The marvellous slow food market is on at the Convent today — get a rhubarb tartlett from the rhubarb lady, a strong coffee from Lentil as Anything, a loaf of bread from the bakery, and stock up on unbelievably good home made panforte for Christmas presents.  But take your own plastic bags, or baskets. And there’s an open day at the Convent besides, where you can go inside the buildings, check out the artists’ studios, the ‘wellbeing studios’, and probably even the most beautiful ‘cello shop in the world.  Market finishes at 1 p.m., open day goes till 4 p.m. 3MBS is running tours.

The Age has reviewed a bar that I like, the Abbotsford Convent’s Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment. I never seem to get there though. This could be the prompter.

I couldn’t make the Collingwood Historical Society’s annual walk yesterday, a damn shame since it was specifically about the industrial history of Abbotsford. Perhaps someone can provide me with some tidbits they learnt. The very first Abbotsford blogger, Bruce, went, and shared a smidgen on his blog.

The Lord sprayed sunshine and chirping birds on the annual fair of the Convent’s Rudolph Steiner school, Sophia Mundi (pictured). The junior school is in the Convent’s grounds, while the senior school remains in the Nicholson St building where I had been to previous fairs. It was a good fair, and suggested a well-run school. I took a look at the kindergarten on Abbotsford St a hop skip and a jump away, too. It’s called Little Sophia Rudolph Steiner Kindergarten, and also looked good. Some good friends of mine had a Steiner education. Steiner invented biodynamic agriculture, which holds the phases of the moon as important to when to grow things, anthroposophic medicine, and Waldorf education. He was also an architect, artist, and writer who presented more lectures than Justice Michael Kirby. There are 1,000 Steiner schools around the world. Rudolph thought the Germans were pretty special, and was influenced by Goethe. My hopelessly ignorant suspicion is that though Rudolph may have been pretty cool at the time (he died in 1925) thoughtless adherence to his more curious views today may be inadvisable. The feeling I got from the school was that they had probably embraced the good and moved with the times. The location is of course to die for, and the downsides — I postulate that eurythmy may be a downside — must be seen in the context of the upsides, like access to the Convent and the Yarra and the Children’s Farm.

‘It was indeed the Convent of the Good Shepherd, the Sacred Heart Class was where we kids worked our butts off to feed the nuns and the orphans (the orphans I don’t mind helping to feed …… ) and St Euphrasia was for schooling. So there were four sections in all. When my father placed me in the convent (I wasn’t in trouble by the way, at least not pregnant…), my father got rid of me as a plaything and the convent was as good as anywhere else.

We girls got up early, went to mass, came back, attended the refectory where we all had breakfast (such as it was) then we went to work. I was only a kid back then and didn’t know better, I just accepted their slavery as normal! Hubbys Bub [another poster on the disucssion board] the stories we could tell, your friend and I except my heart already feels as if it is breaking in two. As for my anger it’s getting like a great big ball. I don’t dare say too much else, as right now im not coping well at all.

This I want to say: breakfast was luke-warm porridge with a slice of STALE bread. Lunch on the other hand was soup, with the morning’s left over porridge added for volume! Please, I just need someone else to back me up as I know it sounds unbelievable!

We worked so hard. I usually worked in the ironing room, but did some time in the mangle room, which is a huge round press that one fed sheets and such into! Anyone who knows me will tell you I loathe ironing, hence most of my clothing is drip dry!

We had a huge bath and toilet area. We had a bath once a fortnight from memory and even so the water we used had been used several times before we got in Y…..UCKO! The crows, usually called auxiliaries, would drag us down there and beat the bejes-s out of us if some nun had a complaint against any of us. Never mind if it was true or not. Biff! Bash! And cop that! Until we grew older and now and then fought back.

There was also a method of complaint called standing on the slab. We would walk off work and stand in the middle of the room and that’s where we stayed until bedtime. We could eat the muck they gave us for breakfast, then the nun in charge of our workplace would ask us if we were prepared to work. I was too stubborn to comply and so went without many a meal. Some of the girls would try and smuggle us something, but it was usually at extreme risk to themselves, and many a child went down the toilet just for feeling pity for a fellow sufferer.

I make absolutely no apologies whatsoever for despising those cows called nuns if they were the gaurdian of our souls then god help us. I looked at my granddaughter and thought I wasn’t much older or bigger than that when I first went there! HANG your heads in shame, you women who were portrayed as the gaurdians of our bodies and souls. SHAME SHAME on you! The only time I have ever stepped inside a Catholic church since was to attend a funeral. I wandered around for some time after that eventually I realised I had a spiritual need so looked deeply into the Bible, and now I know what’s actually in the Bible, I despise them even more. Not only because they were nuns, but primarily because they were WOMEN!

Totally unforgiveable bvehaviour, however I can forgive (not easily ) but because the Bible directs us to! I DEFINITELY CANNOT FORGET THOUGH. I have deliberately wiped a lot of menories away, in order to survive and a survivor is exactly what I am and can take a little comfort in that.’

Shanaka Fernando, already the winner of the Metropolitan Local Hero Award, has gone the next step and won the Australian Local Hero Award on Australia Day. The Victorian Government has decided he is a “social challenger” lauding his victory thus:

‘By establishing the ‘Lentil as Anything’ concept, Shanaka Fernando has set a wholly successful example to society of how a commercial enterprise can be operated on a socially responsible, idealistic and altruistic basis and still be financially successful and popular with the public. Since Shanaka relinquished his personal capital in the first restaurant and turned it into a cooperative and youth training enterprise, the business has grown into four restaurants employing about eighty young people and providing space for artists and writers. This not-for-profit business celebrates compassion, individuality, and artistic expression under a philosophy that challenges and defies our consumerist society. The policy of ‘no set prices’ where customers pay only what they can afford or what they think the meal was worth is a social experiment that encourages people to have an internal conversation with their conscience and their ethics. And on top of that, the food is terrific.”

This is what John Howard’s men are saying about the Fernandomeister:

‘Melbourne’s Shanaka Fernando was awarded Australia’s Local Hero in recognition of his work founding not-for-profit restaurant group ‘Lentil As Anything’. The business has shown how a commercial enterprise can be operated on a socially responsible, idealistic and altruistic basis and still be financially successful and popular with the public. It operates on a policy of ‘no set prices’, where customers pay only what they can afford or what they think the meal was worth. Shanaka relinquished his personal capital in the first restaurant and turned it into a cooperative and youth training enterprise.The business has grown into four restaurants employing about 80 young people and providing space for artists and writers. The 38 year old, who was born in Columbia, Sri Lanka, arrived in Australia in 1989. His father is Sri Lankan with Portugese lineage and his mother is Sri Lankan with Irish descent.

“Being named Australia’s Local Hero means a lot to me and, hopefully, it means the nature of what is happening through our organisation is important and will spill out to the greater society.

“I hope this award will inspire other migrants and anyone in the community, who may have ideas that might not seem normal and which have no prior format, to go ahead and try these ideas and to follow your heart.

“On Australia Day, I will celebrate the generosity of spirit which exists in the Australian community.” Accepting his award on the eve of Australia Day, Shanaka’s view on what being Australian means was poignant.

“I didn’t know the answer to the question of what it means to be Australian until quite recently,” said Shanaka.

“I went out into country Victoria with refugees and we had a tree planting weekend and I came in contact with what I considered an amazing spirit of community and openness.

“To be Australian is, I think, to be welcoming of others. “To be Australian is to be encouraging of each other, to urge each other to shine and reach our full potential.

“Which is,” he said with a grin,”very contrary to the tall poppy syndrome.”‘

This all makes him sound somewhat earnest, but he is more interesting than that. He  mixes in patahysical circles, and bangs on his boogie. And the latest Convent Muse contains this passage from an interview with him:

‘As a result of his recent Award, Shanaka has been invited to speak at ABC Haywire, a national outh Conference in Canberra.  He hopes to encourage creativity in young people, so they can feel self-empowered to tackle issues with a minimal sense of convention.  When asked how this could be best communicated he said: “For example, if kids think the answer to alcohol problems is for everyone to walk around with pineapples on their heads – that is exactly what they should do”’

I got the Convent’s latest Muse and share its news with youse:

• all coffee sold in the precinct is to be roasted on-site between 10 and 1 on Saturdays by John Frangoulis of Melba Coffee, and all the raw beans are to be purchased from like really aware free ranging chooks, as Tim and Debbie might have put it (ahh, but I show my age…);
• there’s going to be a free concert by Orchestra Victoria on 11 February 2006 — first 120 people to arrive get in free, everyone else misses out, no bookings (9694 3600);
• 3MBS is having an open day on Saturday 3 March 2007 between 10 and 2 (book on 9416 1035);
• next Sunday Arts at the Convent is on 4 March 2007 between 10 and 5;
• next slow food farmers market is on 24 February 2007, and attendances at the third one (1,570) were up almost 400 on the first one, and the City of Yarra gave the Convent Foundation and the Slow Food Movement an Australia Day Award;
• most excitingly, that same day, the artists and “wellbeing practitioners” who have studios in the Convent Building are going to open them up between 10 and 4.

I received from Miss K for Christmas Catherine Kovesi’s book Pitch Your Tents on Distant Shores (2006, Playwright Publishing), a beautifully written and very substantial large-format hard-back history of the founders of the Abbotsford Convent, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. It was, and may still be, available from the Sisters’ Provincialate Office at the discounted price of $55. It is remarkable in being quite accessible to the lay reader whilst doing what institutional histories must do. It has many photos of the Abbotsford Convent. Not given to reading religious histories, I am enjoying it.

No doubt it is a commissioned history, which may explain this frank admission in the introduction:

“More problematic has been the question of the stories of those numerous girls and women who found themselves occupants of the many institutions of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Victims of a society which saw women who deviated in any way from the norm as outcasts, they have stories, often of excruciating pain and heartbreak. Whilst I have tried to include some of these stories, the prime focus of this study has been the sisters themselves and their work. I hope that this might provide a foundational backdrop for others to publish work on the lives of the former residents and inmates whose stories need telling.”

But it is clear that Dr Kovesi rails against too hysterical an imagination of the strictures imposed by severe nuns on their wards (referred to as “children” regardless of their age) by blind assumptions based for example on Marxist Peter Mullan’s film The Magdalene Sisters. It horrified Melburnians a few years ago with its depiction of depraved sadism of Catholic nuns towards “fallen women” in 1960s Ireland. Dr Kovesi says “In the case of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd there has been not so much a shortcoming of history, as a shortage of it altogether and speculation has been allowed to run unchecked,” and suggests such speculation is but the most recent in a centuries old history of disparagement in certain quarters amounting to a “‘Magdalen’ genre”. (The common view of Mary Magdalen, to whom Jesus is said to have first revealed his resurrection, since the 13th century is of a prostitute, however she is referred to in the Bible only as a sinner who tearfully repented her sins to Jesus). Dr Kovesi says:

“For many Catholics the work of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd behind these enormous walls was the subject of hushed conversations, usually out of earshot of younger children in the household, with the occasional threat to their teenage daughters that if they behaved badly they would end up in the care of the sisters. …

For non-Catholics, what went on behind the walls of this and other complexes of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd was often the subject of rampant speculation and, at times, outrageous assertion. The sisters were described as ‘torturing demons, proselytising the souls and battening upon the bodies of their luckless victims’, the convent represented as a ‘gloomy prison wherein girls and women, as well as young children, are immured and most cruelly tortured, and a place where’s God’s sunshine of a smile is ever absent.’ The Sisters were accused of running sweatshops, of undercutting competitors in the marketplace, of forcing women to stay against their will. Common to these views was that of the walls as sinister and negative; the privacy they afford was seen as allowing heinous acts to be performed, their height was seen to be aiding the imprisonment of the inhabitants.”

Dr Kovesi records that the Sisters did not entirely escape the wave of complaints about institutional abuse in the 1990s, but did comparatively very well given the vast numbers of residents who had passed through their door. She emphasises that unlike some other religious orders, corporal punishment was absolutely banned, no complaints of sexual abuse were levelled against the Sisters in Australia, and she found no evidence of residents being detained against their will. Indeed, there was a “no touching” rule which it is suggested led, ironically, to an unfortunate absence of physical affection.

There is no record in the book of any complaints made by former residents of the Abbbotsford Convent to the Senate Enquiry into Children in Institutional Care. It seemed to me from the Report itself that there were in fact 4 such complaints. I asked Dr Kovesi about the apparent discrepancy, and she explained to me that though there were 4 submissions referring to Abbotsford Convent recorded in the Senate report, none was made by a former resident of the Abbotsford Convent, and a mention in a submission is not necessarily a complaint.

The book notes that between 2000 and 2005, the Sisters settled 39 claims from former residents of the Sisters’ many residential institutions in Australia, pointing out that the majority of these claims addressed the lack of educational opportunities provided by the sisters. Given the numbers who passed through their institutions, in other words, they fared well. The fact that the claims were settled out of court tells us nothing about the settlements, especially as the claims were made in a system designed to reach a negotiated settlement.

The Age has a big full page spread today on the Convent in general, Catherine Kovesi’s book on the history in Australia of its Sisters of the Good Shepherd, and in particular, two former nuns, Sister Monica Walsh who entered the order aged 18 in 1963 and Sister Noelene White, neither of whom these days live in nunneries or wear habits but are, nevertheless, still nuns. There have been no additions to the order in the past 20 years. It’s really worth a read; I commend it to you.

Yep, it’s true, and no politicians this time. From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. See www.mfm.com.au, $2 entry and $2 parking. It’s a plastic bag free zone, so bring baskets, trolleys, and bags of your own. See previous posts here and here.

The Melbourne Farmers’ Markets website’s blurb is:

“Farmers’ markets are at the heart of Slow Food. It’s not just the most direct source of fresh produce but also a genuine, accessible way for the public to find the real story on how our food is farmed.

…The market will illustrate Slow Food principles and the Victorian Farmers’ Market Association criteria and be all proceeds will be directed back into local Slow Food endorsed projects.

This is simply about Victorian farmers getting what they deserve for their efforts and consumers getting value for what they pay for…. no long cold storage, no gases, no over processed chemical laden foods and no GMOs. Just delicious, nourishing seasonal foods in an atmosphere that promotes conviviality and community.

Come and find seasonal, organic and low/no chemical fruit and vegetables, free range, rare breed and heritage meats, fish, chooks and eggs. Then there’s handmade cheeses, pasta, condiments, bread, honey, olive oil, flowers, seedlings and much, much more.”

Dates for the next 6 markets are: 23 December, 27 January, 24 March, 28 April, 26 May,  and 23 June.

Shanaka Fernando (left), Lentil As Anything’s founder, is celebrating winning the Metropolitan Local Hero Award in the Australian of the Year Awards, 2007. According to the Herald Sun, he was last year living in a tent on the Elwood foreshore. His is an interesting life. He was raised a buddhist in a wealthy Sri Lankan family and came to Australia in 1989 to study law. He founded Lentils after travellling extensively through Africa, Asia, and South America. More about him anon.