I just got back from Ballaboosta, a restaurant near my place on Glynburn Road. I was there for a meeting with the Amnesty International group I’m involved with. There were just three of us, but we had a great night.
We’ve decided to hold an art exhibition at the Fringe next year. Since they know I’m into letter writing, my role will be to write to all the federal MPs and senators. I’ll be asking them for their thoughts on sanctioning Israel and expelling their ambassador from Australia.
Their responses will be displayed as part of the exhibition. Below is a photo I took inside Ballaboosta while we were eating.
It’s like saying, “We see you, we acknowledge your right to exist… but only if you agree to live under permanent vulnerability.” That’s not recognition — that’s conditional permission. And permission can be revoked at any time.
Fair enough — disarm Hamas and any terrorist organisation operating through the occupied Palestinian territories. But if Palestine is recognised as a free state, why shouldn’t it have its own army? No equivalent demand is ever made of Israel, which has one of the strongest militaries in the world and is actively using it. Palestine is the occupied party, and yet we are telling them they must not be free to protect themselves. That makes me furious.
I touched on this tonight and didn’t get a resounding agreement at first. I worried I might sound like I was supporting terrorism — which I absolutely am not. But when I explained what I really meant, they totally agreed with me. This is something that has made me angrier than almost anything else about this assault on Gaza. Why are Palestinians being asked by the Australian Government to accept the status of second-rate citizens?
I do admire Albanese for saying Netanyahu is “in denial” over the suffering in Gaza. And in many ways I respect him for announcing that Australia will recognise Palestine as a state — especially given the backlash he’s faced. But the conditions are patronising, insulting, and unfair. They were put in place to reassure Israel and the United States that Australia hasn’t completely gone rogue. It’s not just a political compromise — it’s a moral failure. It tells Palestinians that their right to self-determination is less valuable, less legitimate, and more negotiable than Israel’s right to militarised dominance.
Apart from that it was lovely to meet my Amnesty buddies in person. We’ve been meeting on Zoom for a while, but tonight was the first time I’d seen them face-to-face. They’re already good friends with each other, and we spent about two and a half hours chatting. Below is a photo of the outside tables at Ballaboosta, empty by the time I left.
I’d also been barred from using Randstad because, when I was in Sydney, I accepted a position at the Australian Bureau of Statistics — but when it came time to starting the job, I was lying in bed so depressed and distressed that I simply couldn't get up. The two agencies I now had frosty relations with were the two best in Adelaide.
I thought I’d try contacting Randstad to ask for a second chance. When I called, I happened to get a woman around my age named Alana. She was friendly but had an edge I liked. I was honest with her — I told her I’d been so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. She told me to come in for a chat, which I did, and she reinstated me from DNU which means Do Not Use — to a fully active temp again. I couldn’t thank her enough. We got along so well, and she was so good to me. She found me work straight away.
My first job back with them was on the reception desk of the doctor’s clinic at Highgate Park — the old Julia Farr Centre. I was relieving the receptionist while she was seconded to another role. That’s where I met the judge’s daughter — she reminded me of the judge from Sydney and my exposer. I can’t remember how long I was there; I think it was about a month.
It was actually a very sad place to work. All the residents had an acquired brain injury or other severe disabilities. A number of them had attempted suicide, such as stepping in front of a truck, and they were in a bad way both physically and mentally. I met a woman who’d had a stroke on the operating table, a man with Huntington’s, and many others with profound disabilities.
I was still a smoker then, and there were other staff who smoked too. Out the front were tables and chairs where people sat and smoked — both cigarettes and marijuana which seemed to be allowed, or at least overlooked by management. Honestly, fair enough. Life must have been pretty rough for some of these people, so I thought it was nice they could have a small pleasure like getting high.
Something interesting I learned while sitting at my humble little reception desk was that there used to be a sex worker who came to see some of the residents, paid for by their families. She was passionate about providing sexual expression for people with disabilities. The only reason she stopped coming was because the nurses often had to physically position people to make sex possible, which meant they were technically facilitating a crime.
I think it’s a shame that isn’t legal. If someone is willing to take on that role, and everyone involved consents, I believe that intimate contact could be extremely therapeutic for some people. Of course, I know there are endless legal, ethical, and philosophical arguments around that sort of thing.
On my last day at Highgate Park, I had a lot of internal mail to send out to other facilities. Then I got a call from Alana telling me I had a few days’ work at the Strathmont Centre — a large government-run residential facility for people with intellectual disabilities.
When I arrived that Monday, I checked the incoming mail and I had sent myself some internal mail from Highgate Park! I thought that was extraordinary. I know it’s such a small thing, but it was one of those serendipitous moments you experience when temping around town.
The Strathmont Centre was interesting — there’s a lot of history there. From memory, there was another staff member in the reception area and we spent most of the time talking. I know this is not an intellectual disability but I remember taking a call from a woman who was losing her sight, and it got me thinking a lot about blindness. I asked myself: What would I look at if I knew it was the last thing I was ever going to see?
The Strathmont Centre had a lot of security. The reception desk wasn’t open — it was behind a big plastic shield. The other receptionist told me a few spooky stories about residents, doctors, and staff who had supposedly died under mysterious circumstances. Back then it scared me, but looking back now, they were probably just stories or exaggerated truths.
After my short stint at the Strathmont Centre, Alana placed me at the Eastern Community Intermediate Care Centre at Glenside Hospital. In many ways, it felt like the ultimate trifecta — I’d gone from acquired brain injury, to intellectual disability, to mental health.
I was on the reception desk at the front, so I dealt with both staff and patients who were free to pass through. The staff told me that many of the patients were suicidal. I know that’s an incredibly painful thing to experience, but I couldn’t help thinking that they should go to Highgate Park and see what happens when a suicide attempt doesn’t work. In many cases, the result was far worse than what they had initially intended. Of course, I didn’t say that to anyone, but it’s true.
While I was working at the ICC, there was a scandal involving a South Australian judge. I remember seeing a small article in one of the weekday papers that hinted at misconduct by a District Court judge, but it didn’t name names. Then, one Sunday, the truth came out — a big front-page photo of Callum Phonenix in the Sunday Mail, outlining that he had resigned from the bench after being involved with sex workers. The article stated that his legal representation was Hamish Sinclair QC — the same QC who had appeared in the judge’s courtroom in Sydney.
I couldn’t believe it for two reasons. The first was, I had actually temped in his chambers during the Snowtown murder trials, and I remembered him well. That meant something I’d said in my last letter to the judge was true — I really had worked with barristers who later became judges. The second reason I couldn’t believe it was that, of all the QCs in Adelaide, he was using the very same one from the courtroom I had been in at the Downing Centre. It felt almost unbelievable.
At that time, judges were still very much on my mind. I’d written to most of the judges in the country, and quite a few overseas. I started going through the Courts Administration Authority’s website, searching for sentencing remarks by Judge Callum Phonenix. That’s when I came across a remark I really liked:
"I hope that you take full advantage of the opportunity you are getting and that your life is successful and happy and rewarding. It does not have to be fancy, it just has to be a decent life."
The photo of Mr Phoenix on the front page of the Sunday Mail was weird. It looked as though he were staring directly at me. I can’t quite explain it. I know I had worked in his chambers, but beyond that there was something so familiar about him.
I decided that if he ever returned to the bar, I would write to him and offer $10,000 to sit down and read my entire life story — and then give me his judgement on whether my letters to the judge had been reasonable. I also wanted to ask his opinion on what the judge might have been thinking when he opened them.
I’m not the sort of person who usually has $10,000 lying around, but for some reason my parents had just given me that amount. I can’t even remember why. What I do remember is wanting to spend it on rehabilitating myself in relation to my judge issues.
The reason I mention this is because there was a nurse working at the ICC whose husband knew Mr Phonenix. Before the full story came out — when his name had been linked to “trouble” but sex workers weren’t mentioned yet — she hinted that she thought he’d been involved with something incredibly sinister. I got a bit angry with her over that. He wouldn’t have remembered me at all, but I still felt oddly defensive of him because I didn’t believe he would do something like that. Then, when it came out that he had been with sex workers, I actually hailed him as a hero for going to a professional and not wasting the time or emotional energy of court staff.
I kept him in the back of my mind as someone who might one day be able to help me address my “judge issues.” I thought it must have been incredibly embarrassing for him to have to resign from the bench like that, and I even worried he might take his own life — but thankfully, he didn’t.
I left the ICC after about another month and was assigned to a longer-term role at the SuperSA call centre. On the very day I was offered the job, there happened to be an article in the paper about Mr Phonenix’s judicial pension with SuperSA. I thought it was strange timing, but didn’t think much more of it.
I’ve always loved being on the phones, so it felt good to be back in a call centre. I quickly made a group of friends there, and we socialised a lot outside of work. My boss was amazing — not overbearing or micromanaging, but approachable and down-to-earth. She once said to me, “Today I might be your boss, but tomorrow you might be mine, so I always treat everybody with the same respect.” I never forgot that.
While I was working at SuperSA, I moved to North Adelaide to live with a girlfriend I’d met while working at Centrelink. Her grandmother owned the place, so we were paying very minimal rent for a prime location.
After I’d been at SuperSA for a few months, I happened to look at the notice of vacancies. I wasn’t looking for a new job — I just like to see what’s out there. That’s when I saw a role I was instantly fell in love with: Fingerprint Technician with SAPOL. I wanted that job so badly.
To get myself in the right frame of mind, I went to Adelaide Moulding and Casting Supplies. They helped me take a cast of my hand and my foot using dental alginate. I then made the casts up in plaster of Paris. The first thing I did was paint the hand with purple acrylic paint.
In the photos below, you’ll see a lot of white dots. These weren’t visible to the naked eye — they only appeared when the camera flash hit them.
It didn’t bring the fingerprints up, but as you can see, a lot of lines became visible, and I still thought it was worth sending through to SAPOL.
For the foot, I used gold metal leaf — essentially imitation gold leaf — to highlight both the perfections and imperfections of its form. You can see the result in the photos below:
My mum thinks I go over the top with these things. I don’t see it that way — I think I’m passionate. She advised me not to send a résumé like this, but my view is that if they didn’t want me as I am, there was no point in working there anyway.
A time I did go over the top with a job application was a couple of years ago when I was looking for work while studying. I saw a role advertised as a Customer Service Officer at Balfours. I ended up writing them a two-page letter outlining the entire history of Balfours and everything I liked about the company — and again, I never heard back.
I was at SuperSA for around ten months. There were a couple of other temps, two of them part-time. We all got along really well — it was like one big happy family. The two part-timers together made up a full-time position, while I was full-time on my own.
One day, my boss called me into her little cubicle and told me she could only keep one temp in a full-time role — and she’d chosen me because I’d been there the longest. That meant the two part-timers would both lose their jobs. I thought about it and it made no sense — why should two people lose their income so one person could stay? So I told my boss that the other two girls could have the position and I’d go back to temping around town. She tried to talk me out of it, but I felt it was the right thing to do.
We agreed to make it sound like I’d chosen to leave, and a few days later my boss told me there’d be another position opening in about a month, so I could come back. We shook on it. But on my last day, one of my friends did something that, in hindsight, I think was a bit manipulative. She bought me a pile of presents, organised a card for everyone to sign, and made a big speech saying goodbye. It turned into such a grand farewell that coming back a month later felt almost impossible. I don’t know why she did that. She has borderline personality disorder — and I’m not judging that — but I’ve wondered if some of her logic came from that.
After SuperSA, I did a short stint at RevenueSA. I was there for a couple of months and literally sat there doing nothing all day — no calls, hardly anyone to talk to. It was mind-numbing. That’s when I decided to go back to art school.
In early 2013, I enrolled at the Adelaide Central School of Art. I loved it — it was creative, energising and full of ideas. Plus, it was located on the Glenside Hospital campus, which somehow added another layer of excitement.
