Table of contents for Winter 2016 in Smith Journal

He wasn’t much more than a kid when he arrived and had only been to school for a few years, but he eventually made a stack of money in the building industry. When he retired, he decided to go home. To show his pals and family members back on the island how successful he’d been in the new country, he nabbed the best bit of land and built himself a whopping great house. He imported all the materials, and even had to bring in some of his own tradies, because the locals didn’t have a clue on some of his construction methods. The result couldn’t have been better, as far as he was concerned – now, looking out to the Aegean, among the whitewashed buildings, is his very large and…

CLIMBING IS LIKE A GAME I’ve given up trying to figure out why I climb. I just like it, and always have done. From about the age of 12, my mum and dad would let me go up to the Blue Mountains on my own for the weekend to go climbing, and I’d sleep in caves. I find the combination of the physical effort and the mental focus climbing demands to be a really delightful cocktail. It’s like playing chess, but in a vertical world. BEING AWAY FROM EVERYTHING IS ADDICTIVE I have found with the passage of time a deeper and deeper satisfaction being in isolated, wild places. It’s not so much a function of isolation but of wilderness. It’s that unrelenting, unforgiving, uncompromising sense of power you get…

I’M A BRITISH POLICE OFFICER SECONDED BY THE BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE TO THE UNITED NATIONS. I’VE BEEN HERE SINCE AUGUST 2014 – IF YOU’D TOLD ME FIVE YEARS AGO I’D BE WORKING IN SOUTH SUDAN, I WOULD HAVE SAID YOU WERE BARKING MAD. But in 2011 the staff policing college in the UK asked me to help with some training of police officers from Qatar. It went much better than I’d expected and, at the time, I thought perhaps I could dip my toe into the international policing arena. That’s how I ended up in South Sudan. Being in the police service was something I’d wanted to do from a fairly young age. I didn’t shine at school whatsoever – I wasn’t a prefect, I never led anything, I sat…

BY THE TIME THIS ISSUE OF SMITH JOURNAL ARRIVES ON NEWSSTANDS, DONALD TRUMP WILL BE ALL BUT CONFIRMED AS THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES, OR WILL HAVE GOT CLOSER TO IT THAN ALMOST ALL OBSERVERS, THIS ONE INCLUDED, WOULD HAVE PREDICTED. The reason almost all observers were confident Trump would run out of road is that we assumed eventually he’d tell one whopper too many or too big or too grotesque, and get found out. But not only has Trump’s lack of interest in facts not impeded him, it has also been crucial to his progress. Whether consciously, like some finger-steepling Machiavellian genius, or inchoately, like some walnut-brained reptilian predator sensing quarry, Trump grasps – and epitomises – something profound about our times: that the…

FOR ME CHINA IS LIKE A WOMAN WHO HAS BETRAYED ME! IN THE LATE 1950S MY GRANDMOTHER WAS A COMMIE, AND GAVE ME BOOKS ABOUT WHAT A HERO MAO WAS, AND INDEED HE WAS. China was the whorehouse of Europe and America and the Western world, and Mao cleaned it up. He obviously tortured and killed a lot of people, but some good came of it. She also steeped me in Scott Nearing, who wrote a book in the ’50s called The Brave New World, which portrayed Mao and his tiny, shoestring Long March Army as heroic, idealistic underdogs. My father invented a small area of the law in which a shareholder with only one or two shares could sue a company if it was doing something to benefit the…

DURING WORLD WAR I, THE BOY SCOUTS AND GIRL GUIDES OF EDINBURGH WERE SECONDED FOR THE WAR EFFORT. IN PLACE OF WORKING FOR THEIR BASKET-MAKING AND BIRDWATCHING BADGES, THEY STARTED COLLECTING MOSS. Sphagnum moss, a spongy little plant that grows in cold, swampy places, worked a treat as a wound dressing and, with the help of Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s little followers, Britain was producing up to a million dressings a month. “It is very absorbent, far more so than cotton wool, and has remarkable deodorising power,” wrote one doctor at an army hospital in Egypt, as he put in his order for more of the stuff. Dried moss can apparently hold up to 22 times its own weight in water, as well as soak up blood and other bodily fluids.…

IN APRIL 2003, DURING THE FIRST DAYS OF THE AMERICAN INVASION, LOOTERS BROKE INTO THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF IRAQ IN BAGHDAD AND MADE OFF WITH MORE THAN 10,000 OBJECTS. Among the cache was the Gold Lyre of Ur, about 4500 years old, and one of the oldest surviving stringed instruments in the world. It was one of four lyres discovered in the 1920s, alongside 74 corpses, in what was believed to be Queen Puabi’s tomb, the ‘Great Death Pit’, in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. The frame of the Gold Lyre was later found broken in the museum car park, stripped of the precious metals that had adorned it. When amateur harp and lyre player Andy Lowings, a British civil engineer on the verge of retirement, heard about the…

AROUND 250 KILOMETRES OFF THE COAST OF HONOLULU IS A TINY BIT OF LAND SHAPED LIKE A CROOKED KNIFE. IT’S CALLED NIIHAU, BUT A LOT OF HAWAIIANS PREFER TO USE ITS NICKNAME: THE FORBIDDEN ISLAND. The place is almost impossible to visit. It’s been owned by a single family, the Robinsons, since 1864. They originally bought it from a Hawaiian king, Kamehameha V, for US$10,000 in gold. The bargain price came with just one condition: the Robinsons had to swear they’d protect the island’s small population of native inhabitants. They always took this agreement very seriously, and, as a result, the island is still almost exactly as it was 150 years ago. There’s no running water, no sealed roads, and – apart from a few cattle ranches – most of…

BORN: October 5, 1936, Prague, Czechoslovakia DIED: December 18, 2011, Hradecek, Czech Republic DURING THE FIRST 11 YEARS OF VACLAV HAVEL’S LIFE, HIS COUNTRY OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA HAD BEEN PERIODICALLY ANNEXED, DIVIDED AND BRUTALLY OCCUPIED: INVADED FIRST BY NAZI GERMANY, THEN THE SOVIETS. BY THE TIME HE TURNED 12, THE COMMUNIST PARTY WAS IN CONTROL, PLACING THE NATION IN A DISMAL STRANGLEHOLD IT WOULD TAKE 41 YEARS – AND ONE SCRUFFY DISSIDENT PLAYWRIGHT – TO ESCAPE. As the offspring of upper-middle-class parents, Havel was considered politically suspect by the new Communist regime, and so was barred from entering any uni with a humanities program. Instead, he slogged through two years of an economics degree at Czech Technical University before completing compulsory military service in 1959. Taking on a job as a…

COMING BACK INTO SYDNEY FROM AN OVERSEAS TRIP, KERRI WILSON GOT PULLED UP AT IMMIGRATION. THE GUY BEHIND THE DESK LOOKED AT HER FORM AND ASKED HER WHAT SHE DID IN THE WAY OF A JOB. SHE TOLD HIM SHE WAS AN OCULARIST: THAT SHE MADE ARTIFICIAL EYES. “Ah, that’s okay then,” he said. “I thought it said you were an occultist, and I was going to start checking through your stuff.” It was hardly surprising the bloke had never come across an ocularist before – all up, there are just seven in Australia. “We’re a rare trade,” she says. So rare that there’s no training course for such a thing – Wilson, who’d previously worked as a jillaroo and in antique restoration and was good at drawing as a…

EVERY DAY IS DIFFERENT AND THAT’S WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS JOB. YOU KIT UP, WALK OUT THAT DOOR AND JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. I’m a First Class Aboriginal Community Police Officer with the Northern Territory Police in Alice Springs. My dad is an Arrernte man so this is his Country, even though he was taken away at two years old as part of the Stolen Generation. I joined the police force in 2008 at the age of 40 because I wanted to make a difference and help my people. They need to understand the ‘law’ side of things, as much as the non-Indigenous officers need to understand the ‘lore’ side of Aboriginal culture. Achieving a balance where both complement each other is important. Prior to my time…

IT’S A BIG TIME COMMITMENT BEING THE ONLY POLICE OFFICER ON LORD HOWE ISLAND, BUT BY THE SAME TOKEN I’M LITERALLY IN PARADISE. EVERY DAY I HAVE A ‘WOW’ MOMENT WHERE I REALISE HOW LUCKY I AM TO WORK IN SUCH A BEAUTIFUL AND UNIQUE LOCATION. I’ve been with the NSW Police Force for almost nine years. After 16 years in the Australian Army I’d reached a crossroads – should I pursue military aspirations or find a job that’s more agreeable to a normal work/life balance? I couldn’t see myself doing anything out of uniform, so the NSW Police Force caught my eye. After seven years stationed at Surry Hills local area command, I submitted an expression of interest for an advertised position with the NSW Police on Lord Howe…

THE ANCIENT ART OF BUILDING THE PERFECT CAMPFIRE IS BOTH LIFE-AFFIRMING AND PRACTICAL: AN ESSENTIAL ASSET FOR THE SURVIVAL SKILLS BANK. Conjuring up nostalgic notions of childhood camping trips huddled around the fire or, more commonly, a pile of sticks clinging to flames for dear life, the furnace unites the team and keeps us warm. Like moths to a flame, we’re drawn to the humble campfire – we circle it and gaze into it for hours on end. But this doesn’t mean we know how to make it happen. When gathering friends for a camp-out under the stars, you’re going to come across a familiar character. You know the one: your mate who earned his fire safety badge in Boy Scouts back in the ’80s so thinks he’s the only…

A GROUP OF NORWEGIANS HAS ELEVATED THE CONCEPT OF GIFT-GIVING – BY 1365 METRES. THAT’S THE HEIGHT OF MOUNT HALTI, WHICH THE GENEROUS BUNCH WOULD LIKE TO GIVE FINLAND FOR ITS 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF INDEPENDENCE. A MOUNTAIN. AS A BIRTHDAY PRESENT. The idea makes sense. Norway has more than its fair share of peaks – nearly 300 soaring above 2000 metres. Finland, on the other hand, doesn’t have any that crack the 1500-metre mark. To make matters worse, the country’s highest point isn’t even a summit – it’s on the side of Mount Halti, which pinnacles just 20 metres inside the Norwegian border. In the words of one individual who commented on a Facebook page set up to promote the proposal: “Driving from Finland to Norway in the north is…

IF YOU EVER RIDE A MOTORCYCLE THROUGH THE INDIAN HIMALAYAS, MAKE SURE TO WEAR A PAIR OF SOCKS. IT MIGHT SOUND LIKE AN OBVIOUS PIECE OF ADVICE, BUT IT SOMEHOW SLIPPED NATHAN MILLWARD’S MIND WHEN HE WOUND THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS IN 2009. He turned up woefully underprepared; all he had to protect himself from the elements was an open-face helmet, a waterproof jumpsuit, a pair of Converse trainers and a single sock. Millward’s bike wasn’t exactly ideal, either. He’d come to tackle the climb with a Honda CT110 – a low-powered motorcycle that’s widely used by Australia Post. At first, it seemed to hold up okay. But, as the slopes got steeper, the engine began to whine and intermittently cut out. Then, near an altitude of 5000 metres, disaster struck:…

IN 1963, RUSSIAN ARCHITECT GALINA BALASHOVA RECEIVED A STRANGE PHONE CALL. It came from a senior member of the Soviet Design Bureau, who said they had an important assignment for her, but could only talk about it in person. It was too sensitive. Too secret. Deeply curious, Balashova agreed to meet the official at his office. Her mind wandered. What could the task be and why had she been selected for it? Up until that point, her career had been fairly modest. She had designed parks and memorials, and helped remove bourgeois decorations from old buildings. How did these projects interest someone so high up? Perhaps she was being tapped to oversee the construction of a new factory, or help with the plans for an apartment block? When she arrived…

ONCE UPON A TIME, DISPOSING OF UNWANTED INFORMATION WAS A SIMPLE PROCESS. DIDN’T LIKE WHAT WAS ON A CLAY TABLET? SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! THOUGHT A PARTICULAR SCROLL MIGHT BE INCRIMINATING? BURN IT IN A FIRE AND EXECUTE THE SCRIBE! The printing press changed all that. Suddenly it was possible to produce information on an almost uncontrollable scale. During the 20th century, as both printing and paper became ever more accessible, the paper trails we left in our wake grew and multiplied, defying our attempts to control or destroy them. Printed material filled entire offices, floor to ceiling; forms, filled out in triplicate, were filed in separate locations. Try destroying that during a lunch break. It’s hard to even burn a ream of paper successfully – there’s usually not…

IN 2015, CHRIS CHIVERS RECEIVED A STARTLING EMAIL. IT WAS FROM ISIS, THE TERRORIST GROUP CURRENTLY RUNNING AMOK IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND THEY WANTED TO SHOW HIM SOMETHING. As a reporter for The New York Times, Chivers was used to terrorists contacting him whenever they wanted some free press (a gift he rarely granted). But this message was different. It contained a photo of a strange-looking substance, roughly the shape of a swim-lane buoy. Confused, Chivers asked the sender what he was looking at. The response nearly knocked him off his seat: “Red mercury.” Chivers had heard a lot about red mercury over the years, though this was the first time someone had ever claimed to possess some. The substance was extraordinarily rare, ludicrously expensive and, if the rumours…

I HATE THE TERM ‘GUILTY PLEASURE’ BECAUSE IT SUGGESTS YOU HAVE TO FEEL GUILTY FOR LISTENING TO OR APPRECIATING A SONG, WHEN ALL MUSIC IS IMPORTANT AND AN EXPRESSION OF SOMEBODY’S SOUL, EVEN IF IT’S KIND OF SUPERFICIAL. BUT I THINK ‘BLURRED LINES’ QUALIFIES AS A GUILTY PLEASURE. I pay so little attention to pop radio; I only dabble. I pretty much turned away from radio when I was 12 years old and never looked back. It’s only gotten more synthetic and less organic; it’s just not my thing. I can’t even handle Adele. Really, the prevalence of Auto-Tune should be enough to put anyone off pop radio. But I felt ‘Blurred Lines’ had a hook. I remember I thought it was really funny and dirty. I know it became…

JIM HAYNES Jim Haynes, in the late 1960s, was the paragon who originated the idea of Arts Labs: anarchic, self-organising arts collectives that could germinate in any town or city, offering an instant platform, practical arts education and immense amounts of radical, productive fun to everyone involved, producing magazines, events and anything else that captured their fecund imaginations. Art and culture are our most effective political weapons, and Arts Labs placed them firmly in the talented hands of ordinary people. Without their instructive psychedelic multimedia free-for-all, the world would never have heard of me, or Hunt Emerson or David Bowie. I was part of Northampton’s Arts Lab in the ’60s and ’70s; we’ve recently organised a new one, and I’m more excited than I have been in years. Do it…

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A GREAT BELIEVER IN THE SAYING THAT BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO NOTHING. EVER SINCE I WAS A CHILD I THOUGHT THAT THE WORLD CAN BE AN UNFAIR PLACE. Later, I studied a lot of social history at university, about persecution, the Holocaust and how injustice happens. I joined the police because I wanted to try and redress that balance a little bit. I was also motivated by the police shows I watched on telly as a child. I was a fan of Dirty Harry, which I probably shouldn’t have been watching. Now I realise that series was quite detached from the realities of the job. The Bill is a bit more realistic, but I like the American shows more than the British ones: I…

I WASN’T THE KIND OF KID WHO KNEW THEY WANTED TO BE A POLICE OFFICER WHEN THEY GREW UP. THE REALISATION CAME LATER IN LIFE. I grew up in a small mountain community north of Los Angeles called Frazier Park. There wasn’t too much to do up there, so I spent a lot of time messing with computers. That’s when my interest in technology started. Later, at college, I became the social media intern with a record label called Dangerbird Records, and shortly after that I got a job working at Apple before eventually getting a job in advertising. Then one day, I was sitting at my desk and I just had an epiphany. Our time here is so limited; what is my stamp on the world going to be?…

FIVE YEARS AGO, SAMUEL GINSBERG WAS DRIVING TO WORK IN CAPE TOWN WHEN HE CAUGHT A NEWS STORY ON THE CAR RADIO ABOUT A MASSIVE FIRE IN A LOCAL SLUM THAT HAD DISPLACED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. That was nothing unusual – these fires are a common occurrence in his city – but for some reason, Ginsberg started wondering whether it would be possible to slap together smoke detectors so cheap that even slum dwellers could afford them, and whether distributing them to everyone wouldn’t solve much of the problem. Fires are an incredibly destructive aspect of life throughout one part of South African society. Around eight million of the country’s inhabitants live in ramshackle communities of lean-tos built of tin, wood and cardboard. Cooking and heating are largely done over…

WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF ‘LIKE’. LOGGING ON TO FACEBOOK, YOU’RE IMMEDIATELY EXPOSED TO A TORRENT OF THINGS YOU NEED TO POTENTIALLY EVALUATE OR LIKE. Pressing ‘Like’ could seem like a cop-out, because you’re not saying something more, not explaining why you like something. But, at the same time, there’s such a flood of information and we’re consuming it so quickly that it’s really the perfect response. It’s a little bit non-committal – you’re not saying it’s the best thing you’ve ever seen or the worst thing. I wonder if the ocean of ‘Like’ swamps the capacity for love. I don’t mean romantic love, but to be genuinely enthusiastic and engaged, where things really emotionally resonate with you. Certainly, the ‘Like’ has a levelling effect. On YouTube, something amazing…

IN EARLY 2014, HBO BEGAN AIRING TRUE DETECTIVE, AN EIGHT-PART TV SERIES ABOUT SERIAL KILLERS, HARDBOILED POLICEMEN AND THE OCCULT. STARRING WOODY HARRELSON AND A NEWLY RESPECTABLE MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, THE SHOW QUICKLY BECAME SOMETHING OF A POP-CULTURAL TOUCHSTONE FOR ANYONE WITH PREMIUM CABLE (OR A WORKING INTERNET CONNECTION). By the time the last episode aired in March, more than 3.5 million people in America were watching (legally, at least). But it wasn’t just the show’s nail-biting plot and star power that had audiences captivated: it was the look and feel of the series. An aura of menace permeated the show like the muggy Louisiana air its characters breathed. And while True Detective’s plot may have been as American as apple pie and a sixer of Lone Star beer, it actually…

OF ALL THE HEAD-SCRATCHING THEORIES SCIENTISTS HAVE THOUGHT UP OVER THE YEARS, FEW HAVE CAUSED AS MANY HEADACHES AS QUANTUM MECHANICS. It’s the branch of physics that focuses on the small stuff – atoms, particles, electrons – but it manages to make some pretty big claims about the nature of reality. For instance, according to quantum mechanics, particles can move in many directions at once, atoms can spin clockwise and anti-clockwise at the same time, and cats in boxes can be both alive and dead.1 (Google ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ if you’re looking for a good time.) Quantum mechanics is so surreal that Albert Einstein – who more or less came up with the idea in the first place – ended up arguing that it was too illogical to be true. When…