Kieran Modra: The way I see it

Cover of the book

What becomes of a country lad who loves daredevil adventure, only to discover that he is slowly losing his sight?

What courage does it take for him to pursue his dream of becoming an elite athlete representing his country?

Kieran Modra’s inspiring story tells us about a shy country boy in a city boarding school, an adolescent struggling with his identity as he comes to terms with a disability, and the Australian athlete standing atop a dais as he accepts his gold medal.

Read an extract of the book below, where Kieran is struggling with authority and resting on a team trip in Avezzano, Italy.

For three years in a row the Australian para-cycling squad trained in Avezzano, Italy. Avezanno once lay on the shores of Lake Fucino, Italy’s largest lake, which was drained in the late 19th century. After the land was reclaimed, the city grew and wide fields became available for cultivation. The city was destroyed in 1915 by possibly the worst earthquake in the history of Italy with 30,000 fatalities. Kevin McIntosh remembers the town with affection:

Avezzano was an outdoor track, a good environment to train and we were welcomed every year by the community. The mayor and the city council would greet us when we arrived. There was always an exchanging of flags and gifts to make it official that we were honoured guests of the town. When we went into town for an ice cream or coffee, it was often free. It was a comfortable environment and there were few complaints, although there were always athletes who made it harder for the other athletes, and for us as coaches and officials.

Needing time to myself, I enjoyed exploring this area, even without permission from the Australian team officials. The only time I could do this was on ‘rest days’. The surrounding mountains are steep and beautiful, with pretty walking trails. I found rest days hard to handle, so at my first camp there, I decided to get up very early and (without telling anyone) take the tandem for a ride by myself. I found a mountain road that went almost straight up and decided that I needed to get to the top. For at least two hours I rode very slowly up the mountain road and after reaching the summit, it was time to descend. Realising that if either the bike or the rider was damaged in any way there would be big trouble, I took it very easy coming down. It was fun riding on the opposite side of the road to our Australian way and I was delighted that no one had missed the tandem or me when I got back to our hotel. The following year I took hiking boots to walk the trails. On another rest day, and without telling anyone, I decided to climb a different mountain. It took hours to get to the base and I started climbing straight up. After four hours I had passed all vegetation and had come to an area of only shale and rock. About to give up, I saw another climber and followed him to the top, where we rang the bell on the summit. From the top we could see a severe storm approaching, so to get down quickly my new friend took me down the dangerous shale side, where we ran and slid our way to the bottom in about 20 minutes. It was exhilarating, and thankfully the friendly climber returned me to our hotel by car. Although very sore, I tried not to show it, and being a rest day, I thought my coach hadn’t missed me. But the story got out when I showed the video that I took of my escapade to ‘friends’ and the masseurs noticed all my scratches and bruises and began asking questions!

Kieran’s coach had missed him:

There was a balance in getting Kieran to do what he needed to do, and stopping him from doing what he wanted to do. A good example is the way Kieran treated the recovery days. These are critical and after one recovery day in Italy I went to have a chat. It went like this:

‘Kieran … how was your day off yesterday? I didn’t see you around. Did you spend most of it in bed?’

(After a short pause.) ‘Yeahhhhh.’

‘Tell me more. I can’t see you staying in bed all day. Did you go for a walk?’

‘Yeahhhh.’

‘Oh, where did you go? Did you walk into town?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Maybe further?’

(Silence.)

‘Kieran, I know where you went!’

If ever you get to see the video, it is clear that Kieran didn’t slide down the mountain … more like rolled down it! On the video you see the legs going faster and faster … and then it goes sky … earth … sky … earth … sky … earth. So we had to have a little chat about the recovery process. But at the end of the day he always turned up and performed. Kerry was the complete opposite. She generally did what we asked her to do … but she couldn’t control Kieran either.

Join us for the launch of Kieran Modra: The way I see it on Tuesday April 10 at Lexus of Adelaide from 6 pm. RSVP by April 8 to secure your place at the launch. If you are unable to attend the launch, but would like a copy of the book (RRP $34.95), you can visit us at our Rose street bookshop, or find the book online.

The cover of the book

Remembered for his contributions to music and his courage in being Australia’s first celebrity to reveal his struggle with HIV-AIDS, Close to the Flame is an homage to a humble and hardworking genius:

Stuart Challender had already proved himself as the most talented conductor of his generation, with invitations beginning to flow in to conduct renowned international orchestras, when he was diagnosed with AIDS . Bravely, he chose to become Australia’s first celebrity to reveal his struggle with the disease to the public.

A new definitive biography of Challender, Close to the Flame, explores his remarkable career, cut short when he was only forty-four years old.

Challender joined Opera Australia after twelve years of study and work in European opera houses. He was then taken up by the ABC and appointed artistic director and chief conductor of Australia’s leading orchestra, the Sydney Symphony.

Challender was a great champion of the music of contemporary Australian composers and responsible for the premieres of many important Australian works. In his final years, Challender struggled to continue to work while disease ravaged his body. His decision to go public about his condition brings the story to a moving conclusion.

A review by Matthew Westwood of The Australian reveals the depth of the impact Challender had on music in Australia in his short-lived career:

‘Challender’s legacy lives on in a few cherished recordings, not least his performances of Voss, orchestral music by Peter Scul–thorpe and Carl Vine, and Mahler’s Resurrection symphony. And there’s a little bit of Challender on the hour at the head of ABC news bulletins. The Majestic Fanfare is the arrangement by Richard Mills, performed by the SSO in 1988, with Challender conducting.’

Close to the Flame – Richards Davis’s fourth in a line of Australian classical music biographies – is not only a vital piece of Australian musical history, but an inspiring story of courage in adversity.

Close to the Flame (RRP$45.00) is available for purchase online, or from our Mile End bookshop.

Bitter Fruit is a showcase of a collection of early photographs, many previously unpublished, focusing on Indigenous Australians. Presented in a beautiful hardcover, this is a breathtaking document of the Australian experience.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that this post, and the book associated with it, may contain images of people who are deceased.

Bitter Fruit: Australian Photographs to 1963  reproduces a selection of photographic materials – most previously unpublished – collected by  Michael Graham-Stewart over a 15-year period. It unites orphan images recovered from all over the world, while also allowing little-known episodes in Australia’s fraught history to be told. The book takes as its starting point the year 1963, when the famed Aboriginal photographer Mervyn Bishop undertook a cadetship with the Sydney Morning Herald, and ends with an image of Tasmanian activist Lucy Beeton from the 1860s.

Group with birds (1930s)

Bitter Fruit focuses on specific information known about the people who took the photographs and, more importantly, those depicted in them, rather than offering a single, overarching narrative that is bound to oversimplify. The authors wanted the book to offer a counterpoint to behemoth surveys of Australian photography that have tended to downplay the interaction between Indigenous Australians and white settlers. Bitter Fruit deliberately eschews critical theoretical analyses and language in the hopes of creating a sourcebook that allows for multiple interpretations and does not claim to offer a ‘last word’.

George Pantuni, standing right, Mrs and Captain Henson seated centre, and Ephraim McLean, seated at left. Other names unknown

Graham-Stewart and McWhannell note, ‘We hope that the book will help other non-Aboriginal people to better understand and come to terms with the violent histories in which we are implicated, while also allowing descendants of the Aboriginal people in the images to access their ancestors. Our sincere hope is that more stories will emerge as Australians of all kinds continue to unearth information associated with these images – images that are often upsetting and difficult to look at, but that also represent truths about our past and present.’

Children from the Roper River Mission, c. 1914, Ngukurr

About the Authors

Michael Graham-Stewart

specialises in gathering up colonial photographs in order to reconstruct the complex stories that such materials encode. His particular interest is in exploring the ways in which photography operates not only as an instrument of oppression, but also as a means of connecting with people of the past. Michael has published several books on photography, including Surviving the Lens: Photographic Studies of South and East African People, 1870–1920 (2001), Out of Time: Māori & the Photographer (2006), Framing the Native: Constructed Portraits of Indigenous Peoples (2011), and Negative Kept: Māori and the Carte de Visite (2013). A Scot, raised in England, he currently lives between London and Auckland.

Francis McWhannell

is an independent writer and curator from Aotearoa New Zealand. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Museums and Cultural Heritage from the University of Auckland. He has contributed to various publications, including Painting: A Transitive Space (Auckland: ST PAUL St Gallery Three, AUT University, 2017) and Dynamo Hum: Denys Watkins: Selected Paintings 2004–2016 (Auckland: Rim Books, 2017).

Bitter Fruit is available for purchase on our online store and at our Mile End bookshop.

Bush Mechanics: From Yuendumu to the World

Below is an extract from the new release Bush Mechanics: From Yuendumu to the World, edited by Mandy Paul and Michaelangelo Bolognese. The book explores the wildly popular TV series of the same name that aired on the ABC from 2001 – 2002, and goes behind the scenes showing readers the highs and lows of life in the remote Australian outback.

Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders are warned that this extract and video may contain the names, faces and voices of deceased people.

Extract from page 8 of Bush Mechanics:

‘While memories of the humour, indignity and anguish associated with a technology of invasion opens the Bush Mechanics series, the stories soon turn to the ways that Warlpiri themselves have taken to automobiles. While Europeans first brought motor vehicles into the Central Desert, now these Warlpiri men leave the community to bring them in for their own purposes and according to their own values. Cars and the things that yapa do with them have become saturated with meanings and embedded in practices that reflect the possibilities and constraints of life in Yuendumu. Perhaps most notably, the distinct car culture portrayed in Bush Mechanics is a contemporary expression of an earlier subsistence economy that continues to be strong in the present.

Crocodile, the dapper advocate of humpy living in the fourth episode, wonderfully demonstrates the ongoing importance of bush food in contemporary Warlpiri life. As he digs a kangaroo out of the ashes, Crocodile proudly declares that he is able to provide his family with a big feed without a supermarket. Automobiles are similarly placed, by choice and by necessity, within a local subsistence economy that continues to thrive alongside the cash economy. By incorporating cars within that system, the bush mechanics have devised ways around the material deprivations that characterise their lives in Yuendumu. They have created their own ways of being men with wheels, based on an impressive disregard for the orthodoxies of individual car ownership, the economics of the car market, and the professionalisation of automobile repair. In so presenting the bush mechanics as mobile makers – foragers of mechanical parts and disseminators of alternative solutions – the series offers upbeat parables of the men’s self-determined survival within settler colonialism.’

A brilliant example of the ingenuity and determination of the Bush Mechanics can be seen in the following video. The mechanics are returning home after a paying band gig in a nearby town and run into some trouble with their car – more than once!

Bush Mechanics is available online or in store at 16 Rose st, Mile End