“Ferals […] raise hackles. They transgress our fences, our ways of thinking. . .”

Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Humans cannot control the feral. Ferality is a subversive force that burrows beneath boundaries, denies signification and refuses to be fenced in by categorisation. The anarchic potential of ferality is a central preoccupation in contemporary feminist theory and praxis. As Professor Kelly Stuthers Montford explains, there is a current push to rewild and feralise feminist theory due to the domestication of some traditional forms of feminist thought. She argues that, because patriarchy can be defined as “a process of domestication that involves the taming and breaking of those targeted,” the feral offers a way to both conceptualise and embody the radical possibilities of feminist transgression.

Amy Taylor, frontwoman of Australian pub-rock powerhouse Amyl and the Sniffers, is a proud, self-proclaimed feral. “I am staunchly feral and proud of where I come from, which is working class,” she explained in a 2021 interview with to Be. Taylor grew up on Bundjalung country in Mullumbimby, Northern NSW. Until she was 9 years old, her family lived together in a snake-infested shed. Taylor celebrates this feral, rural and quintessentially Australian upbringing in her single ‘Snakes,’ singing, “Telephone poles in the cane field / Sweating by the sea, there was humidity / There was snakes at the beach, at the workplace / Snakes by the dam, I was rolling in the mud / I was feral, I still am.”

Ferality has become a central preoccupation in Taylor’s songwriting. In the pub-rock anthem ‘Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled)’ she barks: “Some mutts can’t be muzzled / I guess I got you puzzled / Some mutts can't be muzzled / I guess I got you puzzled / Woof, woof!” These lines encapsulate the subversive power of ferality; the feral confounds its pursuers by refusing to be controlled and silenced. In ‘Don’t Fence Me In,’ she sings, “No fence around me / No, you can’t limit me / I’m in between your set of rules.” The feral is a liminal being. It unsettles its pursuers by existing in ambiguous spaces—in between rigid confines and strictly demarcated binaries.

Taylor’s stage presence is also notoriously feral. When performing, she seems to be in communion with the animality of her childhood. She owns the space, marching around with crackhead energy, regularly breaking the fourth wall (or fourth fence) by stage diving, gliding atop the swirling stampede beneath her. It is important to acknowledge that while ferality is often idealised as a symbol of liberation, it also involves acute vulnerability. While we often romanticise the stage as an elevated platform of security, safety and creative expression, women and non-binary artists are constantly working within and railing against the patriarchal forces entrenched in Australia’s music industry. Taylor herself has spoken publicly about the sexism and sexual abuse that she regularly experiences on and off stage. As she sings in ‘Tiny Bikini’: “Ooh, I know it’s technically my space / But I’m the only one here in a bikini [...] Eh, there’s too many snags at the party / Eh, so I’m just gonna walk.”

Amyl and the Sniffers is the sonic incarnation of the feral. Their sound is a caged animal clawing to escape. You can imagine the creature as you listen—cornered, bucking, and baring their sharp jagged teeth. In fact, it is this sonic ferality that defines the broader sound and subcultures aligned with Australian pub rock. The genre emerged in the 1970s in small, overcrowded working-class pubs. Like the feral animal, the sound was a force that could not be contained. It transgressed the confines of pub walls and escaped out onto the street—often in the form of vomit, piss and violence. Amyl and the Sniffers cut their teeth performing at these iconic pubs across the country. Though the band has now moved into bigger paddocks, the energy of their live performances has not dwindled. While Australian pub rock is always better experienced in its ancestral birthplace—seedy corner pubs and daggily-carpeted bowls clubs that stink of beer and ring with the grotesque melodies of pokie machines—Amyl and the Sniffers have proven that their feral energy translates, no matter the setting.

The band is heavily inspired, both sonically and aesthetically, by Melbourne’s Sharpie subculture. Sharpies can be traced back to the waves of European immigrants of the early 1960s who brought over the distinctive, and often violently opposed, mods and rockers subcultures. The Sharpie image was originally influenced by the sharp dress of many working-class Italian immigrants. The attitude was tough, but the look was flashy. This in many ways echoed the rise of skinhead sub-culture in the UK, where, as a result of the Windrush generation, working-class Brits were becoming increasingly influenced by Jamaican music, style and the bad-boy image of Trench Town gangsters, or “rude boys.” But Sharpies were a distinctly Australian—and, to be specific, Melbournian—subculture. If the mod and rocker styles can be considered as introduced species, they quickly mutated into something completely unique.

As Sharpie evolved into the 1970s and beyond, the subculture became increasingly edgy, frayed and aligned with organised violence. This second wave of Sharpies (often misrepresented and demonised by mainstream media as feral “skinheads”) cut their hair short on top, keeping it long at the back and sides, and congregated in large groups to dance to pub-rock bands such as Loyde and the Coloured Balls, Buster Brown, Rose Tattoo, The Angels, Skyhooks, and ACDC. Amyl and the Sniffers sustain and pay homage to this period. Taylor is the pure embodiment of the Sharpie spirit—she hums with that wild and untameable feral energy.

When Amyl and the Sniffers released their third full-length record, Cartoon Darkness, in October last year, I was re-reading Charlotte Woods’ 2015 novel The Natural Way of Things. The novel is a radical, feral-feminist text. It follows ten women who have exposed the predatory actions of high-profile men as they are abducted from their city dwellings and transported to a sheep farm-come-women’s prison somewhere in rural Australia. Mirroring Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), the women are forced to labour in archaic dresses and bonnets in scorching paddocks that are surrounded by tall electric fences. As the months go by, the imprisoned women become increasingly feral and begin to challenge their incarceration. The character Yolanda in particular undergoes a complete metamorphosis. She begins hunting rabbits and wearing their fur, slowly blending in with the feral animals on the farm. In the final scenes, while the other women remain incarcerated, it is Yolanda who escapes the prison/paddock walls, bounds off into the desert and becomes "the fresh, living rhythm of a beating heart, of surging blood and paws thrumming over the earth."

Reading these final lines, I thought of Amy Taylor and her snake-infested upbringing in Mullumbimby. She embodies a feral energy on stage, characterised by a pounding heart and a surging blood. I thought about Molly, Daisy and Gracie, the three young girls in Doris Pilkington Garimara’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996), who are aligned in solidarity with feral rabbits through their shared defiance to oppressive colonial/patriarchal systems. I thought about all the ferals out there in this vast country who are transgressing fences and myopic ways of thinking.

photography DAKOTA GORDON
creative direction and stylist KURT JOHNSON
hair and make-up ROSE LETHO
assistants ALEX MCCOMBE, CLAUDIA HAYMAN