Agenda Dysphoria

This week (and most weeks) the issue of gender identity has featured prominently in the media. It was also a central theme in two of the plays staged as part of Riverina Water’s /SOACT’s Ten X 10 Play Fest (23 – 25 June, Basement Theatre, Wagga Wagga).

On Tuesday night Sarah Ferguson interviewed US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on ABC’s 7.30.  The rationale for doing so was that, unusually for a Republican, Taylor Greene is a strong supporter of Julian Assange and Ferguson sought her comments just moments before the beleaguered WikiLeaks founder set foot on Australian soil again, after 17 years, 14 of them in captivity, self-imposed then state sanctioned. In her responses to Fergusons’ questions, Taylor Greene appeared either to fail to grasp what was meant or to deliberately answer with rehearsed generalised clichés about the importance of ‘freedom of press’ and ‘truth’. Disturbingly, while praising Assange, Taylor Greene snidely insisted on using the name Bradley Manning in relation to the US military insider who provided the 400,000 classified military documents to WikiLeaks despite their transition to the female gender, as Chelsea Manning, in 2010. Taylor Young described that transition as‘parading’ a new identity.   Ferguson took issue with that choice of vocabulary and went on to ask the Congresswoman if her commitment to ‘truth’ extended to accepting as fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 US election, defeating Donald Trump. At that Taylor Greene turned hostile, repeatedly asked what Ferguson’s questions had to do with Julian Assange and, to her off camera team and presumably the viewing audience, asked if Ferguson got ‘her marching orders from the Democrat party’.

I have since read in The Washington Post  that Taylor Green is a full blown gun-toting alt right conspiracy theorist who so terrorised her Democrat opponent Kevin Van Ausdal in the 2020 Georgia Congressional election campaign that his life virtually imploded and he had to withdraw from the race. As Sarah Ferguson said, that indeed makes her a ‘strange bedfellow’ even amongst the diverse ranks of Assange supporters!

Then the next day my news feed featured reports that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has condemned actor David Tennant for his remarks at an LBGT award ceremony whilst accepting a ‘celebrity ally’ award for his LBQTI rights advocacy, Tennant said that he wished Kemi Badenoch, Women & Equalities Minister in Britain’s Tory government, would ‘shut up’ and hoped for a world in which she ‘doesn’t exist anymore’. These admittedly strong comments relate to Badenoch’s reactionary stance on  a number of social issues including denial of the harms of colonialism and the slave trade, repeated criticisms of trans people, and moves to have biological sex deemed a ‘protected characteristic’ under the UK Equality Act. Badenoch, who is of Nigerian descent yet lists Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill as role models, seems an odd fit for the role of Minister for Women & Equalities even in a Conservative administration. A bit like Jacinta Price, the LNP’s spokesperson for Indigenous Affairs, leading the ‘No’ campaign for The Voice referendum.

The above are, of course, examples of the so-called ‘culture wars’ where liberal inclusive and traditionalist privileged paradigms clash in the arena of public discourse. That clash was a theme in The Study of Reuben March and The Sensitivity Editor two plays that featured in the recent Ten X 10 Play Fest. The first was a debut play from Imogen Rubi who also took the titular role. It dealt with scientific and sociological assumptions about the identity and sexuality of non-binary people and was an impassioned challenge to stereotyping and applying the wrong lens to others’ lives. A two hander, presenting an interview scenario between an asexual gender fluid person and a scientific researcher, the play set out to disabuse the researcher, and by extension the audience, of their preconceptions. The researcher character had little dialogue, largely serving as a sounding board for Reuben’s educative remarks. His growing realisation that he might himself be gender fluid may have had more impact if there had been some ‘tells’ planted along the way. The play would also have benefitted from creating more dynamic of tension between the characters with less obvious delineation between enlightened Reuben and the wrong-headed interviewer.  

The list of characters listed in the program for The Sensitivity Editor held out the promise of hearing from PL Travers, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie and Shakespeare about recent moves to revamp their work to suit twenty first century values. Sadly that opportunity was squandered with declamatory dialogue from the editor character and the same, or mere throwaway quips, from the literary luminaries. The cast did their best but Rod Marsden’s approach was hopelessly reductive and superficial. It showed scant familiarity with the works of any of the authors and resorted to cheap digs at various supposed examples of ‘wokeism gone mad’. These included suggesting that the sooty faces in the Chim Chimmeny number of the Disney version of Mary Poppins had been decried as blackface, and that the demise of golliwogs in popular culture has diminished literature (as far as I am aware none of the writers featured were reliant on golliwogs to propel their plots). Marsden willfully misinterpreted the pronoun debate and sought cheap laughs by lumping it in with anti-monarchist and racist issues. I am not necessarily an apologist for sensitivity editing and the reworking of classic texts. I believe different criteria apply to adult and children’s fiction, with an appreciation of context and history obviously being more accessible to mature readers. The depiction of sensitivity editing in this play as solely about not offending ‘snowflakes’ without acknowledging its role in redressing past cultural dominance is unforgivable when there is such scope for a nuanced and valuable approach to the debate.

A Grand Tour of the Grand Garage

Paul Seaman is a well know Wagga Wagga mechanic who has owned the remnant, central part of the Grand Garage complex in Fitzmaurice Street for over 40 years and trades there as the Swift Service Centre. He lives onsite in the back portion of the building with his partner and their cat, Misty. I made contact with Paul through the Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook Group and we exchanged messages about the garage’s location having been, in the late 19thC, the site of the Chinese camp in Wagga Wagga with original buildings extant until as late as 1954. Paul shared with me some interesting newspaper cuttings, photos and a plan of the site. The latter included a tantalising note saying that Chinese graves were discovered adjacent to the Murrumbidgee river bank during construction of the levee in 1957 and the evidence submerged. Recently I visited him to ask him if he had discovered any vestiges of the Chinese presence on his property and to see what remains of the swanky Grand Garage.

The Grand Garage/Swift Service Centre as in looks today (my photo).

The old Grand Garage building retains the distinctive P&O style curved profile depicted in the Daily Advertiser’s article about its opening and opulence in 1954. Its stucco façade, windows, main door and some external fittings are original and Paul has cleverly incorporated a coffee kiosk that follows the architectural lines.  Inside, the customer service desk and main workshop occupy the part of the structure that once housed the ballroom. It has an attractive timber sprung dance floor which for practical reasons has been overlaid with concrete in some parts.  Paul pointed out small surviving details of the ballroom’s 1950s art deco glory: vents, cornices and a couple of chrome door handles with the style’s characteristic geometric design. He said there was once concealed lighting around the walls.  He must have worked that out from the old wiring as neither he nor I have been able to find photographs of the ballroom, or indeed of any part of the interior, of the Grand Garage.  I mentioned that the parents of a Wagga-born friend of mine attended dances at the Grand Garage and Paul told me that the wife of proprietor, Alf Ludwig, grew tired of attractive single women ‘hanging around’ and put a stop to the dances sometime in the 1960s.

Art deco plaster vent given a touch of gilt by Paul (my photo).

Paul opened one of the doors that feature those art deco handles, it is framed with cream painted timber and has a bubble patterned glass inset, all of which are original. The door leads to the ‘waiting room’ which is how the space is described in a 1954 advertisement in The Daily Advertiser listed along with the garage’s other amenities: ‘hot showers, telephone, writing facilities, boiling water, electric iron’.  It was likely designed as a rest area adjacent to the kitchenette and men’s and women’s showers and conveniences and now serves as a storeroom. Paul thinks it may be haunted as he has felt shivers along his spine when in the room alone at night. I wonder if it is the spirits of Riverina travellers or of Chinese gamblers that are restive in the rest room!

Original door to 'Rest Room' (my photo).

The network of rooms that contained these facilities has been extensively modified and now contains modern toilets and a bathroom, a kitchen and Paul’s living quarters. His bedroom does still incorporate a 1950s fireplace converted to bookshelves but other than that there are not really any hints of Alf Ludwig’s ‘ultra-modern’ facilities for visitors / prospective used car buyers as they existed back in the day.

We looked at the workshop area /lubritorium spruiked in the 1954 advertisement as follows:

Our new lubritorium is in charge of a specially trained man whose job is not only to grease every working part of your vehicle but to report to you any worn part. For 15/- he will check your car thoroughly replace any broken nipples, grease it, inspect gear box and diff and change oil if required.

Still attached to the ceiling are the now non-functioning 1950s lubricating device and compressed air hose that the ‘specially trained man’ would have employed.  Paul, ever the vintage car enthusiast, is currently using the area to restore a couple of 1970s Holdens.

Original 1950s lubricating device (left) and compressed air hose (right) (my photos).

Paul’s office occupies the bow fronted area to the right of the ex-ballroom. It reflects his long tenure in the building with many mementoes and photographs relating both to the business and his family. There are several pictures of his sons, who have both entered motor trades, one is a mechanic, the other, a panel beater. Paul’s collection of historical clippings is in a filing cabinet beside his desk. In  addition to what he had already generously shared with me he gave me copies of images of George Lloyd’s grocery shop, which preceded Knights next door, inundated by 1950s flood waters, and an image of George himself at the counter of his shop. 

George Lloyd's grocery store, now Knight's Deli, marks the northern boundary of the Grand Garage site pictured here during floods in the 1950s. The Grand Garage's bowsers and signage are on the right
(source: Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook page).

Paul told me that originally the garage, its showrooms and workshops, all the customer amenities and several outbuildings covered the area from where the side wall of Knights deli now stands to Meccanico’s café and the Cadell Place development. That explains why the address is given as 167 - 183 Fitzmaurice Street in the old advertisements whereas the Swift Service Centre’s is just 175. This approximately 3000 square metre site is where Wagga’s Chinese camp was situated from the 1860s. We know from newspaper articles that the Joss House/ Free Mission Hall was demolished in 1938 and that a church constructed behind that building to the rear of the site was still in use as a storeroom by the Grand Garage in 1954.  

The boundary of the site as it looks today, Knight's Deli has a similar profile to the grocery store that used to occupy the site (my photo).

Two Chinese businesses existed where Meccanico’s and the rest of the Cadell Place development now are. Foon Kee, herbalist and grocer, had a cottage and store on the site until the 1930s when he departed Wagga after 60 years to return to his home province of Canton for his final years. His next-door neighbour, Tommy Ah Wah, a successful business man who owned property in Wagga and Junee, is credited in Tracking the Dragon with operating the first garage at the Fitzmaurice Street address however according to a Daily Advertiser report of 1927 two ‘NRMA-trained’ mechanics, ‘Messrs. C E Kent and W E Pulsford have opened the Grand Garage in Fitzmaurice- street,  near the Hampden Bridge, and hope, by expert advice, to have a share of the patronage of resident and travelling motorists’  so perhaps Tommy Ah Wah bought it from them or was their landlord.

Foon Kee's cottage and store in the 1920s, he is just visible in the doorway
 (source: Wagga Wagga City Council website).

Back to my tour…

Paul told me that the forecourt area of the building would have originally been lined with used cars for sale as shown in The Daily Advertiser’s 1954 photograph. Now it has a driveway and a row of petrol bowsers as well as parking spaces for Swift’s and visitors’ vehicles. The concrete is heavily crazed and a gravel drive leads out into a back lane that runs beside the new levee completed in 2020. Within the garage site’s boundaries are several ageing structures. Sadly none is the remnant church where Chinese characters and drawings could still be clearly seen in 1954. Paul said he believes that was probably demolished later that decade.

Meccanico’s Café and Cadell Place incorporate some of the older structures on their sites and recently, just up the road, the Prince of Wales Hotel (1865) created a restaurant that includes some of the pub's heritage features. Paul said he would love to see the Grand Garage restored to its art deco grandeur and functioning as a restaurant at some point in the future. The wooden floor would come up a treat and he has already experimented with adding gold lustre to some of the stylish vents. The building is well equipped with a kitchen and multiple toilets and there is ample room at the back to extend the premises. The large curved windows make the interior light and they could look out onto some plantings and statuary instead of the bowsers. It just needs someone with the vision!

Alf Ludwig at Wagga's Gold Cup racing carnival probably in 1999
(source: Wagga and District Historical Society collection).  

Our conversation touched on rumours relating to the Chinese occupancy of the site which still need research, but which will more likely forever remain mysteries. These include the purported graves, the supposed network of tunnels under Fitzmaurice Street and a legendary statue appropriated from the temple. Paul said a man of Chinese descent called by one day and told him an ancestor of his had been buried somewhere on the site. That seems unlikely but not impossible depending upon the year of death. There are Chinese funerals recorded at the Wagga Monumental Cemetery from 1874. A person has posted on the Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook page that there are multiple tunnels under Fitzmaurice Street connected to David Jones, Romano’s Hotel, the Courthouse and, of course, the Grand Garage (he cites Alf Ludwig as his source for that one). Their purposes are variously described as giving a magistrate quick access to his liquid lunch, a route for Chinese gamblers escaping a police raid and use as conduits for WW2 military communications!  However, the only substantiated story of an underground cavern in Wagga Central relates to the now filled in men’s lavatories outside the Union Club Hotel in Forsyth Street. Lastly, the ‘holy grail’, a missing religious statue, possibly gilded, liberated from the Chinese temple.  Paul told me Alf Ludwig lived in hope of discovering gold somewhere on the Grand Garage site. He reached 86 years of age so he had ample time to search, but from what I’ve read he had more success making his fortune taking bets on the horses and as a purveyor of used cars and television sets. Is it just possible that he enjoyed fuelling this urban myth?     

References:

Morris, Sherry, Wagga Wagga – A History, 1999, Council of the City of Wagga Wagga

McGowan, Barry Dr, Tracking The Dragon - A history of the Chinese in the Riverina, 2010, Museum of the Riverina
Lost Wagga Wagga Facebook Group