The Maroon Diaries

It's not often that I get the opportunity to mark a centenary, but this is such an occasion, so I want to share something special with you. I've had this book for about nine years or so now. A friend of mine found it in a rubbish skip on the street in Five Dock, an inner western suburb of Sydney. He knew it was precious and saved it, but he didn't know what to do with it. It was when I showed him my altered book art that he decided that I loved old books enough to appreciate such a treasure, and he gave it to me. I don't know what to do with it either, either than love it and be amazed by it. One hundred years ago, at Christmas in 1916, this book was presented to Dorothy Wickham Bate for Music. The latest date I can find recorded in the book is 1936. For twenty years, Miss Bate kept this book with her, adding new friends and memories to it regularly. I don't know why she stopped keeping it - there are plenty of blank pages still left - or where it was in all ...

source: Australian War Memorial I used to be a pacificist. It was so simple - War is Wrong, any violence is wrong, anyone choosing to participate in it is wrong, and that's that. I knew how right I was with all the confidence and ignorance of a member of a generation that has never known war. I grew up in Australia in the 1980's, where there was no war. The blackfellas had long been defeated and their history revised. War was something from history books, something that other, less intelligent countries still did, something you could see on the news, but it was never a part of my life. I was 13 when Australia went to the Gulf War, but I didn't know anyone who was involved, and couldn't see what it had to do with us at all. And because my priveleged, peaceful, Western society was all that I knew, I thought it was normal. I had an image of the history of the world as being mostly peaceful, interrupted by bouts of terror and violence occasionally. I didn't see h...

Like most of my generation, I grew up watching an awful lot of television. An awful lot of crappy, often American television with all the brainwashing advertising in between. I certainly developed addictive behaviours toward televsion viewing as a child. Once I was grown up, I decided that that was bad. When I had my own place, I lived without television, and had no doubt that I was better off. When I thought of people who use television to deal with their moods, I had nightmarish visions of overweight women in pink, Tim-Tam-crumb-infested nighties watching Ricki Lake and home shopping infomercials. As long as I didn't have a television set, that could never be me. I sure as hell wasn't giving up the Tim Tams. However, I did go out of my house sometimes. Sometimes I was in other people's houses. So I still got to see plenty of television here and there over the years. And I came to understand that there's a lot of really good stuff on television, too, and to appreciat...

How can you 'celebrate' the armed invasion and occupation of the Australian continent for penal slavery and the attempted genocide of the Aboriginal peoples? For me and many other Australians, today, January 26, is a day of mourning, and we call it Invasion Day. The myth of Australia Day was just one of those lies we were taught by society for the purpose of suppressing its true history. Like I said on December 25th , there's no fucking way I'm going to celebrate that. By the time I was twelve years old, I was pretty well educated for a kid, and a star student. But still, after 8 years of public school education, my understanding of the 'settlement of Australia' was that it went pretty much like this - Captain Cook discovered Australia and turned up with a boatload of convicts on January 26, 1788. When they got there, there were Aborigines living there. However, they weren't really people, they were actually just native Australian animals, so it was ok...

Op-shop rummaging has yielded some delightfully retro results lately. I must give credit to Majikfaerie for the discovery of this gem. She spotted it in an op shop in the big town and knew I would want it. Melba Art Needlework Book, published by Hawksworth & Osborne at 24 Flinders St. Melbourne, and retailed at one shilling. We couldn't find a date of publication, but I reckon it was around about the time when a book like this would have cost one shilling. Now I thought I was pretty knowledgable about textile art techniques, but there are stitches and methods in here that I have never heard of before . Alston stitch, Craig stitch, double cape plait stitch, oyster stitch, thorn stitch, rambler rose stitch. Can you imagine how exciting that is for me? At a jumble sale style op shop in the village, I came across a plastic bag stuffed with bits and pieces that seemed to be the chucking-outs of someone's crafty-sewing things collection. Jackpot! Why is a retro sewi...

These beautiful works of art were formed by the patient fingers of a generation of anonymous women. I have no evidence that all these pieces were created by women, but I'm confident that it's a reasonable guess. In another generation, I might not be so sure. I have found these treasures in op shops everywhere, with an eye out always for the pretty, handcrafted details on a tablecloth, pillowslip or doily. I can't bear the sadness of the thought of these items being unwanted. I scoop them up and take them home and adore them, and honour the women who have created art with needle and thread since the beginning of human culture. I wonder who the woman who created each piece was, what she was thinking of and hoping for as she stitched. I wonder whether, when she folded the piece for the last time, she knew that she was doing so. I wonder whether she is still alive somewhere, or has passed on. I wonder at the circumstances of the creation, the adventu...