Notes from Pig City - Archive of author and journalist Andrew Stafford

In search of Australia’s newest mystery bird

Environment / January 10, 2024 / 6 minutes of reading

For 100 years, the Night Parrot was the undisputed mystery bird of Australian ornithology. Until the discovery and subsequent study of a tiny population in Queensland’s far west in 2013, two specimens found by the side of remote outback roads in 1990 and 2006, also in Queensland, were the only hard evidence of its continued existence.

With the parrot now present and accounted for, there remains one Australian bird that has never been photographed: the Buff-breasted Buttonquail. Like the Night Parrot, it has gone a full century undetected. The last undisputed record was a specimen shot by the legendary naturalist William McLennan near Coen in far north Queensland, in February 1922.

It may even be the first Australian bird condemned to extinction since the Paradise Parrot – yet another Queensland species, which was last seen alive in the 1920s.

Buttonquail are a small family of ground-dwelling, polyandrous species that resemble but are not closely related to “true” quail (part of a much larger group that also includes pheasants and chickens). Distributed from sub-Saharan Africa across Asia and Australia, buttonquail mostly live in grasslands, fly only when disturbed and are not often seen.

Despite its enigmatic status, the Buff-breasted Buttonquail (Turnix olivii) is not a sexy species.… Read more..

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The Cosmic Psychos: 40 years of drinking, fighting and roadkill

Music / January 10, 2024 / 6 minutes of reading

Ross Knight – bass player, singer and mainstay of Australian punk heroes the Cosmic Psychos – tells a good yarn that deftly illustrates his group’s public image.

The Psychos, who are celebrating 40 years since their humble beginnings in central Victoria as a school band originally named Rancid Spam, were unlikely guests of honour at the Australian embassy in Berlin in 2013, commemorating 60 years of friendship between Australia and Germany. The band had driven all night from Utrecht in the Netherlands, arriving in Berlin about 3am. Of course, they found a bar before rolling up to the embassy a few hours later, very much the worse for wear.

As they slid open their van’s side door, beer cans spilled out, rolling towards the assembled dignitaries like unexploded mortar shells. The band followed the cans into the light, blinking, Knight dressed in Blundstones, jeans and a Yakka shirt and their guitarist, John “Mad Macka” McKeering, in a tracksuit.

“We were standing next to generals and majors and ambassadors and goodness knows who else, going, ‘Bloody hell, how did this happen?’” Knight says, chuckling.

The Cosmic Psychos are an Australian institution. Sounding like the Ramones fronted by the Crocodile Hunter, they write songs in a distinctly local vernacular about drinking, fighting, roadkill and punching above your weight.… Read more..

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The Cruel Sea: Fortitude Music Hall, 30 November 2023

Music / January 9, 2024 / 3 minutes of reading

Outside the Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane’s biggest nightclub strip, two hours before showtime, a long line snakes up and around Brunswick Street Mall. It’s been well over a decade since the Cruel Sea played here, and the 3,000-capacity venue is soon overflowing to the point of feeling oversold.

It’s a reminder of just how big the Tex Perkins-fronted outfit was in their heyday. They’re back to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Honeymoon Is Over, their biggest album by far. Other than a low-key warm-up for a wildlife charity, this is the first of a half-dozen gigs that may or may not point to a second life for the band. There’s nerves, and some rust.

The audience, overwhelmingly in their 50s and 60s, are showing signs of wear too. The Cruel Sea were a strictly generation X, very Australian phenomenon. After the title track of Honeymoon became a hit – one of those songs that still appears on Triple M’s so-called Ozzest 100 – the Cruel Sea rode the wave until the end of the millennium, then vanished like smoke.

Tonight’s set is dedicated to keyboardist and guitarist James Cruickshank, who died in 2015. He’s replaced by Matt Walker, who ambles on stage with the band’s original trio: guitarist Dan Rumour, bass player Ken Gormly and drummer Jim Elliott.… Read more..

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Mutiny in Heaven: the Birthday Party from hell

Music / January 9, 2024 / 6 minutes of reading

In 1981, at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Melbourne, a band is making a video. The idea is to recreate a vision of hell. A cartoon death’s head with six limbs flashes on the screen. We see a young and scrawny Nick Cave – “a fat little insect” – pole-dancing in the middle of a circus tent. The song is an ode to self-loathing called Nick The Stripper.

Behind him, the Birthday Party swings and stumbles. After a year in London, the band once dubbed the Boys Next Door have returned to their home town a very different and much more menacing beast, ready to cut their first full album, Prayers On Fire. The tune, if you can call it that, hangs on a ghostly three-note refrain by the guitarist Rowland S Howard.

The action moves outside the tent. Along with friends, the band has bussed in residents of a mental health facility; one of them stands atop a gallows. Cave is wearing a loincloth. There’s a disturbing scene involving a goat.

A new documentary on the band, Mutiny In Heaven, lingers over this grotesque carnival of souls for the clip’s full four minutes. The film’s director, Ian White, says it would have been a shame not to use it in its entirety.… Read more..

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Deborah Conway: Now she’s 64

Music / January 9, 2024 / 8 minutes of reading

In June 1991, Deborah Conway was driving in her home town of Melbourne and, with the aid of one of those old push-button car stereos, the singer heard her song playing on three radio stations at once. It’s Only The Beginning was everywhere. No one could resist its ringing, descending guitar hook, with its obvious echo of the Cure’s Just Like Heaven.

The song was joyous, something Conway – who had first hit the charts with Do Ré Mi’s feminist anthem Man Overboard – was thrown by. She rewrote the lyrics with a darker undercurrent before settling on the sunny optimism of the original, with its wry acknowledgment that some of the best affairs of our lives are fleeting, if not wildly inappropriate.

And then there was the film clip.

In her new memoir, Book Of Life, Conway reveals that Mushroom Records boss Michael Gudinski didn’t think she had made the best use of her physical assets by dressing in plus-fours and setting the song on a golf course – a playful homage to the classic 1938 Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby.

Conway wasn’t interviewed for the recent Gudinski documentary, Ego.… Read more..

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AFL grand final 2023: the advantage call that wasn’t

AFL / January 9, 2024 / 4 minutes of reading

In a game of centimetres and seconds, and less than a kick in it, it mattered: With one minute and 18 seconds to go, Lachie Neale was legged by Oleg Markov. And then the whistle blew.

No one heard it. Zac Bailey, who’d kicked two incredible early goals, grabbed the ball and hoicked it forward.

The umpire called advantage, but there was none, and Bailey’s ball landed harmlessly. The game played on.

Half an hour later, in the Brisbane Lions’ rooms, children ran amok – playing kick-to-kick across the room, heedless of the adults in various states of mourning around them.

Lachie Neale embraced his wife, Jules. He was quiet, but his body shook with sobs. To his own surprise more than most, he’d won his second Brownlow Medal early in the week.

He’d played in one grand final before – as substitute, for Fremantle in 2013 – but the biggest prize still eluded him.

By the far wall, his co-captain, Harris Andrews, lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. When he had composed himself, he stood taller than ever after a superb season – his back straight and chin up.

“It was a fantastic game. I thought the boys really rallied hard,” Andrews said.