The Crow Eaters Read online

  While the housing plan was forward thinking, the development of the city in health, law and education was not as refined. This dependence on industry turned Elizabeth from a utopia of the future in the 1960s to a place in the 1980s that was an embarrassment. Once upon a time it was a place that the city’s namesake – Queen Elizabeth – would visit regularly on her Australian tours; it then descended into a place of disadvantage. The lingering image of Elizabeth became one of ‘single parents and crime waves, vandalism and delinquency’, as Peel writes.

  Royce Kurmelovs, who grew up in nearby Salisbury, wrote for Vice that, ‘Elizabeth’s best days are done’, after growing up in an era when Holden ruled and manufacturing kept this ‘Detroit of South Australia’ afloat.

  Peel, who grew up in Elizabeth, writes about its dual identity, and that it ‘represented both the hope and the failure of our efforts to make a better city and a better society’.

  Like many South Australians, I have only driven past Elizabeth on my way north; I have never stopped. After only seeing snippets of Elizabeth on the nightly news, of violent home invasions, tabloid statistics of it being the fourth most dangerous city in Australia – and commercial news reports of robberies and stabbings – I am keen to see the reality of South Australia’s biggest eyesore for myself. People warn me to be careful and they make jokes about stolen cars before I arrive, though I think this is part of the problem with Elizabeth – it’s easy to be critical from a distance. I want to see what it’s like from within.

  Royce Kurmelovs is tall and bearded, with inquiring eyes. He has agreed to show me some of the area where he grew up. I had read many of Royce’s articles on South Australia before I arrived in the state and his writing gave me something of an introduction to Elizabeth and the area north of Adelaide.

  We begin at the Salisbury shopping centre, near to where he grew up and where his family still lives – just down the road from Salisbury’s most infamous former resident, and one-time Guantanamo Bay inmate, David Hicks. The edges of the shopping centre are populated with Cash Converters, an Afghan Flavours store and numerous unemployment offices. What surprises me, though, is how busy and multicultural it is. Where I live in the hills it is particularly monocultural, whereas here it is much more diverse. There are people of African descent wearing colourful clothes walking past Vietnamese bakeries, Greek retirees drinking coffee at Italian cafes and great swathes of variety. There are start-ups and small, hopeful businesses on the street and life going on everywhere. It’s true, it is very busy for a weekday morning, and this does say something about the demographic here, though it doesn’t come across as a sad place.

  We drive north and eventually, like all roads to Elizabeth, we pass the enormous hangar that was the Holden plant. It closed down on 20 October 2017, after 69 years as the financial and cultural centre of Elizabeth. At its peak, it produced 780 cars a day and 1600 people worked at the factory across the two shifts. The place that was once the centre of the entire region is set to become the Lionsgate Business Park eventually, though, for the moment, this former icon of Elizabeth looks empty.

  ‘If you didn’t work there, you knew someone who did,’ Royce says of Holden as we pass the factory and approach vacant lots and paddocks with grazing sheep. We skirt around the suburbs and the Edinburgh Indus-trial Park where many of the 700–800 businesses in the area were dependent on the Holden supply chain.

  In Royce’s book The Death of Holden: The End of an Australian Dream , he writes, ‘The factory out that way paid people’s mortgages and rent, let them bring kids into a world that was predictable.’ Royce’s writing inspired me to come here in the first place, though to also see the impact the closure is having on Elizabeth.

  ‘You never really understand something like that growing up in the middle of it,’ says Royce now of its influence. His grandfather worked at the plant when they migrated here and its presence was a constant in Royce’s early life.

  In the wake of the Holden closure, the focus has changed to retail, it seems, at least temporarily. We drive past the Elizabeth Shopping Centre – an enormous, new-looking complex full of retail outlets. I do find the focus on ‘shopping’ slightly strange considering that unemployment is often one of the statistics spouted here by politicians. Some polls put unemployment here at 33 per cent, though this fails to consider all demo-graphics and the underemployment that exists across every part of Adelaide, not just Elizabeth. Recent data suggest that the youth unemployment rate here is closer to 19 per cent and, while it is one of the worst in the country, it feels like a political football to be thrown about on ABC television’s Q&A, rather than the reality of the issue. Royce and I drive past the enormous mural on the wall of the shopping centre. It is a legacy piece by Cam Scale, who also painted the Kimba silo works. The orange and chrome design of cars, workers and tools is meant to represent the production line and its significance to the community.

  We travel through the streets of Elizabeth Vale, Elizabeth Downs and Elizabeth North. The houses here are grim, there are hollowed-out cars every now and then, couches, mattresses and old crates strewn on lawns and, strangely, lots of cats in the streets. Royce reminds me, though, that I should look at the original houses of ‘utopian’ Elizabeth in context, this was post–Second World War and things were difficult. The chance to have a safe place to call your own, in no matter what era, is an important thing and something many people in Australia take for granted now. Despite the better days seen by many council areas here, there is pride displayed by many of the streets and houses. We walk past one house which is painted entirely in a new coat of luminescent aqua, neat gardens and neighbours sitting out the front of their places drinking tea together on an overcast afternoon. It reminds me that the lens you’re viewing the place through – tabloid journo, city planner, hopeful local – will determine which images stick with you in a place like Elizabeth.

  We come across a trashed house in Elizabeth Downs, with no intact windows, the remnants of a fire in the backyard and the front door open, through which we can see the smashed innards of an abandoned house inside. This is the Elizabeth the papers perpetuate. There is a ‘no junk mail’ sign still intact out the front, though despite the anarchy behind the hedge, the brochures and catalogues are just heaped up on the path outside the house up to knee height.

  Next door, as if the mess of the adjacent house doesn’t exist, a young man patiently sweeps his spotless porch. He waves as we walk past and tells us that the elderly couple who lived there moved to a nursing home and, when the house wasn’t claimed by anyone, it gradually fell into disrepair and became a sanctuary for people with nowhere else to go.

  Royce and I stop at the Red Lion Hotel in Elizabeth North for a beer and a game of pool. There is a notice on the door to not wear bikie insignia inside, though aside from this it is an unremarkable suburban pub. The electronic chime of pokies fills the space now, though once upon a time this was the sort of place that made Elizabeth famous for other reasons.

  One of the most positive narratives coming from the north of Adelaide centres on music, and how the rough, working-class history helped shape icons such as Jimmy Barnes, who grew up in Elizabeth and let the tough earlier years here inspire his and Cold Chisel’s tone. The Angels’ front man, Bernard ‘Doc’ Neeson, also grew up in Elizabeth after emigrating from Belfast in 1960. Listening to The Angels it is easy to hear their influence on bands such as AC/DC and Nirvana. They are responsible for one of the most notable pub anthems in Australia, ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again?’ (‘No way, get fucked, fuck off!’ became the famous crowd response to this question all over the world). Rock anthems and live music in the many rough-and-ready pubs of Elizabeth became the starting point for the hugely influential music scene here, when hotels were tough and music was everywhere. While things have changed a lot here since the 1970s and ’80s, music has become one of the emblems of Elizabeth as it looks to the future.

  When we drive on, Royce points out the site of the former
Octagon Theatre, which many locals I speak to remember fondly as the place they once saw Chisel, The Twilights, The Easybeats or John E Broome and the Handels play. The Octagon has been demolished, though the Shedley Theatre remains, along with the Northern Sound System, which now acts as a community youth development centre focusing on music production. I note the big murals of Bob Marley splashed on the side and plan to return later.

  Elizabeth is now officially known as the City of Playford and new town planners who either don’t remember, or would rather forget, the past, market it as ‘SA’s next great city’. The development and ‘hope’ here does remind me a little of the ABC TV show Utopia strangely enough, with all the statistics and millions of dollars promised for new hubs and activated precincts. After my visit with Royce, I try and organise a visit to the Northern Sound System to observe the current influence of music here. Such is the enthusiasm to show people the ‘other’ side of the city I receive a call from the mayor’s media advisor within the hour to arrange a tour the next day.

  I’m met by Mayor Glenn Docherty and his two media advisors Vassil Malandris and Rob McLean, next to the council chambers, momentarily making me feel much more important than I am. I’m ushered into the front seat of the mayor’s car (a Holden I note) and Glenn, who at 35 is remarkably young to hold such civic office, shows me his version of the place where he grew up.

  The New York Times Australian bureau chief Damien Cave visited Adelaide in 2018 and labelled it a ‘rust belt’ city like Pittsburgh, Chattanooga or even Dresden in Germany, which are all now exploring every avenue possible to find regeneration. It is easy to see Elizabeth as the centre of this attribution in South Australia.

  ‘I’d like people to stop being surprised that successful people come from here,’ Rob says as we drive past the new tennis centre and towards Blakes Crossing, a new suburb which is all parks, ponds and new town-houses – it looks like Gungahlin and the new suburbs in Canberra, not the Elizabeth I had seen previously. I know the mayor is taking this chance to do some PR and to show me the hope they have for this place. He’s not focusing on the bad news stories that have characterised Elizabeth in the past, though I am happy to see a different perspective on the city to better understand it as well, and I think the mayor’s view is part of that, even if it doesn’t resonate with everyone.

  Glenn makes a point of not just showing me ‘progress’, but he also cruises past his parents’ 1970s brick home in the suburbs to show a more representative image of the Elizabeth he grew up with. Echoing what Royce had told me earlier, Glenn says, ‘When you grow up here you don’t realise it’s a “bad” place.’ His voice squeaks and is barely audible, the result of a week full of meet-and-greets, events and openings across the city to promote the hope he has for Elizabeth – he tells me he has a meeting with Federal Member and Shadow Tourism Minister Anthony Albanese soon to show off his city to a national audience.

  ‘When I used to play footy here as a kid, people would ask me if I played with knives in my socks,’ Rob says from the back seat. ‘Our kids will have a different experience of growing up in Elizabeth from us,’ says Glenn as we pass the new Adelaide United A-League team training base and head out to Angle Vale, past ploughed fields and the vineyards of Virgara Wines, only 15 minutes from the centre of Elizabeth.

  While the rough streets and immigrant struggles of Elizabeth once produced some of Australia’s most iconic music acts, this is no longer the town of Jimmy Barnes and The Angels, it is a place of Tkay Maidza and hip-hop. We circle back to the city to see Northern Sound System, one of the council’s biggest youth success stories. NSS focuses on giving opportunities to young people aged 12–25, centred on music. NSS staffer Louise Rinaldi shows me around their recording studios, which are decked out with soundproof walls, Pro Tools desks and closed doors with musicians inside, which they rent out to locals for $5 an hour. We walk past the rehearsal and performance space where Velvet Genie are practising and Louise tells me that another service they offer is the N1 Records program, where local and emerging artists are mentored to understand the music industry and meet producers, record singles, attend conferences and plan their first performances with industry experts, ‘empowering them to take control of their art and future’. The most notable graduate of the program is Tkay Maidza, who has gone on to receive international acclaim for her music.

  Despite all the new housing estates, community centres, sports parks, health precincts, manicured lawns, statistics and ‘progress’ they show me, it’s the Playford Food Co-op in Elizabeth Downs I’m most taken by. This bare bones shop, next to one of the last remaining active video stores in South Australia, which still has the five for $5 deals I remember as a kid, allows people to provide their families with proper food and a greater sense of community while doing so. ‘This is about dignity,’ says Glenn as we enter. The place smells like spices as the workers – many of whom are local volunteers – organise meals and menus for customers. Many of the menu items here allow people reintegrating into society, or single parents with maybe only one night a fortnight with their children, to provide something nutritious and affordable.

  People receive a free loaf of bread and a bag of vegetables with every purchase, and their goods are supplied by Barossa Fine Foods, the Gawler butcher and many other local businesses which see Elizabeth as a place to be hopeful about.

  Kirsty Stapleton stands behind the counter sealing up pre-packaged bags of food so people have all the ingredients they need to create family meals such as chicken stir-fry ($8.50), cottage pie ($8.50), minestrone ($4.50) and beef curry ($7.50). There are snack packs for $1.60 for school lunches and simple colour-coded labels to instruct people on the nutritional value of the meals. Kirsty grew up in Elizabeth and she tells me, ‘Helping people really makes this more than just a job.’ They provide 35 000 meals a year for people in South Australia just from this one unassuming store.

  As we leave, I see a familiar sign out the front of the shops. It’s for the local doctor’s surgery and I remember the sign from my walk through here last week. I realise that the trashed house I visited is only five minutes from here. It confirms the two different sides of the place presented to outsiders, only a few hundred metres apart, depending on how you view it – a place of rundown houses and squalor, or one of hope and dignity.

  ‘This has always been a place of change. It’s a progressive place,’ Glenn says as we get back in the car and drive through Elizabeth South, where the first houses here were built in 1954. ‘Has it always worked? No. But it has given us a sense of community,’ he says, driving back to the centre of town again.

  Glenn drops me at the plaza. It’s where he met Prince William and Kate in 2014 (after they had visited NSS themselves); 60 years after the Duke of Cambridge’s grandmother first visited her namesake suburb. More fitting to the era, Glenn says he gave Prince George a skateboard as a gift, rather than the quarter million dollar jewels that were once bestowed on the royals here.

  I have seen two sides of Elizabeth, though I’m not entirely satisfied. I want to go out on my own to see something not filtered through someone else’s history of the place first. On my various trips to Elizabeth, my head always turned at the concrete building on the edge of the oval off Main North Road painted with a mural of two bulldogs dressed for combat on the side. Inside is the Northside Gym, a boxing, jiujitsu and mixed martial arts (MMA) institution where many national fighting champions have trained. It now also provides an outlet for disadvantaged kids and recent arrivals to integrate themselves into the community.

  I arrive at the gym on a cold Monday night. Hooded fighters jog past, shadow boxing in the still air. Boxing has intrigued me ever since I wrote a story about a Canberra gym six or so years ago. I arrived to do a profile on an up-and-coming boxer and ended up returning regularly for a year, learning how to box in the process. Norman Mailer once wrote: ‘[Boxing] arouses two of the deepest anxieties we contain. There is not only the fear of getting hurt, which is profound in mor
e men than will admit to it, but there is the opposite panic, equally unadmitted, of hurting others.’

  There is something strangely alluring about boxing and as soon as I step out on the mats at the Northside Gym I remember why I loved my time learning how to jab, pivot, block and spar, and why I still do it nearly on a daily basis. In Among the Thugs, his book about football hooligans, Bill Buford suggests violence like this can be a ‘thing of focus and purity’.

  The gym has been operating in Elizabeth since 1968. It is an unassuming concrete box full of boxing bags creaking on their chains, a new MMA cage at one end – provided by the council – and a tattered boxing ring at the other. On the wall are posters of the men the boxers aspire to emulate: Rocky Balboa, Mike Tyson, Kostya Tszyu and Jeff Fenech. The flags of many of the fighting nationalities are draped across the concrete blocks: Australian, Aboriginal, Welsh, Brazilian, Italian, Irish, Greek and, curiously, a Liverpool FC flag as well. It is cold inside and there is a thick smell of sweat in the air. There is no techno music and no motivational posters either; there’s no pretention at all. I notice one sign over near the boxing gear: ‘Your mother doesn’t work here so put equipment back where you got it from.’

  While boxing was once an activity of the lower classes which allowed for transition to higher social classes, the dynamic of boxing has changed. It is now accessible to everyone and has become part of the middle-class fitness regime alongside zumba and pilates. Even the use of gloves – 16-ounce padded mitts to protect the hands and head – have changed from the leather straps and ‘sharp gloves’ lined with metal which were used in Greek and Roman times. Boxing as combat might have declined in popularity and the violence associated with it might have softened, but its place in the modern world is still evident.