>[!INFO]+ Meta >Area:: [[Neverland - The Lost Continent of Australia]] >Date:: 2013 >Tags:: #text #Australia #Lebanon *Large chariots, arriving from the country, rolled their wheels over the flagstones in the streets. Dromedaries, baggage-laden, came down the ramps. Money-changers raised the penthouses of their shops at crossways, storks took flight, white sails fluttered. In the wood of the Tanith might be heard the tambourines of the sacred courtesans, and the furnaces of baking the clay coffins were beginning to smoke the Mappalian point.* Gustave Flaubert[^117] Entering the Piccadilly nightclub is like walking into a dragon's lair. Smoke belches out of the mouths and curls from the nostrils of the men and women sitting around tables covered with delicacies of raw lamb, tongue and liver. Patrons suck on hoses connected to gurgling *agillehs*, ornately painted glass vessels housing gold stems crowned with tassels. The smoke wafting through the air is sweet, tasting of apple and pomegranate. It has none of the acrid chemical smell produced by commercial cigarettes. It would be difficult to imagine anything more exotic to Australian culture. Yet this scene today is bounded by quintessentially Australian elements---from the most successful entrepeneurs of contemporary arts and politics to the roots of colonial identity in the British Empire. Both past and present Australia are both indelibly touched by this Levantine scene of enjoyment. Back to the Piccadilly ... A team of waiters is busy tending these *agilleh*; they dispense coals from braziers to keep them well stoked. Smokers recline back into their seats and absorb the ambience. There's freshly squeezed carob juice to wet the throat and ample nuts and fresh fruits. A couple of Druze from Brazil have brought their own private matte sets. There is everything to sate the senses---everything but alcohol. The music begins slowly; every note is well considered and each word is carefully chosen. The singer's introductory *mowel* is drawn out, heedful of the occasion and sung with sincerity. The audience applauds key words, like '*Ramadan*'. As the tabla beat quickens, the smokers languidly wave the tips of their hoses in the air. An elderly man begins clapping, and dozens immediately join him. They make a sharp sound by bringing the palms of their hands together, rather than crossing them as is the Western fashion. The result is crisper and catches the offbeat. Though it's not encouraged in the holy month of Ramadan, a few men enter the dance floor and flirt with each other. The Piccadilly is the heart of Lebanese Melbourne. Its clients are first- and second-generation migrants, mostly from the mountainous north near Tripoli. Many are connected to the Lebanese Communist Party, which continues to celebrate its struggles against the French imperialists. The club's owner, Claude, is trying to carry on the tradition of Ramadan nights, when Moslem and Christian share enjoyment of the quieter classical Arab music. Like Ricky in *Casablanca*, he hangs on the outside, beyond politics and religion. Claude never advertises; he just spends the day on the phone ringing the regulars when something special is coming up. If I'm lucky, he'll ring me---it amuses him to see a few Aussies in the place. If they follow the path of previous generations of Lebanese, these patrons will gradually give away their customary enjoyments. As the son of parents who migrated from Hachit, in north Lebanon near Khahil Gibran's birthplace, Claude is somewhere in between the fresh and the assimilated Lebanese. He is confident with Australian ways but has not lost his taste for Lebanese culture. It is this range of assimilation that makes the Lebanese a unique group in Australia. Most other migrant groups, such as post-war arrivals from the Mediterranean and Vietnamese boat people, come in one or two large waves. By contrast, the Lebanese have been trickling into Australia steadily since the late nineteenth century. The contrast between fourth- and first-generation Lebanese demonstrates their long and successful journey into the heart of Australia. It shows their fabulous success in reaching the centre of Australian culture, but also the toll this has placed on their sense of identity. #### **Too many hats and not enough kibbeh** At the other end of the scale to the Piccadilly is the Victorian Parliament. The Premier of Victoria presides here over legislation, community leadership and the maintenance of Anglo traditions. Despite this authority, you couldn't find a politician more appealing to the average voter that the current Premier, Steve Bracks. A straight-down-the-line guy, he is a passionate football supporter and friend of people from both sides of the track---unions and their bosses. He also happens to be the first leader in the long history of the Australian Labor Party from non-English speaking stock. In the 1890s, Bracks' great-grandparents arrived in Australia from a town in Lebanon called Zahlé. About forty kilometres east of Beirut, Zahlé lies on the eastern slopes of Mt Sannin and forms the centre of business for the Bekaa valley. Given the complex web of ethnic responsibilities entrusted to any state leader, Bracks is probably wise to play down his own background. Yet third- and fourth-generation Lebanese have risen to important positions in around Australia. Another descendent of the Bracks family, Frederick, started Bracks Slacks in Sydney in 1956, which is still one of Australia's biggest men's apparel suppliers. Other descendants from Lebanese include Australia's most distinguished writer (David Malouf), the most successful name in Melbourne's fashion industry (Jo Saba), two of Melbourne's top chefs (Greg Malouf and Michael Bakash), and the Chief Executive Officer of the City of Melbourne (Michael Malouf). Lebanese will continue to shape Australia. In 2002, the CEO of Benson Socks, Elias Jreissati, was heralded by the director of the National Gallery of Victoria as one of a breed of twenty-first century patrons, after he donated \$2 million. These individuals are not only Lebanese, every one of these distinguished Australians can trace their origins back to the same town---Zahlé.[^118] So what makes Zahlé special? What magic occurred to turn the desperate of Zahlé into the powerful of Melbourne in only a couple of generations? And what did they leave behind? On Easter Thursday 1997 a dinner at RMIT's Storey Hall, the 'First and Last Supper', explored what Australia would have been like if colonised by the Phoenicians. Patrons were requested to wear an item of purple clothing (the Phoenician trade was mainly in purple dye). They were entertained by local Lebanese musicians and dancers. Projected on the screen was a fake Lonely Planet web site detailing the tourist sights of Shukkinak, the designated name for this place. Historian Michael Cathcart donned the persona of Dr Gilbert Gilbertus, 'archaeologist, historian and philosopher to the House of Caesar'. Speaking on behalf of a Britain still under the reign of Rome, he speculated what this southern continent might have been like if the fleet of colonisers hadn't floundered on its way to New Holland, becoming the 'lost fleet'---what if the British had colonised the southern continent instead of the Phoenicians? While the atmosphere around the tables was fanciful, behind the scenes two chefs were at work in a furious cultural alchemy---reverse assimilation. They were cooking up dishes that adapted the recipes of their Phoenician ancestors to the Australian context. The menu included lentil soup with a dab of goat's cheese, salmon kibbeh nayee, quail with green harissa broth, and lemon curd fool, and was accompanied by Victorian red wines and arak from Zahlé. This was the first of several culinary events that gathered the talents of Melbourne-Lebanese chefs such as Greg Malouf and Michael Bakash. The two chefs were trying to get back to their roots, in Australia. Michael Bakash runs Toofey's, an upmarket fish restaurant in Carlton. His father spent his childhood in a Zahlé orphanage before coming to Melbourne at the age of seven. Like most arrivals from Lebanon, Mick thought he was going to America---Al-Na-Yurk was the generic name for anywhere beyond the Middle East. Mick did his best to earn his keep, establishing his first business at fourteen and eventually owning a string of restaurants and cafes. Though raised in the Melkite church, Mick's sons went to Catholic schools. Bakash had little contact with other Lebanese, except on occasional trips to relatives in Albury, which as a child he thought was part of Lebanon. Not wanting to be 'tough and ruthless' like his father, Bakash decided to focus on the kitchen and become a chef. Food was a sacred code of welcome: 'Being hospitable and having people to your house and you offer them some nuts and they say no and then you insist they have some nuts, and then you almost force them down their throat.' While we are talking, a waitress holds up a piece of paper with the one-word question 'Crayfish?' scrawled on it. Bakash sighs and does a few calculations in his head before coming up with a figure, '\$120'. Then he turns to me, 'I'd like to run a restaurant with good cheap meals. Lebanese is the ultimate in peasant food.' While he has achieved every chef's dream of a lucrative and critically acclaimed restaurant, his dream now is to step back and open a popular eatery with basic, quick meals in traditional Middle Eastern style. He recalls Zahlé and its restaurants. 'There's a river running down the middle, the Budoni. On either side are cafes, outdoor eating areas and vines. There's waterfalls, the smell of strawberries. And the soil is so rich you don't need to put anything into it.' So what makes the people from Zahlé so successful in Melbourne? Bakash defers to the Semitic trait of self-reliance: > Throw a stone over the border and you're in Israel. They say the same > things about Jewish people. There's not really that much different > apart from religion, between Jewish people culturally and > geographically as Lebanese people. They arrive in one country and > start setting up shop. They don't start working for somebody. > > You know the joke, if the Lebanese had got to the moon first they > would have opened a milk bar, rather than plant a flag on it.[^119] To get on in the food business, you not only have to provide good food, you have to make a welcoming atmosphere. For a prestigious chef, Bakash has a capacity for self-deprecation that seems perfectly adapted to Australian life. Greg Malouf is a different kettle of kibbeh. There's something a shade more heroic in the path that he's taken. Malouf's family weren't originally in the food business: 'My father was in the rag trade. He was a marker up of women's sportswear. He tried to drag the sons into it. Hard worker, good cook.' His son preferred to make food his profession. He has since published his own cookbooks, including *Arabesque*, which was a hit with Melbourne's Christmas market. But food was almost the death of Malouf. The combination of Lebanese and Western foods has left Malouf with a lifelong battle against cholesterol---which often happens when Middle Eastern eating habits meet Western-style foods. While working in France at the age of 21, Malouf had heart bypass surgery. And in 1989 his heart was replaced. He was forced to put his brilliant career in some of the top Melbourne and overseas restaurants on hold, and was advised to keep out of the kitchen. Malouf refused to stop cooking and accepted a position at an up-market pub, O'Connell's. His innovative Middle Eastern cuisine was popular with food writers, and the pub was eventually awarded three hats. Despite his notable career in the kitchen, Malouf has the same yearning as Bakash for the simple things of his childhood: > I've had enough of stars and stripes. I want to get back to my roots. > I want to have some wood-fired milk-fed lamb and some yoghurt tahina > dip and some calamata and pickled chillies and turnips. Like we used > to eat as kids---BBQs and mezze. Just presented a bit more elegantly > than the usual.[^120] Malouf gazes into the distance. It is his last day at O'Connell's. He is free now to go on a trip to Tunisia to research a new book. And then he hopes to work on establishing a Mediterranean bistro, where he can return to basics.[^121] The struggle of migrant children to realise their natural talents against language and cultural barriers is well-known. The story of Bakash and Malouf seems the opposite. They both feel that their natural talents have been promoted too far and are yearning for the simpler lifestyle they left behind. While other assimilated Lebanese may not be as openly nostalgic as these two chefs, they are still aware of belonging to a phantom culture with no place in Australian life. #### **Yesterday Zahlé, today Brisbane** The yellow brick road of assimilation has also led Brisbane author David Malouf away from the culture of his forebears. Unlike the Melbourne chefs, though, Malouf has never professed a desire to return to the Zahlé of his ancestors. In 1995, when I approached him to participate in a discussion about Lebanese in Australia, he politely refused, saying it had little relevance to his current life. Indeed, the Levant never surfaces in his fictional writing. It appears only occasionally in his small autobiographical studies. His childhood reminiscence, *12 Edmondstone Street*, poetically maps the Queenslander weatherboard house of Malouf's childhood. Three generations are present, back to his grandfather, who was born in Zahlé. His grandfather's generation belongs to a world that is entirely separate from Australian life. Malouf remembers his grandfather in the background, talking in Arabic with his brother, a Maronite bishop: > Our own afternoons, so warm and still, seemed far from even the echo > of violence. And the language in which he and his cronies went over it > all; the fearful history, the litany of names, the village jests and > insults, was so softly guttural and cooing ...[^122] Against this distant world of the Arabian nights, Malouf's father's generation pursue a radically different course. They turn their backs on the Maronite faith and enrol their children in Roman Catholic schools. Malouf never hears his father speak Arabic; and so his son, the writer, finds that a 'whole layer of his experience' remains silent to him. The inscrutability of Malouf's Lebanese background is consistent with his broader concern regarding the pre-linguistic body. In *12 Edmondstone Street*, the tour through his childhood home is paced so that the reader is led eventually to the final room with a sense of revelation. When we arrive at the bathroom, we are presented with the originary site of childhood experience---the body. This personal journey reflects the plight faced by many of his fictional characters. In *An Imaginary Life* and *Remembering Babylon*, Malouf presses his writing to the challenge of rendering the experience of a person without language. The 'wolf child' is a consciousness through which Malouf articulates his abiding concern, which is to translate the symbolic order, the world of others, into the imaginary realm of personal experience. Thus the epic scale of the outside world is reduced to a series of physical sensations and internal murmurings. In *The Great World*, this is represented literally by an encounter with a globe---'where the tip of your finger could cover an area of thousands of square miles, and whole cities with millions of people in them, but only because in your head you could *see* this'.[^123] The craft of Malouf's writing is to provide the reader with windows into this primal apprehension of foreignness. In the broader scheme of things, Malouf's 'ethnic background' is a secondary consideration in determining his approach. The Romantic 'inner turn' has ample precedent in the canon of English literature, from William Wordsworth to Simon Schama. Any present reference to Malouf's 'Lebaneseness' is more in the nature of a *reading*, rather than an analysis. This reading looks from the perspective of the assimilation experience in Australia. It contrasts Malouf's path, in which Lebanese heritage remains an enigma, with that of Khalil Gibran, who recovers an essential Levantine wisdom while growing up in Boston. Within this reading, the dislocated experience of physicality in Malouf's fiction reflects the stark difference between the physical cultures of Lebanese and Australian. Lebanese culture makes physical pleasures a priority---in eating fresh food, dancing and physical affection. By contrast, Australians reflect the English tentativeness towards the physical---in packaged foods, inhibited dancing and interpersonal distance. The Zahlé generation have been so successful in Melbourne because they have brought with them the warmth of hospitality and conviviality that is otherwise lacking in Anglo public life. They invite the stiff Aussies into their *dubka* circle dance of touch and collective rhythm. While this gap would have been greater in Malouf's childhood than it is today, it is still a clear cultural division. Australian public life is afflicted with a mechanical, cold predictability. But let's stop here, eh? Into this romanticisation of the Lebanese experience sneaks a resentment towards the Australian mainstream. If we keep along this track, we get to the rant of cultural elites, from the likes of Barry Humphries and Barrie Kosky, against the barren soil on which they have been cast. Public life in Australia is certainly notable for its absence of spontaneity. Yet, rather than comfort ourselves in a shared disdain for the Aussie veneer, it seems more challenging to delve into the alternative more deeply. Australian cities offer open access to the pre-assimilation experience. We don't need to hypnotise David Malouf to recover his lost Maronite world. It is available to us any Sunday by walking into a Lebanese church. Once inside, you will be faced with different paths depending on your background. For those with a Catholic upbringing, the Maronite service has a disconcerting mixture of familiar and oriental features. At the Church of Our Lady of Lebanon, in Carlton, the priest holds the icon of the Virgin Mary above his head for the adoration of the worshippers. A neat young man conducts a small choir of nuns and lay singers. Their singing is ethereal, using the Arabic style of vocal oscillation rather than the flat collective hymns of the Roman Catholic churches in Australia. Part of the service is in Aramaic, the original language of the gospels. Although this is the oldest Lebanese tradition in Australia, Australia's Lebanese are widely assumed to be Muslim and sometimes stereotyped as Islamic fundamentalists. But their Christian practice is not only persistent, it can be traced directly to the Levant of the gospels. Those who grew up under the Roman Catholic church---in whose eyes 'wogs' were latecomers to the true faith---will find the authenticity of Maronite service quite challenging. After a Maronite service, the Anglo world outside is not so much sadly familiar but strange on its own terms. #### **Druze festivity in the Barossa** As English is Malouf's' creative medium, and he speaks none of his grandfather's language, he is naturally removed from the influence of Arabic literature. The situation is different in other arts, where there is a material continuity between work done in Australia and ancestral lands. As is often the case, it is the craft practitioners who delve deep into the peculiar cultural alchemy of mixing Australian soil with foreign ideas. Phoenician Australia today is embodied in a diminutive potter of gargantuan energy. The ceramist Neville Assad-Salha has fashioned a life moving between an industrious career in South Australia and the communal village scene in Lebanon. Assad is not easily lost in a crowd. He speaks in a Thespian manner and accompanies every sentence with a dramatic gesture. While talking about making pots, he moulds meaning from thin air and wriggles his shoulders with excitement. Assad can give the subtlest of ceramic effects a kind of biblical clarity. After every three or four sentences he exclaims, 'Fantastic!' Assad's family came from Ra's al Matn ('head of the mountains'), a village perched on a ridge about 14 km east of Beirut. They were Druze, which is an eclectic Islamic faith that permits no conversions: 'Druze is about the strength of tribe and community, rather than indoctrination. Once you marry outside the tribe, then you are lost sheep and never reincarnated.' Like other Druze villages, Ra's al Matn had a 'house of recognition' where official functions such as meetings, weddings and funerals took place. Druze were among the principal opponents faced by Western crusaders in the Levant. Their founder was the eleventh century caliph al-Hakim bi Amrih ('ruler by his own command'), whose mysterious disappearance led to prophesies of his eventual return, which would herald a golden age. Assad's uncle had come to South Australia and married an Irish Catholic woman. By the end of his life, he owned twenty-seven houses, which were filled with his wife's relatives. Assad's father came in 1926 and worked in the chicory kilns at Millicent but fell out with his brother over Catholic dietary restrictions. His father eventually started the town's tennis club and helped stimulate social life: 'He was known as Sam the Syrian. He was a real party boy and very fondly remembered in the town.' Assad's parents, by contrast, wanted to maintain Lebanese culture and moved their family to the Riverina close to other Druze families. Though under pressure to take over a fruit farm from his father, Assad decided to study art. Assad ascribes his decision to a family context. His father's father had worked as a stonemason in Venezuela. When in Australia, his family took on an art teacher as boarder, which introduced Assad to the smell of paint. A few years into art school, Assad visited Lebanon and worked in a village pottery, making tall water jugs on a kick wheel for 20 cents each. In the Barossa Valley, Assad discovered an equivalent to his Lebanese village in the small town of Dutton, where he renovated an old Congregational church and enjoyed the close community that seemed freely available in the 1970s. For Assad, clay is a medium that allows both change and permanence. When fired, clay is hard like stone. And as stone, it resembles an object that rests permanently in the environment as part of an enduring history. This is by contrast with the flimsy dwellings in the bush around Assad's church in South Australia. Assad describes weatherboard as a 'cardboard cut-out' architecture; it has a 'thin skin', like a 'pop-up book' that is going to 'fold down around you when you're asleep'. Stone, however, offers a foundation and fixity in the land. When Assad is talking, each phrase, each distinction, has its own well-crafted gesture. While clay signifies immutability, it also allows for the influence of the maker. Assad praises clay as a fluid medium which can be gouged, blistered, fired, have bits blown off, and responds to any other emotional outburst that the maker chooses to inflict on it. Because of this, clay allows for an expressionist approach, which can convey the vigour of the maker's relationship to their materials. This dualism of change and permanency is present in Assad's use of Arabic calligraphy. Assad doesn't gouge the lettering in a way that can be read---by English *or* Arab speakers. Though he employs a pattern made by Arab script, he distorts the letters so that they make no sense. For Assad, the Arab script gives presence to the elements of the Australian bush, such as scraps of sunlight, clouds and paw marks in the soil. Assad's vessels offer a Levantine reading of the Australian landscape as filtered through calligraphy. Whereas the Latin alphabet is easily associated with vertical landmarks, such as mountains, the horizontal nature of Arab writing is sympathetic to ground-based features. The eye searches for clusters of marks at odd angles to each other. It takes a horizontal scansion on the world, similar to Fred Williams' gestural landscapes. While his early works have dealt with the surface of the Australian landscape, Assad's later *Mixed Marriage* series explores its interior sense. Five clay vessels, each the size of a 10-year-old child, stand in a row. The first is formed to resemble the cloth wrapped as a shroud on a corpse. The final vessel, with a friable surface, looks like a termite mound. Assad hints at the mysterious inner insect worlds that dot the northern Australian landscape, which he links back to the dark secrets of Egyptian memorial culture. Assad's fascination with sarcophagus and funerary ornament seems at odds with his gregarious character. However, given the absolute prohibition on any exogamy in the Druze religion of his upbringing, it is logical that he faces a life in South Australia without the prospect of reincarnation. Everything that Assad does is 'hands on'. Today, Assad is head of the ceramics department at Adelaide's Jam Factory craft centre. At the same time, he has purchased one of Adelaide's icons, the Q theatre, which he is renovating single-handedly so that it might function again as a theatre, gallery and studio. He continues to make Levantine incursions into South Australia: he was recently MC for an Arabic night patronised by Lutherans of the Barossa Valley in Nuriootpa: 'We had water-bubblies \[*agilleh*\], Arabic music, great belly dancer, and hummus in hand-thrown bowls---very simple with stripes in the traditional style. Fantastic!' Despite being third-generation Lebanese, Assad has maintained the vitality and self-reliance of the first generation. He seems the epitome of the kind of energy that was admired in the Phoenician peoples. He makes you wonder what might have happened if Anglos were the migrants, coming to a land that had been settled by *his* forebears. Speculation about Phoenician colonisation was particularly active during the settlement of Australia itself. More than exotic fancy, it was vital to the understanding of the British values that provided the mortar of a new nation. #### **And did those feet in ancient time walk upon Australia's sandy shore?** The Phoenicians played a critical role in the evolution of Imperial British identity in the Victorian era. The ancient Semitic culture had a particular fascination for the historical imagination of nineteenth-century England. During Victorian times, any English gentlemen with pretensions to scholarship made a study of Phoenicians---the Semites whose feet actually did 'in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green', for Phoenicians were trading with the Cornish people in tin and gold well before the Romans arrived. William Gladstone wrote several books on the subject, in between Prime Ministerial duties. In *The* *Devil's Foot*, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle placed Sherlock Holmes in Cornwall so he could imbibe 'its sinister atmosphere of forgotten nations' and study the impact of Phoenician tin merchants on the Cornish language. The Phoenicians were both a classical people and an adventurous seafaring race; they were the only people to dare pass through the straits of Gibraltar beyond the security of the Mediterranean (considered by Adam Smith 'a most wonderful and dangerous exploit of navigation'). Matthew Arnold's poem *The Scholar Gypsy* (1852) features a 'grave Tyrian trader' who escaped the Greek domination of the Mediterranean to trade with the Cornish. > O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,\ > Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,\ > To where the Atlantic raves\ > Outside the western straits The image of the far-flung Phoenician trader inspired works by Kipling and T. S. Eliot. This fabulous lone seaman struck a romantic figure that contrasted starkly with the mercantile juggernaut of Victorian England. Despite their heathen status, many English thinkers identified with Phoenician civilisation. The historian George Rawlinson articulated the special place the Phoenicians might have in defining English character: along with the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Dutch, Phoenicians and English possess a 'special gift' of entrepeneurship. They excell in virtues of the 'lower order': 'Industry, perseverance, shrewdness, quickness of perception, power of forecasting the future, power of organisation, boldness, promptness'.[^124] English colonists possessed the same kind of skill and determination in settling the far-flung reaches of the world as did the Phoenicians in voyaging beyond the Mediterranean. Rawlinson describes the Phoenicians as blessed with 'a tough fibre and vital energy' as well as a pliability that enabled them to adapt to the cultures of their trading partners. Rawlinson advises his English readership to follow this 'glory to be practical' and thus prefer the peaceful conduct of commercial rivalry to the violence struggle on the battlefield. Yet it is precisely this Phoenician quality that the French historian Jules Michelet criticises in the English. In his *Histoire Romain*, Michelet cast the Phoenicians on the side of the Jews and Arabs, set against the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, Romans and Germans: 'On the one side is the genius of heroism, of art, and legislation; on the other is the spirit of industry, of commerce, of navigation.'[^125] The history of the West has been cast as a struggle against the Semitic, from the Punic wars in Roman times through to the Crusades. > Kings of the sea, of the world without law and without limit, uniting > the savage hardness of the Danish pirate and the feudal arrogance of > the 'Lord' son of the Normans---How many Tyres and Carthages would one > have to pile up to read the insolence of titanic England?[^126] In his controversial *Black Athena*, Mark Bernal offers a strategic analysis of this Levantine obsession. For Bernal, the English fascination with Phoenicians results from their paradoxical allegiance to the Holy Lands. While seeking continuity with the people of the Bible, the English sought to distinguish themselves from the introverted Judaic culture. Bernal writes, 'if Semites were the epitome of parasitism and passivity, then the Phoenicians---who were active in sailing, manufacture and trade rather than Jewish 'financing'---could not have been truly Semitic.'[^127] Thus the Phoenicians enabled the English to find some link in character back to the classical age, the sacred age of history, while distinguishing themselves from its direct descendants living among them. Today, this mythic Phoenician energy is driving Australian culture and economy. Yet it does not appear in the picture of who Australians are. The kind of cultural argument that occurred in the late nineteenth century England is missing in twenty-first century Australia. The fear of racism prevents Australians incorporating the story of a particular people into the central focus of identity---not sitting lonely on a farm fence, brushing flies from the eyes, but warmly welcoming friends and family to a nightclub with fresh food and gently swaying music. #### **Kimberleys, the unpromised Levant** To what extent can we translate this Victorian fascination with Phoenicians to the Australian context? Perhaps we too were graced with a Tyrian trader. Eric Rolls has speculated that the ancient Phoenicians may have been swept away from their circumnavigations of Africa to reach the western coast of Australia: > With a knowledge of navigation and astronomy that could not be laughed at today, they were rounding the Cape of Good Hope by 600BC and trading with India for things marvellous and beautiful: gold, silver, jewels, incense, ivory, apes, peacocks. It is possible, and even more than likely, that Phoenician barques were caught in westerly storms and driven as far as Australia's west coast.[^128] Despite occasional rumours of Phoenician coins being found on the west coast of Australia, this Semitic contact remains speculation. Later Arab contact seems almost probable: Australia was situated at the doorstep of a bustling marketplace, where trade was brisk along routes that stretched from the East Coast of Africa to the islands of Japan. Arab sailors visited Aru, only 500 km north of Australia. It would have taken very little for one of those boats to have strayed south. Despite the absence of concrete evidence, the mere possibility of contact with ancient Levantine visitors has haunted the experience of northwest Australia. As a locus of ancient visitation to the continent, the Kimberleys have proven to be of prophetic significance in the link between Australia and the Holy Lands. The mysterious rock paintings of Wandjina figures have often been attributed to foreign contact. When first discovered by the explorer George Grey, they evoked a biblical presence. He writes about a haloed portrait on the roof of a cave: > This figure brings to mind the description of the Prophet Ezekiel: > 'Men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed > in vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed > attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the > manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their > nativity.[^129] Such allusions provide a point of Western identification in an otherwise foreign environment. The rock art grants the explorer repose to look 'at the beautiful scenery around me, which now for the first time gladdened the eyes of Europeans'. The paintings have since been the subject of much speculation, with reference not only to visiting seafaring races but even aliens from outer space. Despite these mystical associations, the Kimberleys have a quite concrete link to the Levant. Zionist Israel Zangwill had approached Alfred Deakin in 1907 about the possibility of block settlement, but had been rejected. In the early 1930s, he and other Zionists cast around the world looking for potential sites of Jewish colonisation, including remote regions in Canada, Argentina and Uganda. A Melbourne businessman, Isaac Jacobs, campaigned for a northern Australian settlement. He succeeded on a small scale with a Russian-Jewish community in Victoria's Goulburn Valley. Early proposals for colonies in South Australia and New Guinea were vetoed by the Federal government. In 1935, the London-based Freeland League proposed the purchase of seven million acres in the East Kimberley region for 50,000 refugees from Nazism. Dr Isaac Nachman Steinberg, once first minister of justice in Lenin's revolutionary government, arrived in Australia to investigate its feasibility and garner support. He won the backing of many politicians and community leaders. Support in Western Australia was particularly strong for a settlement that might help resist the threat from Japan along the less populous coastline. Steinberg's report of this quest, *Australia: The Unpromised Land*, is interesting partly for the conversations it reports on why Australians might desire a Jewish settlement. The proposition of a Semitic homeland was a unique moment in Australian history---an opportunity to consider what element our culture lacks that might be gained by implanting a Jewish settlement. One worldly response came from Steinberg's supporter Professor Wood, in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Melbourne. For Wood, Jewish colonisation would supply Australia with the understanding of tragedy that was part of the 'old European' make-up. While Australians have struggled against nature, they know little of the fight against persecution. Steinberg quotes Wood: > 'The Australians do not appreciate the moral value of their freedom > because they have received it, like their material comforts, without > fighting for it. And I believe therefore that it will do us good to > come into close contact with a people like the Jews, who have suffered > so much throughout history and have nevertheless kept their cultural > life going.' [^130] From Steinberg's perspective, the advantage for Jews was complementary. After experiencing the humiliations of anti-Semitism in the European cities, the Kimberleys offered the opportunity for a more positive struggle against the elements of nature. Steinberg speculated on the results over generations as their nervousness wanes and they adopt the 'tranquillity and serenity of mind, so characteristic of Australia'. He claimed that the Kimberleys would appeal to a people who wished to escape the humiliations of the city and 'go back to Nature'. After a number of generations, a new person would evolve---the Australian Jew. > The poet and the singer, for instance, would introduce the Australian > landscape and air into their songs. They would write Jewish poems > about the kangaroo or the laughing kookaburra, the hot days and cool > evenings, the magic spell of the earth and the first steps of the > wonderer pioneers. Yet their voice would be the voice of Israel, and > the rhythm and the sigh of their songs would be Jewish.[^131] At the other end of the country, there was also a push to offer the wilderness in south-west Tasmania as a place for Jewish settlement. Steinberg was approached by an eager philosemite, Critchley Parker, who had managed to obtain widespread support from State government and community leaders for a Jewish settlement in the undeveloped part of the state. Impatient to determine which part of the island this would be, Parker set off in May 1942 to survey the area, against the advice of friends and government. He found himself stranded by bad weather and eventually ran out of food. In his dying days, he recorded his vision of a Jewish settlement called Poynduk in Port Davey. It is a classical vision that harks back to the ancient Greeks, where settlers participate in 'games' to develop their skills in physical pursuits, crafts, music, arts and philosophy. > Annual shows would also be held, representative of all branches of the > community's activities. Other Tasmanian industries should be > encouraged to display their wares; this should be done at the > Community's own expense, so that the perfect amity and accord existing > between the Jewish settlement and the Tasmanians be emphasised in this > practical way. Later, other states of the Commonwealth and other > countries should be encouraged to come here, so as ultimately to make > the equivalent of the Leipzig Fair. This could be called the Pacific > Fair.[^132] The Pacific Fair has echoes today in the Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, and the Ten Days on an Island festival in Tasmania itself. Yet these festivals are still based on the importation of exotic foreign cultures, and it is interesting to speculate how it might be if such cultures came from within. Though touched by Parker's enthusiasm and sacrifice, the Kimberleys remained the most viable place for a Jewish settlement. For seven years, Steinberg mustered the support of trade unions, churches, politicians, community leaders and business groups. Unfortunately, the extension of the war to the Pacific forced the government to defer approving the plan. Eventually, in 1944, Prime Minster John Curtin formally rejected the Kimberleys scheme and any other 'block migration'. Despite the support of significant community figures, polls showed that 47 per cent opposed the scheme. The idea of a Jewish homeland in northwest Australia evaporated, just like the planned Soviet homeland for Jews in Birobidzhan.[^133] In due course, thousands of Jewish refugees immigrated to Australia as individuals settling in the major cities and adding immeasurably to both the cultural and economic capital of the nation. But this migration has been filtered through the established structure of Australian society. What might have happened if this energy had instead been focused in one place, if the character of the Australian Jew had been able to emerge just as strongly as the Jew of the Polish *shtetl*. It would be easy to consign the Kimberleys to Australia's purely speculative role in world history. Maybe Australia could have accommodated the new Israel, but in the end it seems a mere afterthought in the Jewish story. However, in recent times the link between Israel and the Kimberleys has re-emerged in a direct fashion. Melbourne businessman Joe Gutnick amassed a fortune in Western Australian mining ventures. He attributed his success to his spiritual advisor, the leader of the worldwide Lubavitcher movement, Rebbe Menachem Schneerson. The Rebbe encouraged Gutnick's explorations for gold and diamonds, and gave Gutnick the special title of Lubavitcher Rebbe\'s Special Emissary for the Integrity of the Land of Israel. Netanyahu's election in 1996 is attributed to the money that Gutnick poured into his advertising campaign. Gutnick has explored the Kimberley region following the Rebbe's prophecy. While it is not his major source of wealth in Western Australia, his older sister established an alternative company, Diamond Rose, to exploit claims in the Kimberley region. The prospectus stated that its goal was to 'find the 12 gemstones of the Breastplate worn by the High Priest in the Temple of Jerusalem over 3,000 years ago as described in the Bible'. According to the Talmud, this breastplate would be reconstructed with the arrival of the Messiah. The company's success is partly attributed to the mythology it taps, with a large revenue from American TV shoppers anxious to buy the gemstones thus far discovered in the Kimberleys. Meanwhile, Gutnick works from his Melbourne headquarters, appropriately named Kimberley Gardens, which contains the only kosher hotel in Melbourne. Though there is no Jewish settlement in the Kimberleys today, it provides a material and symbolic link between Australia and the Holy Land. The extension of the Kimberleys mythology into the global market invites an element of political realism. While the prospect of a Jewish settlement seems an entertaining speculation, it would soon come up against the messy business of colonisation. Steinberg only mentions the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Kimberleys once, and then he calls them 'shepherds', suggesting their hold on the land is contingent rather than inherited. With this kind of attitude to indigenous inhabitants, the Kimberleys may well have experienced similar kinds of ethnic tensions as present day Israel. As for Gutnick, he is well known for his cavalier attitudes to Palestinian rights, although he has a better record dealing with Aboriginal Australians, with whom he has been successful in negotiating agreements in his mining ventures. According to his biographer, Gutnick expects the same kind of paternalistic deals to work in the Middle East. The same mixed blessings emerged from his most public role in Australia, as the Chairman of the Melbourne Football Club. Though Australian sport is hardly the most needy recipient of the \$3 million he donated to his club, Gutnick's role in the politics of the sacred code was refreshing. With stereotypical *hutzpah*, Gutnick berated the corporate management of football and upheld the interests of members before those of sponsors or industry. Though he missed his team's 2000 grand final appearance because they played on the Sabbath, during his reign as chairman Gutnick introduced a restless spirit of disputation into what is otherwise a secret society of corporate interests. For Gutnick, Israel and Australia are inextricably linked. When questioned about the relevance of his Israel interests to life here, he stated, 'If you secure Israel, you secure people in Australia.'[^134] Though Australia refused to accept the wholesale settlement of Jewish refugees in the Kimberleys, Joe Gutnick has ensured that this part of Australia plays a critical role in securing the land of their eventual destination, Israel. Despite the circle's closure in commercial terms, we are still left with unfulfilled images of the Australian *shtetl*, whether in north-west Australia or southwest Tasmania. These images join those of a Phoenician Australia, in which the more foreign elements of Middle Eastern heritage are not dissolved in the process of assimilation but find new soil on the other side of the world. This Levantine antipodes is the shadow cast by the tremendous success of their descendants in Australian society. #### **Sources** The Phoenician colonisation of Australia was originally conceived in Melbourne's RMIT Gallery. Special thanks to Neville Assad-Salha, Michael Bacash, Greg Malouf, Philip Morrissey and David Odell for their contributions. David Bernstein, *Diamonds & Demons: The Joseph Gutnick Story*, Port Melbourne: Lothian, 2000. Leon Gettler, *An Unpromised Land*, South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Press, 1993. George Grey, *Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-west and Western Australia: During the Years 1837, 38, and 39*, London: T. and W. Boone, 1841. J. Hoberman, *The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in the Absence of Communism*, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. George Rawlinson, *Phoenicia*, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889. Eric Rolls, *Sojourners: The Epic Story of China's Centuries-old Relationship with Australia*, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1992. Hilary L. Rubenstein, 'Critchley Parker (1911--42): Australian Martyr for Jewish Refugees', *Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society* no. 11 (1990), pp. 56--86. Isaac Steinberg, Australia---The Unpromised Land: In Search of a Home, London: Victor Gollancz, 1948 ## **Enileh Haghar's Address to the General Assembly** Revered Secretary General and esteemed fellow members of the General Assembly, it is a supreme honour to stand before you today. In you is vested the responsibility of upholding justice within its universal prerogative. This sacred duty is sublimely complicated and burdensome, but you have the gratitude of the world's people as your bounty. You are our final court of appeal and our horizon of hope. In a small way, I would like to contribute to the discussion around one of your most lauded acts in recent times. I refer to Resolution 316.2, commonly known as the 'Thick Blue Line'. Within this legislation lies the ultimate punishment for the absolute transgression: 'Any country that condones acts of gross violation of human rights, such as slavery, female circumcision, cannibalism and human sacrifice, shall be formally ostracised from the General Assembly.' Such a threat is no wooden sword. Thanks to this enlightened determination, many backward countries have reformed their barbaric laws and thereby joined the ever-expanding conversation of civilised nations. Though it is difficult for me to admit, and I would endure the wrath of many fellow countrymen to say this, I fully understand the recommendation to ostracise my own revered country in accordance with this resolution. I know this recommendation has not been made lightly. As testimony to the gravity that underlies this decision, I hold in my hands the 3,000-page report which advises such action. Never before has Australian history been so well researched. Such a publication should be immediately admitted into the canon of our historical scholarship. We Australians should be grateful for such a document. The Assembly could have responded in a reflex fashion to the court of world opinion, which has long cast Australia as the sanctuary of all that is primitive and heathen. As one might expect of such an august institution, all the corners were thoroughly cleaned. And here I am today, as part of that process, to provide for you the official response to this report before the final decision of ostracism is ratified. As it would be a waste of your time for me to simply rubber stamp this thoroughly researched document, allow me to add a few minor qualifications. Australian history is renowned for its shimmering variety of legends, particularly about the nation's origins. Given this report's bearing on the future destiny of Australia, it is entirely understandable that it presents the orthodox story of its foundation as a Phoenician colony. It is a story familiar to our ears. We all know the tale of an Australia that missed out on the monotheistic evolution of the Judeo-Christian traditions, and thus remained a society based on primitive forces of idolatry, superstition and priestly tyranny. We know well about the first colonisers, more than two and half millennia ago---these regressive figures who fled the inevitable advancement of Greek enlightenment that was sweeping the Levant. And we are all familiar with the picture of these new Australian settlers, isolated from the rest of the world, reposing in their comfortable ignorance. But this is not the only story to be told. As the report correctly points out, there are other, less orthodox histories. If you would be so kind, allow me to draw your attention to one of these. I refer to the co-called 'Chaldean history of Australia', which is dismissed in the present report as myth-making self-justification. In the past, I shared the same scepticism towards such mystical fables of origin. Now, I have changed my mind. What altered my opinion of this history was the recent discovery of the cuneiform texts known as the Nullarbor Scrolls, as documented in the article 'The Chaldean origins of Australia' by the distinguished archaeological scholar, Professor Merudakh Baladan, in the most recent September issue of the *Journal of Ancient Australian History*. According to Baladan's translations, the scrolls record a voyage that preceded the arrival of the Phoenician fleet in 365 before the Common Era. The expedition was led by the Chaldean stargazer Abd-Haddon, who had observed a comet in the southern sky that he interpreted as the prophesised Shamem-hadashti---a promised land for his beleaguered people. Australian astronomers have calculated such a sighting at 415 BCE. This was the period when the Chaldean control of Phoenicia had been wrested by the Persian conquerors. Thus Abd-Haddon took a fleet of fellow Chaldeans along the trade routes around India and through the Indonesian archipelago. On reaching the shores of Australia, he was presented with a number of divine omens. These may appear fanciful to your modern ears, but please allow a little poetic license. When Abd-Haddon reached the north-west coast of Australia, the tide had receded, revealing a staircase formed naturally from the rock. On the first evening of their visit, the southern skies were blessed by a meteor shower. And there to greet them were the ghosts of Chaldean ancestors, who had been waiting their arrival for millennia. The primordials guided Abd-Haddon through the mountains and deserts along paths navigated by orphic ballads. Abd-Haddon's ornate visions during this period are recorded in vivid detail. I'm afraid that this sober meeting is not an appropriate setting for reading them out loud. The return mission struck disaster and only one ship was able to find its way back to the merciful harbour of Sidon. The surviving stargazers blazed with rapture when telling of the Shamem-hadashti across the seas. But it took fifty years before a larger convoy could set forth to follow the route outlined by the stargazers. We are now at the point where the official history of Australia begins. A Phoenician revolt against the Persians is dissolved in a river of blood by Ataxerxes III. The priestly hierarchy and their slaves escape on five ships, three of which survive the journey across the Indian Ocean to Australia. On arrival, they are challenged by wild demons---the same beings that the Chaldeans saw as their revered ancestors. The arduous voyage and ensuing battle are the first of many tests that contribute to the mythology of Australian tenacity. Australia's major military test comes with the arrival of European powers in the late eighteenth century. Though lacking sophisticated weaponry, our knowledge of the seas makes us formidable enemies to any foreign power. A fleet of British ships, seeking a home for unwanted criminals, is forced to dock elsewhere after sustained hostility from our navy. And thereafter, the term 'Australian' is synonymous with lawlessness, which this report rightly points out has been a prejudiced interpretation of what is clearly self-defence. Though correctly identifying the colonial motifs behind the Australian stereotype, the report seems hesitant to suggest an alternative. This problem is in part due to the historical revision that occurred during the Phoenician renaissance in the seventeenth century, when official histories repressed the original Chaldean quest, turning an astrological mission into a practical exigency. It is only if we return to his original path that we can begin to uncover the spiritual depth that underlies Australian culture. It is this which may cast a different light on the central issue in the present report, the practice of baltek. Baltek has caused Australia to be vilified among civilised nations. It will take more than a history lesson to change your hearts. Allow me an attempt at opening your hearts by speaking a little from a personal perspective, as an Australian woman. We are frequently seen as a people at odds with ourselves, particularly in the Gender Wars. True, men and women of Australia worship different gods. As a woman, I gather inner wisdom from the piteri and worship the mother-god Astarte. My husband, as a man, looks to the heavens for guidance and reveres the hunter-god Tammuz, the enemy of Astarte. This is a division made by nature, not by any one culture. Western cultures like to deny such a difference, while throughout the world men effectively have all the power---just look around this room. In baltek, a man gives himself to Astarte. I stress the phrase 'gives himself' in order to counter the common misapprehension that the man is forced into this sacrifice. Each year, every first-born male priest in Australia is given a strip of cloth on which priestesses lovingly sew his name. In secret, all first-born male priests pay a visit to the local baluz where under the sole gaze of the idol they submit their cloth to either the flame or the box. The boxes are then brought to the temple, where the high priestess selects the successful candidate. The unselected cloths are immediately consigned to the flames. Except for the eyes of the gods, there is no coercion whatever. You must realise, baltek is not a public spectacle. The audience is limited to temple musicians, and nine male and nine female priests. I can assure you from my own experience, baltek is conducted with enormous dignity. With great solicitude, temple priestesses apply purple dyes over his body. He is caressed by all eighteen priests. The timing of his leap is solely within his control and the heat beyond is so intense that the sublimation is virtually instantaneous. It is often the case that victims expire from the sheer ecstasy of the ritual before reaching the beyond. Thus Tammuz gives himself to Baal, for the sake of Astarte. The gift is celebrated all over Australia. The atmosphere of love in the days following baltek cannot be easily described, especially in present company. The unique place of baltek in the world calendar has been well appreciated by some of your finest writers, such as Gustave Flaubert, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and, most lately, Susan Sontag. Unlike other injustices such as apartheid and military dictatorships, baltek is not a tyranny that is imposed on the people. It is an ancient rite reaching back to the birth of Semitic cultures. Without this annual gift, our contract with Baal is void. We cease to be a people. We *are* baltek. We are not alone in this. Every culture has its baltek. You need only to look at the United States of America, which graciously hosts the operations of your organisation. In the USA, it is not one voluntary individual who is sacrificed but hundreds, and all of them against their will. But the real difference is not a matter of how *many* are killed, it is the *way* this sacrifice is represented. While in my country the act is celebrated, in the stronghold of Western civilisation it is a matter of false regret. I would not be the first to argue that the position of baltek is simply an open expression of the essential nature of sacrifice to the renewal of any society. Such is the inspiration of our wide open land, stretching the horizons of present mortal endeavour. As our poets say, 'My life is a zephyr in the desert.' How can meaning be found in any individual existence? What is the eighty years of a full human life compared to the millennia of her people? For our lives to have meaning, we must forgo a world whose horizon is defined by human need. Rather than sending young men into battle or condemning criminals to the electric chair, Australians allow one noble individual the opportunity to give himself in a final act of transcendence. Our own confidence in baltek has been renewed by this recent discovery of the lost Chaldean story. Baltek is finally granted its ultimate justification in world history. As you know, the birth of literate culture in Mesopotamia was based on the sacrifice of the firstborn. The denial of an individual life gave us the capacity for a cultural memory that might span generations. The secret of this bond was carried out of Chaldea by its most famous son, Abraham, known as Abram from Ur. Baal commissioned Abraham to found a new nation in lands beyond Chaldea. To ensure Abraham's devotion to the Chaldean god beyond his land, the covenant required sacrifice of his firstborn son. Rather than his true firstborn son, Ishmael, Abraham substituted his 'legitimate' son, Isaac. In disgust, Baal does not attend the sacrifice. In his place, Yahweh appears and ingratiates himself with Abraham by offering the ram as a substitute for his son. This act of compromise thus gives birth to those emasculated faiths---Judaism, Christianity and Islam---which reduce divine creation to the needs of mankind. Forgive me if you perceive a note of righteousness in my words. It may well be that ours is a more primitive version of the sacrifice methods employed by modern nations. All I ask you this solemn morning is that we are seen as part of the same story---a story of communities that give meaning to each of our lives by positing a transcendence of our mortality. Each week, Christians celebrate the sacrifice of their god's firstborn son, finally fulfilling Abraham's lost covenant. While Christians re-enact this primogeniture symbolically in their altar magic, Australians confront the reality of this act in their everyday lives. There are worse alternatives to Baltek. I speak of the dark tunnel of drugs, violence and catatonia through which so many of your young people seek escape from their lives. One life gives meaning to many. Such is our gift. Despite some extreme statements from young fanatics, who would be delighted with ostracism, we do not seek isolation. We seek to play a role in your world. Today, we remain the common Semitic root of what has since become divided, to the point of tearing the modern world apart. Our recent success in brokering peace between Israel and Palestine should be evidence of the critical part we might play in cementing relations between the Semitic peoples whence we came. Please help us. And please let us help you. I trust you receive my words in the respectful manner in which they were intended. I hope whatever judgment you arrive at in response to this current report will rest easily in your hearts. I wish you all a sweet life. And may the gods bless you. Enileh Haghar Minister for Foreign Affairs, Government of Australia