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Kill your darlings

Kill Your Darlings

PO Box 271, Seddon West 3011, Victoria, Australia

Email: info@killyourdarlingsjournal.com

Web: www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com

Kill Your Darlings 17, 2014

Publishing Directors Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent

Editor-In-Chief Rebecca Starford

Editor Brigid Mullane

Online Editor Emily Laidlaw

Interviews Editor Bethanie Blanchard

Sales and Marketing Coordinator Claire Hielscher

Editorial Assistant Hop Dac

Online Assistant Veronica Sullivan

Proofreaders Erin Stutchbury, Michelle Allan

Published by Kill Your Darlings Pty Ltd

This collection © Kill Your Darlings 2014

ISBN 978-0-9808076-4-6, ISSN 1837-638X

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form

or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission

of Kill Your Darlings. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors are not necessarily

those of the editors.

Cover illustration: Guy Shield

Design and layout: © Kill Your Darlings

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the

Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

5 Editorial

COMMENTARY

9 Different Pond, Different Fish | Crossed Wires in Australian–Indonesian Relations

In light of the spying revelations and Operation Sovereign

Borders, Jim Della-Giacoma examines the decline of relations

between Australia and Indonesia, and reveals that sometimes

our closest neighbours are the people that we understand

the least.

27 Brave New World | The Social Impact of Hooking Up in the Internet Age

Michael Lindsey Davison investigates the rise of Tinder and

analyses how it is affecting not only the way we think about

dating but also the way we think.

39 Transition | On Becoming the People We Are

Alice Robinson writes about transformation and the arrival

49 How Should a City Be? | Durban after Mandela

On the morning after Mandela’s death Michael Richardson

ponders the future of urban renewal in South Africa and

what that means for the market stalls of Warwick, Durban.

61 Read What You Know | The Comfort of the Familiar

Kate Larsen revisits her favourite books and contemplates the

pleasure that lies in rereading.

CONTENTS

69 The Political Tourist in Myanmar | Totalitarian Nostaglia and How to Get Travel All Wrong

Belinda Lopez travels to Myanmar and delves into the motives

behind political tourism.

85 All the Love Gone Bad | On Men and Music Lost

Koren Helbig on music, memory and abandoned love.

93 Displacement | Syria’s Refugee Children

Wendy Bruere takes us inside a Syrian refugee camp and

the lives of the children who live there.

FICTION

103 The Lake | Ben Walter

113 Out in the Wild | Chris Somerville

INTERVIEW

125 Bethanie Blanchard in conversation with Eleanor Catton

REVIEWS

157 A Masterpiece You Might Not Want to See | The Ethics of Devastating Cinema

Justin Wolfers considers Amour, Snowtown, 12 Years a Slave

and the power of brutal cinema.

167 Been a Son | Kurt Cobain and His Challenge to the Masculine Ideal

On the twentieth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death Rebecca

Howden

EDITORIAL

Welcome to issue 17 of Kill Your Darlings. In this issue we will take you around the globe with contributions

from Indonesia to Myanmar and South Africa to Syria. In this issue’s feature Jim Della-Giacoma provides an

insightful and timely look into the state of Australian–Indonesian relations. Jim has lived in Indonesia intermittently for twenty years and has an invaluable understanding of the challenges that threaten our ties to Indonesia. Edward Snowden’s revelations of the Australian Government spying on Indonesian conversations, Australia breaching Indonesian waters and Operation Sovereign Borders all promise to strain the relationship with our neighbour to the north. As our government commits to continuing to ‘turn back the boats’, Jim considers what effect this will have on our relationship with Indonesia, and what repercussions we might face.

Elsewhere in Commentary, Michael Richardson invest-igates the pitfalls of urban renewal in a post-Mandela Durban; Belinda Lopez explores her motives as a political tourist in Myanmar and Wendy Bruere, an aid worker, shows us the reality of life inside a Syrian refugee camp.

Closer to home, Michael Lindsey Davison examines how the rise of Tinder is affecting not only the way we think about dating but the way our brains are wired; Alice Robinson writes insightfully about the transition from individual to mother; Kate Larsen illuminates the pleasures

6 | Kill Your Darlings, Issue 17

of rereading and Koren Helbig contemplates the connections between music, love and memory.

In Fiction, we have new work from Chris Somerville, author of We Are Not the Same Anymore. In his story ‘Out in the Wild’ Chris examines family dynamics against the backdrop of a Queensland casino, while Ben Walter tackles a father and son relationship in his story, ‘The Lake’.

In Reviews, Rebecca Howden revisits the power of Kurt Cobain’s feminist message on the twentieth anniversary of his death, and – in light of the critical success of movies such as Amour and 12 Years a Slave – Justin Wolfers looks at the power of harrowing cinema.

In Interviews, our new interviews editor Bethanie Blanchard had the privilege of an extended conversation with Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton. Much like her novel The Luminaries, this interview is fascinating (and lengthy) and we are thrilled to bring it to you here in full.

We’re also excited to welcome Veronica Sullivan to the KYD team. Veronica is our new Online Assistant, social media extraordinaire and will be running our upcoming KYD Book Club. Stay tuned for more details and, in the meantime, happy reading!

Brigid Mullane | Editor

COMMENTARY

‘While we met at the river as equals, it was not always a place of cultural harmony.’

Photograph © Clinton Rivers.

DIFFERENT POND, DIFFERENT FISH

Crossed Wires in Australian–Indonesian Relations

Jim Della-Giacoma

When Australians went to the polls in 2013, they were offered a stronger relationship with Indonesia.

It was said the coalition’s foreign policy would be ‘more Jakarta and less Geneva’; focused on the concerns of our region rather than diplomacy in distant capitals. It was a catchy slogan, to be sure, but as a pledge, it did not fit easily with another plank of the campaign. If elected, opposition leader Tony Abbott also committed that his government would ‘turn back the boats’ stating that asylum seekers sailing from Indonesia were not welcome here.

These sound bites were short and well-suited for an election campaign but contradictory. Australians, he judged, were fed up with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers ‘ jumping the queue’ and supported a muscular military-

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‘While we met at the river as equals, it was not always a place of cultural harmony.’

Photograph © Clinton Rivers.

10 | Kill Your Darlings, Issue 17

style response. But behind the second catchphrase were some big assumptions. It was an Australian solution to a regional problem; we could go it alone. It would turn our problem into Indonesia’s; it presumed they would accept this. And, if it worked, it was worth betting that the relationship with Jakarta would not go down with the ship. It is too early to assess whether Operation Sovereign Borders has arrested the flow of people sailing illegally to Australia. But the effect of this approach on Australia’s relationship with its large neighbour to the north is already becoming evident.

After announcing this war on illegal immigrants, the relationship began to suffer collateral damage during the election campaign. Nobody foresaw the stealth attack that had already been launched from across the Pacific, when an everyman contractor fled from another set of islands seeking asylum. In May 2013, Edward Snowden, a computer specialist at the US National Security Council (NSC) walked out of his office in Hawaii with the agency’s secrets and fled to Hong Kong. He was eventually given sanctuary in Russia. The shock wave took time to bounce back into our region but by October, after the new government took power, it was out that Australia had for years been spying on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his inner circle, and even SBY’s wife. The Australian Signals Directorate was rather good at it and had all their mobile numbers. Under a long-