David Nichols

Old newspapers from the Yorke Peninsula
Yorke Peninsula is one of South Australia’s tendrils, a couple of hours from Adelaide before you’re in the heart of it, if it has a heart. Don’t confuse it with Cape York Peninsula. Known a hundred years ago as the Cornwall of the south or similar (because, like Cornwall, it was a mining hub and, also like Cornwall, it had a lot of Cornish people in it, drawn by the mining). I have only been there the once and it was golden, sturdy, sparse and clear, Edithburgh a tiny former port town, Port Victoria tinier and also a former port town.

Old newspapers – I’ve been reading them from the early 1920s and the mid-1940s – from Yorke Peninsula reveal hidden ethnic tensions (it has/had SA’s biggest German population after the Barossa, and this is clearly a subject of interest in the area given various European conflicts), secret scandals, beauty contests, ugly man contests (no joke), wheat and rye prices, civic pride debates, lavatory installation plans, news about new ceilings in reading rooms, and it altogether helps unlock my fascination with self-contained rural pasts in a nation forging its own defined character in the modern world.

Lapsang Souchon
Something about this tea is addictive, probably not the caffeine. I did not drink it for about thirty years after consuming some (with milk, ugh) at the age of roughly 12. Then a compulsion came upon me and I can’t resist. It is far greater than ordinary tea. It is also the one boxed tea bag in the commercially available supermarket range that is often missing, presumably because it is a minority interest (i.e. not because there’s a huge demand). I can’t say this adds to its appeal – in fact it encourages me to try and find another type of tea I like as much, but there doesn’t seem to be one.

The work of artist Mia Schoen
If I ever make it into the history books it will be as a kind of Alice B. Toklas figure to the artist Mia Schoen, whose landscapes – usually in oils – are often intricate, direct and stunning. The artist Mia Schoen works all night on these pictures and, at time of writing, her most recent is a large scale portrait of a half-complete office (?) building at Melbourne’s Docklands. It’s both beautiful and terrifying, like a raging storm.

Kung Fu Panda
I immediately added this to my list of favourite films in between It Happened One Night and some Mike Leigh or other. Mainly because it looks so unbelievably vivid and positively writhes on the big screen. This is Hollywood’s grumpy answer to the concept of content delivery on mobile phone screens: there is so much going on here that it’s a whole world in itself. A world called ‘China’, which I admit is slightly problematic – would I be as accepting of a comparable film set in Australia and filled with the roof with stereotypes, probably not, but that aside, what an epic.

Ginger
So versatile, and it stops you getting nauseous when you travel = magic.

There's that line in The Catcher in The Rye about how good books make you want to ring up the author to talk about it. If you can't get through to the writer, David Nichols is who you want - he can strike up an amazing, surprising conversation with about a good bundle of pages. He also is very spot on with finding books you might like (which, of course, are so quickly adopted as your own favourites that they feel like they were your own self-discoveries). He has written a biography of The Go-Betweens, lots of zines and articles for many magazines. I used to buy The Big Issue just for his column, which sadly ain't in the mag anymore. One day, I hope he resurrects his memoir about writing for 1980s teen mags like Smash Hits, because what I read was so funny and please-can-I-have-some-more-ish. He has also been in lots of Melbourne bands and is an academic too.