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Nestled on a cliff face at Sydney’s Coogee, the last remaining women’s-only seawater pool in Australia proudly continues its tradition of a century and a half of female bathing. To this sanctuary known as McIver’s Ladies Baths, Australian-born Tongan performance artist Latai Taumoepeau will this summer add a spectrum of ancestral ceremony.
As part of Sydney Festival, which this year emphasises communal rituals, more than 100 women and children (girls all ages, boys under 13) will join for an evening’s bathing here known as Wansolmoana Lunar Assembly on 18 January (with the event repeated at Malabar Ocean Pool the following evening).
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Five Indigenous men gather at a coastal beach shack, busily carrying beams and corrugated iron across the sand. They yarn while barbecuing in a 44-gallon drum. “Don’t worry, fellas,” says actor Jimi Bani, cheerily assuring them none of the meat is made of culturally sacred animals, “I’ve got all your totem dietary requirements.”
Such culturally specific yet delightfully accessible humour regularly lightens the wide-ranging, mostly weighty load of Dear Son, the theatrical adaptation of Thomas Mayo’s 2021 collection of essays about fatherhood by 13 prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men.
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The roller derby skater Maddy “BB Gun” Wilkinson has speed and scale on her side. The 24-year-old jammer (primary point-scorer) for the Adelaide team the Wild Hearses is 156cm tall (“I push just 5’ 1”, maybe”) and easily weaves between small gaps left by the opposing team, shielded by taller teammates from the scanning eyes of their rivals.
Wilkinson is fast too, and fearless, darting out to knock an opponent off balance – although she has never forgotten the time she broke her collarbone competing in junior league.
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