting, especially in the West, that animation can actually be a more powerful cinematic device than live-action. You have to suspend your disbelief. In a way, animation can be more liberating and take the audience on an emotional journey far more succinctly than live action can.”
Mary and Max also paints one of the more interesting portraits of Australia in recent cinematic memory. Watch for the faces on postage stamps, the footy in the gutter. “I wanted to pick the iconic stuff that was not repelling to Australians,” he affirms, “so the garden gnome in the Collingwood football jumper. Stuff that’s slightly kitschy but not too – you know – there’s no Ken Done stuff. It’s nostalgic and there’s sentiment there, but not to the point of being saccharine.” To his credit, Elliot squeezes more authenticity out of one pair of Y-fronts hanging on a hills hoist than Baz Luhrmann did with a dozen render farms. “Well,” he admits, smiling at the mention of the underpants, “there’s a little reference to my previous film Harvie Krumpet where I actually had to animate in my Y-fronts because it was so hot in the studio.”
This disarming honesty is indicative a person for whom the work is the passion; this publicity stuff is a bewildering afterthought. “At Sundance, when I had to get up in front of two thousand people – it was like the Oscars all over again, I’m seeing all the same faces – I was standing there with Robert Redford, and I’m thinking, how did this happen?”
He laughs, covering his face with his hands. The staff switch on the music for the night’s trading, opening the bar and closing the interview. “There is a reference to me in one of the cemetery shots in the film. My epitaph says ‘Very overrated.’”
Not if Mary and Max is any indication.
(Written for SameSame.com - here)
“ Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, -Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come ; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. ”
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville.
Possibly the most inadvertantly homosexual passage in the history of English literature. I know he is talking about the white liquid found in the cranial cavity of the Sperm Whale, but my god Herman. MY GOD.
