Plus ugly truth and a plea for a truck. Welcome to Galah Weekly, our award-winning newsletter keeping you up to date with regional headlines that matter, plus other delightful things from life beyond the city. By Dean Southwell, who loves his local museum and gallery.
Peak arts bodies have warned that regional galleries across NSW face dramatic program cuts or even closure after many missed out on critical state government funding.
Regional Arts NSW and Museums and Galleries of NSW have asked state Arts Minister John Graham to step in after 18 regional galleries, including Wagga Wagga, Orange, Armidale, Broken Hill and Tamworth, had four-year funding applications rejected by the state government arts agency Create NSW.
Regional galleries learned a few months ago that they had missed out on funding – worth between $70,000 and $200,000 a year – but have raised the alarm now it’s clear so many are affected. Many galleries are run and supported by their local councils, but the Create NSW funding remains critical to what they can offer.
Maitland Regional Art Gallery director Gerry Bobsien said her gallery had previously used the Create NSW support to deliver major exhibitions and jobs and commissions for local artists. It also provides education and arts health programs.
New England Regional Art Museum director Rachael Parsons told Galah this week that so many galleries had missed out on the main funding that applications for two-year packages to be announced in September were likely to be heavily oversubscribed.
She said that NERAM, like so many other regional galleries, was central to the health and vitality of the community in ways that may not be fully appreciated by those in the metropolitan centres.
“There seems to be a lack of recognition within these funding decisions of how vital regional galleries are to the health of their towns where there are fewer options, spaces and services. We’re not just about artworks on a wall. We’re places people come to meet, socialise and connect. We deliver education, health and other cultural programs. We deliver social inclusion and so much more,” Parsons said.
“In regional towns their art gallery may be the main, if not only source, of regular arts-focused programming with few alternatives to fill the gap if we have to cut programs, which is one of the choices we now face.”
Create NSW is also undergoing a major restructure that is unrelated to the funding decisions but likely to see about a quarter of its workforce cut.
A Create NSW spokesman said the government recognised the contributions made by regional art galleries and insisted that investment was higher than in previous years. They said regional galleries had comprised 33% of successful applicants for four-year funding, and that decisions were based on industry advice.
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A volunteer-run program delivering subsidised groceries to needy families in outback NSW can’t keep up with demand and is turning dozens away every month.
A bigger truck would ease the shortfall.
Christine Mastello’s Southlakes Incorporated has run Out West Community Pantry for the past 14 months. It’s an extension of programs she runs closer to her base in the NSW Lake Macquarie region.
On the fourth Wednesday of each month, two volunteers drive a delivery van named Dotty, packed to the roof with goods, on a 1000km round trip that takes them to Merriwa, Dunedoo, Gilgandra, Gulargambone, and Coonamble.
The Out West Community Pantry allows customers en route to buy a box of groceries worth at least $100. They pay just $25 a box, and Mastello said there were usually boxes of freebies including children’s toys as well.
Each month they help about 90 people, but turn away at least 60. Mastello has a dream of using a larger enclosed truck with a tailgate lift that would allow her to help more people. It would also make unloading easier for the two volunteers who make the trip.
It’s a big ask, but perhaps there’s someone out there who can help. Email info@southlakesincorporated.org if you're keen.
“I can source the food no hassle, but buying a truck like that is an impossible dream,” she said.
Southlakes Incorporated’s community food pantries and community hair-cutting project were featured in Galah Issue 11.
Charles Sturt University, which has campuses across regional NSW, has blamed federal government limits on the number of international students when it warned of job losses under a $35 million budget cut.
Vice-Chancellor Renée Leon said international students cross-subsidised remote and rural students at the university. It had more than 8400 international students in 2019 but numbers had fallen by 90%.
Consumers with access to their local farmers’ markets might feel even luckier if they studied the food miles clocked up by some produce in 21st century Australia.
An ABC report has found fresh produce can travel thousands of kilometres to meet the needs of modern distribution systems – often so it can be send back and sold where it was grown.
Meanwhile, food industry groups are calling for tougher biosecurity penalties after a woman avoided jail after illegally imported 62 tonnes of food from Thailand, including insect-infested fruit, and pork, seafood and fish that tested positive for diseases.
Residents of a rural town in south-west Victoria are trying to raise $1 million to save the last local pub, which they regard as a critical asset holding the community together.
Ray Allen, a member of the progress association in Penshurst (population 670), is one of the prime movers in the bid to buy the hotel. Already about 30 people have committed to taking a share, which has helped to raise $250,000. The owners have agreed to sell to the group, which needs another $200,000 to complete the sale. After that they hope to raise another $600,000 for repairs and upgrades.
Another Victorian pub, the Maroona Hotel near Ararat, was sold to 83 community members last month.
Between issues of Galah Weekly and the magazine earlier this year – and two years after eye surgery – Galah’s managing editor Helen Anderson packed her snorkel mask and plunged into the remote biodiversity hotspot of Raja Ampat in West Papua.
“The exhilaration of kayaking between jungle islets and snorkelling over teeming reefs was ultimately less miraculous than mustering the courage to embark on such an adventure in the first place,” she writes in her expedition account published last week in Good Weekend magazine. Read more
Regional artists Anna Henderson, Maree Kelly and David Manks explore the striking landscapes of northern NSW in an exhibition that ranges from the Mooki and Namoi floodplains near Gunnedah to the dramatic escarpments of the New England gorges. At NERAM, Armidale, until 20 July. Read more
Kandos artist Gabrielle Bates is hosting an art tour that offers visitors a rare chance to explore the central NSW community making a name as a home for creatives. The tour will take guests through working studios, art galleries, and public art sites. At Kandos, NSW, 12 July. Read more
Sydney artist Tom Polo brings his vivid works to the Southern Highlands in a solo exhibition, In a part of your mind, I am you. It features a new large-scale painting commission as well as works developed during a recent New York residency. At Ngununggula, Bowral, NSW, until 24 August. Read more
Melbourne artist Bridget Hillebrand, inspired by the coastal waters of southern Victoria, has created a large-scale installation prompted by her concern for ecological shifts beneath the ocean’s surface. At Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell, Vic, until 28 September. Read more
Inspired as a teenager by a book on acclaimed American portrait photographer Arnold Newman, Julian Kingma started as a cadet photographer in 1988 and forged a career in newspapers before going freelance. Based on Victoria's Surf Coast, he has won a string of awards and his work is exhibited regularly at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. This year he released The Power of Choice, a book focused on people who choose assisted dying and those who help them on their final journey. Next month at Byron Writers Festival, he and assisted-dying advocate Andrew Denton will join journalist Virginia Trioli in a conversation on the future of end-of-life care.
Tell us about The Power Of Choice? It’s a long-form photojournalistic project that broadly covers all aspects of voluntary assisted dying – a deep dive into the emotional and physical journey of people who are terminally ill and the nuances of all the families and health professionals that sat alongside them. In some ways it’s an emotional road map for anyone who has to consider it.
What are the key components of that “power”? That power is ALL about choice. The clues are literally in the title.
What's your definition of a good death? Anything that hands over choice to the terminally ill. I’ve observed this for more than two years and the overwhelming conclusion is that voluntary assisted dying drastically lowers anxiety and helps with the much-ignored existential pain – not just physical pain. I have witnessed terrible deaths and I can say that voluntary assisted dying is as close to a good death currently on the table.
You were moved to create the book after listening to Andrew Denton's Better Off Dead podcast. Did you already have strong views on the issue? I’ve always thought it should have been a legal choice. Before its legalisation I’d photographed many terminally ill who were suffering terribly. Listening to Andrew’s podcast only confirmed that problem. I was actually angered by these poor people’s situations and that’s what prompted me to reach out to Go Gentle.
How did working on the book change your approach to life? I’m still absorbing and processing the past few years. This has always been a challenging question because death has always been something that’s scared me. Although I don’t think it’s changed my approach to life, it has certainly lowered my own anxieties. It certainly solidified my belief that legalising voluntary assisted dying was the right thing to do.
Byron Writers Festival is staged at Bangalow, NSW on 8-10 August. The discussion about The Power of Choice is scheduled on 9 August.
It pays to be cute and cuddly in the world of endangered species.
WA wildlife experts say many lesser-known, uglier creatures are being ignored in research efforts in a phenomenon known as conservation bias, which can leave them vulnerable to extinction.
University of WA research fellow Jeremy Wilson said favouritism towards cuter animals meant there were huge gaps in what is known about less-charismatic species such as spiders and bats.
Meanwhile in the chook shed, it doesn’t pay to be a bloke. The increasing popularity of raising backyard chickens is resulting in more roosters being dumped.
We’d love to hear about the news, events and people that should be making the headlines in the Galah Weekly newsletter. Share what’s new(s) in your neck of the woods with us at newsie@galahpress.com
