Disturbing undertones - Page 2

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Dorothy Johnston

Page 2 of 2

IN 1998, THE ACT ACHIEVED SELF-GOVERNMENT. Our fourteen-member Legislative Assembly and successive chief ministers, Labor and Liberal, have caused headaches for federal governments and the National Capital Authority. Legislation decriminalising marijuana and prostitution was quickly passed, and bans were removed on X-rated videos and magazines so that Canberra became a centre for the distribution of pornography. Assembly debates from this period make interesting reading, for the arguments back and forth over the image the capital ought to project and confusion about the purpose of its citizens. A kind of up-yours attitude has developed under the big foot of the Commonwealth which, from time to time, squashes the tiny territory's determination to make its own laws. As with the Tent Embassy, it is proximity which lends bite to gestures of protest or defiance. We are just under their noses. They can pretend to ignore us, but they can't.

A brothel called Parliament House in Fyshwick, one of Canberra's industrial suburbs, mirrors and pokes fun at its namesake. In Canberra, prostitution is zoned light industrial, which means it's legal in Fyshwick, Hume and Mitchell and illegal everywhere else. This is perhaps a comment on the absence of heavy industry. In these zones, there is no traditional manufacturing to dirty the air, or watch going out of business. Parliament House Fyshwick, so discreet during the day that you would never notice it, is built above a sandwich bar and bottle shop. By night, the name becomes a great neon circle in the darkness. At sunset, customers and potential customers begin to gather. They buy six packs at the bottle shop. They've parked their Commodores, utes and semi-trailers, and stand around them, cans and bottles in their hands, kidding one another while they work up enough courage to walk through Parliament House's door.

My other favourite brothel is called Club Goldfinger. It's situated on top of a discount tyre place in Mitchell. There's a large billboard at the front showing a beautiful young woman dressed in gold holding on to the Parliament House flagmast. She stands there proudly, our local Statue of Liberty. Underneath her, in big black letters, is an advertisement for the tyre place: four new tyres plus alignment $49.50, lube $39.95.

THESE PLAYS OF OPPOSITES TEND TOWARDS THE GOTHIC, albeit mostly in a light-hearted way. In my view, Canberra Gothic could well become its own sub-genre. I see myself contributing to it through my crime series and The House at Number 10 , a literary novel set in an imaginary suburban brothel. Crime fiction is an interesting way to write about the layers – often absurdly separated – of this city, and to try to capture in words the contradictions – visual, physical, social and political – of living here.

It is appropriate to invoke the Gothic as a model because the most potent of our symbolic buildings rests inside, as well as rising above, a hill. Above ground, the flagmast and granite walls of the Parliament easily dwarf the surrounding landscape, and the human aspirations and endeavours they are meant to represent.

As Sir John Overall put it: "Griffin had deliberately decided against placing the Parliament on Capital Hill – the dominant natural feature of Canberra – to avoid the symbolism that would go with placing the politicians in a position where they could look over the rest of the city. But the winning design sought to remain true to Griffin's intent by burying the Parliament in the hill."

The Gothic tale, a child of the Enlightenment, both mimicked and mocked its parent. In 1788, as the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay and the colony of New South Wales, with its projections towards a democratic future and a convict underbelly, was born, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason was being published. At the same time, writes Evelyn Juers in "She Wanders: An Essay in Gothic": "Ann Radcliffe was working on her first piece of fiction, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne ". The novels which followed Radcliffe's example were often set in ancient castles, making much of locks and keys, as well as whispered secrets that led to untimely, nasty ends, and acknowledging the chthonic depths, the dungeons and hidden byways that were as important a part of a fortress as its towers.

Inside our Parliament, locked doors and secrets abound. Ravished maidens are in shorter supply, though Cheryl Kernot once blamed Canberra's artificial way of life for falling into bed with Gareth Evans. Whether newcomers arrive searching for an entry, perhaps believing it is assured them, or live with their backs turned to it, our castle's influence can be overwhelming. The fact that inland Australian light shines brightly on it, that it is seldom veiled in mist like Kafka's castle, makes it more, not less, mysterious. The clear, inland light promises truth. It suggests that nothing less will be forthcoming.

But underground is a different story. Under Knossos lies Daedalus's labyrinth. Under every seat of power lie doors and openings to a core of fear and other dark emotions, for which the Minotaur is a most powerful and enduring metaphor.

In spite of Romaldo Giurgola's design, and the democratic principles to which he and his team remained committed, I imagine Edgar Allen Poe would feel just as much at home inside our hill as Thoreau, Emerson or Kant.

Canberra's front parlour approach to visitors is also suggestive of the Gothic. Keep the parts of your house that visitors see admirably clean and neat for important guests, and on no account let your children play there. Shove out of sight into the back room, or the basement, what you don't want anybody gawking at, but can't quite discard.

THE AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISTS FOUND KANT an inspiration as they developed a belief in the importance of intuition, and the individual's relationship to nature. It would be several decades before their philosophy found full expression and the classic phase of the Gothic novel came to an end. It would not be until the beginning of another new century that their teachings, coupled with Jeffersonian democratic ideals, would influence the young Walter Burley Griffin.

"Life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text," wrote Emerson in 1836. But fifty years later, giving his hundredth lecture before the Concord Lyceum, he spoke of "a war between the intellect and affection, a crack in Nature".

In Canberra, kangaroos hop down suburban streets. Once one took up residence in the park just down from our place. I suspect he'd lost his way and could not get back to Mt Majura or the O'Connor Ridge. Sometimes, having crossed a double highway from Black Mountain, mothers with joeys hop frantically along the lake. In November, bogong moths, migrating to the Snowy Mountains in their tens of millions, sometimes get blown off course. Perhaps mistaking Parliament House for the granite masses of their destination, perhaps attracted by the lights, they land on the building's roofs and walls, wing-tip to wing-tip, a fabulous velvet cloak. They play havoc with the air-conditioning and are a public nuisance. Once, on a windy spring night, I watched them lift and settle, lift and settle.

In mid-summer, when those who can afford it are down the coast, the city has that deep quiet of a country town at noon, when nothing much happens out of doors. The light is so clear it hurts your eyes. As before, and starkly, what seems absent to outsiders is the human scale Griffin was keen on.

Firestorm, January 2003: trees exploding into and around the capital, fire annihilating whole suburbs that lay against pine plantations and the bush. Nature run amok and merciless, making us take notice, pay attention. The fires that killed thousands of kangaroos and possums exposed a wombat city underground, a city of vast, interconnecting tunnels, their mouths hard and unyielding as charcoal. With my family, I went out at the weekends to leave bright orange carrots at the tunnel entrances. A sentimental, futile gesture perhaps, but one that we wanted to make. In March, the autumn rains came. The rivers ran ash. Australia went to war with Iraq. People marched around Civic in tens of thousands to demonstrate against it.

When the time came to design and build a memorial to those who'd died in the bushfires, and to all that had been lost, residents decided on a small-scale tribute, on regenerated land in Stromlo Forest Park. Dedicating it in January 2006, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope praised the artists for responding "to the community's request for a memorial that is simple, natural and beautiful, a place of contemplation with running water, trees, and seating".

It is in acts of honouring the dead that the city's authentic monuments are growing. Griffin's land axis links Parliament House to the War Memorial, where a funeral service for the internment of the "unknown Australian soldier" was held in 1993. Historian Ken Inglis described this as "a climactic event in the making of a place in the nation's capital sacred to the spirit of Anzac". David Headon quotes novelist Christina Stead as calling the nation's capital "freer because it is unfinished and all its components not yet joined."

I cannot foresee a time in which they will be joined, nor do I wish for such a future for my city. The gaps allow unheralded surprises: spontaneous, troublesome, ignoble, courageous and human. ♦

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References

Wild Weeds and Wind Flowers (Angus & Robertson, 1990)

Country and Calling (Faber, 1954)

'The writer and society', in Maryanne Dever (ed.), M. Barnard Eldershaw: Plaque with laurel, essays, reviews & correspondence (UQP, 1995)

Riverslake (Angus & Robertson, 1953)

The Paper Castle (Collins, 1990)

The Turtle Beach (Penguin, 1981)

Canberra Tales (Penguin, 1988)

The House at Number 10 (Wakefield Press, 2005)

Canberra Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Federal Capital Press, 1995)

Critique of Practical Reason (Macmillan, 1993)

“She Wanders: An Essay in Gothic” (Heat, no. 15, 2000)

The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (Arno Press, 1972)

Selected Essays (Penguin, 1982)

Sacred Places — War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Miegunyah Press, 1998)

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