Last week was my birthday. As the country entered into a confused lockdown mode and Greek Independence Day celebrations were cancelled across the country, I awoke in a haze.
I decided go on a morning walk. I needed to complete my daily exercise routine. I needed to get the blood pumping and get my brain ticking. As I walked, I took solace in the flowers of the suburbs. The pungent aroma of gardenias and frangipanis filled the air. They took my mind off things. For a moment, I escaped into my stream of consciousness. Then I spotted a bird of paradise. Like an exhibitionist peacock, it said “here I am, check out my colours. Embrace my beauty”. So, I did. For a moment, I was in paradise.
Then, I decided to meander my way back home. I zig zagged to a main street in the Marrickville. An inner-city suburb in Sydney that has a significant Greek migrant population. Keeping my distance from my fellow humans, there was an eeriness in the atmosphere. I stumbled over a modern mosaic. The Olympics – “form Greece to Tokyo”, it seemed to be saying, “but not till next year”.
Reminded of our collective reality, I tried to keep a pace. Then, bang! A slap in the face. I was struck. A long Centrelink line confronted me. A painfully piercing reminder of the current moment. How could that bird of paradise let me forget? Passing sad masked faces, I moved on. After purchasing a bunch of fresh coriander for the dhal I planned to cook for my birthday, my morning exercise walk came to an end.
A block away from my house, I took in the stellar community messaging by Rock Posters Australia. What legends. They made me feel good. Like so many of us, I was ready to sit down and work from home. Despite the circumstances, I was ready to think anew.
After a surprisingly productive day at the screen, I decided to take a break and pulled my copy of historian Wendy Lowenstein’s Weevils In The Flour off the shelf. As a professional historian who is dedicated to reframing the story of Greek migration to Australia, I’ve been returning to her compelling history in recent weeks. Published in 1978, the book is an oral record of the 1930s Depression in Australia. It tells human stories. Travelling across Australia, Lowenstein taped over two hundred interviews of people who remembered the Depression. She documented the memories of small children, housewives, swagmen, coal-miners, carpenters, and teachers. Weevils In The Flour shares the human experience of large-scale unemployment – of lockouts and strikes, of men, money, and markets, of suffers and survivors. Emotional experiences that perhaps my generation (I was born in the bicentennial year, on Greek Independence Day) only has a rudimentary awareness of.
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Distinguished Australian historian Manning Clark wrote the book’s foreword. His words are powerful and rich in meaning. Reflecting on the lack of human voices in Australian history books, he suggested that Weevils In the Flour “should be used by all those who have an interest in and concern for the future of Australia”.
He believed that the book was “a collection which should make us think about the things that matter in life and about how Australians responded to a great disaster”.
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His concluding remarks hit home.
“Above all”, Clark noted, “it will make every one of us want to find out more about the history of human beings in Australia”. I agree. When our libraries reopen, I suggest school children, undergraduate students, and lovers of history across the country get their hands Lowenstein’s invaluable book. It has much to teach us in these difficult and unprecedented times.
This is from the book’s jacket cover: “What does the family breadwinner do on suddenly getting the sack? How do you manage when you find yourself working every second week, or your wages are cut by twenty per cent, but not your mortgage? Working for dole pittance, living in shanty towns, camping in empty buildings, standing forever in queues, despised by bureaucrats and slowly losing self respect, blaming yourself”. Like the bird of paradise, the words seemed to be asking to be embraced. So, respecting them, I share them here.
Yesterday evening, as a birthday treat, I escaped into some yummy ricotta cheesecake that my loved one bought for me. As I ate it, I recollected this poem by Dorothy Hewett that opens Lowenstein’s book.
Dole bread is bitter bread,
Bitter bread and sour.
There’s grief in the taste of it
There’s weevils in the flour.
* Dr Andonis Piperoglou is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University. He is a cultural historian who is currently working from home during the global pandemic.