two week intervention
23 Feb 2009
The Stomach Remembers
Scott Mitchell's stomach doesn't care about the constant calculating, inconvenience and humiliation of income management, it just wants to be fed ... somehow
This article is part of newmatilda.com's Urban Intervention experiment. For more information read this.Day Seven
If you've ever eaten a whole box of Arnott's Shapes you'll know it makes you feel lethargic and gassy.
But for $1.99 where else am I going to get 200 grams of carbohydrates? Bread? Get real. I'm in the middle of Parramatta, I'm not going to walk around tucking into a whole loaf of bread.
I finish helping out a mate with some leafleting and head to a café in Newtown. I'm promised a free feed but end up splitting the bill. I'm angry at myself for resenting paying my own way. I end up paying $10 for a slice of cheesecake.
Day Eight
I've learned to make meals stretch. You can make two scrambled eggs seem like three by adding too much milk and smothering it with sauce.
To be honest it is very possible to feed yourself on $300 a fortnight. But there's a big difference between restricting your intake for a fortnight and never being able to go over that budget — ever — for years. It's terrifying. I've only eaten meat once since I started this and that was only because I was out with friends.
I've still got over a week left and I'm already thinking of a blowout meal for the end of this.
Also, in this experiment I don't have dependents. I'd get more welfare if I did, but certainly not another $300, which means they're still eating into my own payments. Besides, many people in Aboriginal communities share with and support people who are not officially dependents.
I tuck into a bowl of pasta for dinner. That's my remaining vegetables gone. It's off to the Hoochie Mamma Café and Grocery Store for a restock tomorrow — where my quarantined tab is actually reasonably healthy.
Day Nine
When I get to the grocery store neither the manager, George, nor any of the cashiers I've interacted with in the last week are there. No-one has any idea how to process my tab and I can't buy food.
There was a situation last month in Alice Springs where the Basics Card system — that's the one that lets people access their quarantined money — malfunctioned and was unavailable for more than 24 hours. People who had travelled into town from the communities around Alice to buy food and essentials had to return empty-handed and the local Centrelink office was reportedly closed and unable to explain the failure. It caused a massive inconvenience and there were reports of people going without food, babies going without nappies, etc.
In planning for this Urban Intervention experiment, the newmatilda.com editor and I discussed the possibility of our simulating this event, but then we decided that since I knew about it, it wouldn't be as effective, so we scrapped the idea.
But good news — it happened coincidentally!
The woman at the checkout is stern, confident and fairly unempathetic as she tells me there is no way she could sell me my beans, bread and Vegemite. When you're in a line at the shops, all your frustration is reduced to timidity by the impatient, judgmental shoppers behind you. I managed to mumble, "I guess I can put them back". I hung my head and shrunk as I stacked the beans, right side up with the label facing outwards, on the shelf. On my way back to the front of the shop my stomach ached, I was sweating and freaking out.
At home I only have eggs — no milk, no bread, no sauce. Eggs. I put on three as soon as I get back. Once I finish them I only have two left, I'm yet to eat lunch or dinner and I can't go to the shops. I could have bought food with my unquarantined money, but I know it wouldn't last the remaining four days if I ate into it now.
At 7:45pm my stomach gets the better of me, however, and on the way to a friend's place to watch a game of soccer I buy a sandwich for $3.60. That and the three eggs are all I eat for the day.
Day Ten
Hoochie Mamma came good and I stocked up. It's a cool place to shop if you're not consumed by hunger-fuelled fury.
That same impotent fury that's been building up over the last few days makes me want to escape my apartment. I've been staying in to avoid spending money, eating poorly and sleeping worse, so I want to get back to normalcy. I can't keep trekking over to the eastern suburbs — the trips back are too ridiculous — but, as one of the conditions of this experiment, I can't drink alcohol in my local area (Newtown), so I decide to go to a mate's place in Petersham.
I've got $32.60 left, and I put aside $10 for alcohol.
There's no ticket gates at Newtown or Petersham station and the transit police aren't about at this time, so I hop a train for free.
Day Eleven
When I wake up I'm covered in shit — which turns out to be Nutri-Grain, dried corn and glass. I'm on a couch, in a lounge room, with a drum kit that's been knocked over. The snare has been tossed to the other side of the room. Covering the floor is spaghetti, red wine, rice paper, clothing, and a shitload more glass.
My first thought isn't, "What happened to my friend's house?", it's "Shit! I must have spent more than $10".
I have. I've spent $15 and as petty as that may sound to you, it hurt. A lot. While my bewildered friends cure their hangovers with grease, burgers and chips, I decide there's no way I'm spending my remaining $17.20 on takeaway food.
When my stomach remembers that for dinner last night I had alcohol the problem gets worse. For the first time in a few days I have a fridge full of bread and baked beans and milk, but I can't force myself into the rain when I'm this hungover so I can get back there.
I hammer down Panadol and water until around 7:00pm when I finally hop another train back to Newtown where I rip open a loaf of bread and start eating it dry.
Hey, where else am I going to get 200 grams of carbohydrates?
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Without the splurging on booze, which I detest and do not buy (could never afford it anyway), the situation you describe could just about cover any person at the tender mercies of Centrelink, whether on the Dole, or even the Pension, day in, day out, month in, month out, year in year out! At least half of all income has to be put aside for things such as Car Registration, Insurance, Rent, Power, Rates, prescription medicines and many other things that you may not anticipate, such as emergency car repairs to keep it on the road, when your very existence may depend on a working vehicle. Where I live there is nothing like Public Transport, and I live about 8km. from town, on partly dirt roads.
Also, I am not able, nor inclined, to splurge on Junk Foods. Meat is a rare treat. I do eat a fair bit of tinned fish, mixed with powdered potato, on grain toast. Reasonably healthy (the fish) and fairly cheap. Other than that, my main sustenance is a mix of Rolled Oats, Mixed Dried Fruit and All Bran, bought in bulk and stored mixed in a large sealed container, which can do breakfast, lunch and dinner at times. Fills the stomach, reasonably sustaining, and although getting more expensive every day, still (if just) within my budget.
Food out here in the Bush is extremely expensive, much more so than in coastal cities. On remote Aboriginal communities (and I have sampled it) it costs much, much more, is rarely fresh, and is often the junk that is left after giving the best to the white communities.
Certainly the packaged meat, unless things have changed recently, would not normally be fed to my dogs. Lots of fat, gristle and bone. Sometimes, I can actually buy, for about $3 to $5 a small bag of dog meat (for my dogs), which looks better than what I have seen on the shelves of Aboriginal Community Stores, for ridiculous prices.
Certainly, Scott, you seem to be thoroughly enjoying yourself, with all the gallivanting around, catching (and sometimes paying for) trains and buses, attending parties etc.
If you were living on a remote community, perhaps you could go a few doors down and join a few friends for a cup of tea!? No booze, remember. Maybe kick a few empty cans around the ground. Stare blankly into the distance, in utter boredom, wishing that you were dead or that you could drink or dope yourself into oblivion and forget life. This, of course, is not restricted to Aboriginal Communities, but out there, it is endemic.
Maybe jump into one of the ‘old bombs’ around the place with a few mates and head the few hundred ks into the nearest town. You may be able to beg, borrow or steal enough fuel to get you there, but how do you get home? Often ‘the bomb’ stops on the way, never to go again, and is left where it stops. If the bush mechanic skills of the group fail, long walk! I have come across groups (men, women and children) or even single persons sitting on a small campfire on the middle of the road, miles from anywhere and they have been there for days, and they may be there for days to come. They may or may not have some food or the makings of a billy of tea. They are quite confident that sooner or later someone will come along and assist them. Mostly, it has to be fellow Aboriginals, because most white drivers will put the foot down when they see them and scream past in a cloud of dust. They are very appreciative, but also undemonstrative, of the occasional whitey who will stop and assist.
They also, on more trunk roads, have to watch out for truckies, who, in my memory used to sit in truck-stop cafes and boast to each other about how many ‘niggers’, ‘coons’, ‘boongs’ they had ‘got’ with their sawn-off shotguns from their vehicle cabs as they drive between Mt.Isa and Darwin. Great game! Who knows how much was bulls..t, and how much was truth? But the thought was there.
Scott, I do wish that I could take what you are doing seriously, but I can not. What you will experience has so very little to do with life in a real pre-Intervention or post-Intervention NT Community. But the anecdotes from the ‘real world’ do educate. More of them, if you can. However, there is much more to the NT than Alice Springs. In reality, it is almost civilisation there, even for Indigenous peoples. A very racist, dirty, angry civilisation, with a horrible mix of dirt poor people and ultra rich overseas and Australian tourists.
You can sit in a cafe on the Todd Mall and watch passing pedestrians, and see just about a full gamut of life. Very educational, but also very depressing. I doubt that you can see this in any Capital City in Australia. Dazza.
Good on you Scott for doing this. Great to have someone try it and ask a few questions.
Ignore the wowsers asking you to tie a hand behind your back or hop on one leg, they just don’t get it.
I’m fairly certain that any bong hounding, centrelink bludging, musically minded lackwit has been through this process for more than two weeks, and they didn’t care to waste our time by documenting it. It’s everyday life for so many people. Did you go to private school? I did what this article points out for almost four years. Harden the fuck up and write something that isn’t an upper middle class white kid trying to grasp what it’s like to be a lower middle class white kid.
I hope you are not struggling too much on $300 per fortnight for groceries - get real, as pensioners my wife and I live on that quite comfortably including a daily glass of wine or two. Many pensioners have to manage on a lot less
Nothing is foolproof - fools are ingenious
Learn to cook, and to plan. Bean and vegie casserole - a different recipe every week. Divide up into 7 small containers and freeze. Defrost daily and eat with pasta or rice. Meal problem solved. 500 gm dried beans for about $3 at Coles. You have to soak them overnight. Supermarkets offer free recipes. Yes I know the average joe blogs on the dole does not do this. But it is not a money problem.
Dear scott
move to tweed heads. bread $1.79 a loaf $12.53 (14days)
milk 2.19 2 litres $ 15.33
Cereal weet bix $4.50
Thats breakfast covered
Snacks on the go
Fruit and vegetables $25.00
Now for lunch
lunch fish and chips scales $5.50 $77.00
Drink 2.00 14.00
$
Dinner 14 days to spent $148.36.
Plenty to eat at the clubs.
Ride a bike no transport costs. No cooking costs, no cleaning up costs,
eat and go.
Live like a KING.
Free Surf
been great reading your articles very enlightening
askthedust rudely makes some valid points here. Scott retains his family structure, he doesn’t have diabetes, no-one has beaten him (yet) and he remains criminally, almost blindingly, white.
This last is important, because being black changes the way everyone looks and treats you. The construct only goes a little way to understanding real disadvantage and no way toward understanding the plight of aboriginal people in the NT.
Its interesting and all, but insufficient. It invites people like Colwyn to pretend that their situation is in some way comparable to that of an NT indigene. It isn’t, and if Mr ‘get real’ ever lived in their situation he would be dead within two weeks.
Plus, and I am amazed that as a leading class warrior askthedust didn’t point this out, you are clearly a drinking lightweight.
Yeah - lightweight. Go get yourself 4 litres of Stanley dry white and end your life for 36 hours.
I’m no class worrier, Doc Dog, I’m as spoiled and soft as the rest of the middle class. But the point I was attempting to make was that this article proves nothing about anything. I’ve got friends who still live like this and don’t piss and moan about it. They know they’ve still got it better than a lot. Especially indigenous people, etc.
Having recently been in Alice Springs myself and experiencing the sort of culture shock that one goes through when you fully realise how swept under the rug the indigenous/whitey divide is in this country, it’s a little hard to swallow when a uni student tries to serve up this crap and call it an expose.
Sorry askthedust, I wasn’t really having a go. I also am as soft as it comes. I think that’s why I appreciated your comments, despite being a little hard on our man Scott, who is at least having some sort of go.
I reckon Scott knows that he can’t really reproduce the Indigenopus experience too. If his experiment proves anything it is that we, the middle class, would not allow ourselves to be subject to this sort of intervention.
Stanley Dry White isn’t that bad after the first few glasses. Probably pretty shit warm around a fire though. I am a Morris Pressings man for my cheap piss. 4lt for 24 bucks.