Truly an unsung hero of our modern times and sadly unrewarded. Stuart Robert who has helped his mates beyond the standard definition of ‘Mateship’.

Playing for team Strayla. 

A lot has been said over several centuries about ‘Australia’s un- sung heroes’. 

Like Scomo Stewie has blurred the lines between self interest and corruption to give his mates a red-hot go. And yet nosy journos cry ‘Due process’ just cos they’re not Stewies mates. Unsung heroes must deal with the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. A sad reflection on modern values.

 You know what me mean, those iconic sinewy figures who toiled under the relentless sun, beyond the black stump out in the dry hinterland to make Australia rich. Those un-sung heroes who built the railways, the telegraph, the roads, the fences, the pubs and the prisons to contain the unyielding, the wild, the unconquerable. So that civilisation could spread its calming hand upon the wild interior. To tame wild rivers with irrigation, to replace ancient pastures with crops, and anoint the heathen savages with Christianity and the certainty of prisons and life- long dependence upon welfare. 

These are the great achievements of a modern Australia. The un-sung heroes, who perform their tasks unanointed and noble because they know that they are doing good. Doing good for a wider and more nobler cause than just power and influence, and money and fame, and an Order of Australia. By doing noble deeds knowing that their destiny is to leave this country enriched just a little more by noblesse oblige, self-sacrifice and decency. A decency cast by our national commitment to do better and raise the standards for all Australians that may be graced withy the boons of Sports Bet 24/7 and ready access via welfare payments to second rate housing and the stigma of being poor. Knowing that the vast majority of wealth is being siphoned off overseas, or as an indulgence for those who earn over 3250 k, whom don’t pay tax anyway. Knowing that the ‘trickle-down’ effect will give them the eternal gratification of knowing they are being pissed upon. 

Typical crude characterisation of a true unsung Hero. And an ambitious Queenslander to boot.

There is no nobler cause, 

As our heroes, pilloried, imperilled and pursued, know that whatever happen they are upholding the spirit of old Australia. That knockabout camaraderie that’s to understand that in the end survival is all that matters, and there’s no point in wondering about imponderables, because to do so would conjure the spirit of imagination, which as we all know is discouraged in Strayla. 

So saved by the bell once again, they are thrown another chance. 

Will they be lucky again? 

Will they; like Crown executives get off the hook one more time, with a slap on the wrist and an edict to’ try and be good’? 

Only time can tell. The hourglass is cracked, the glass if frosty and the sand, whatever used to be sand is now a pile of dust, the odd cockroach and a used condom. Such is life, but despair is defeat and that is a word not used by the unsung heroes, 

Titians famous depiction of ‘Benny Boy Roberts Smith’ carrying Brenny-Boy Nelson into the safety of the cave ‘like a sack of wet mice’. Painting dismissed by Archibald Jury as ‘overtly sentimental and without National ethos’

So unsung, we return to our saga.. 

After the dust had settled, the crumpled form of Julian, Australia’s misunderstood naughty boy, and the leader of Anzackery itself, Brendan Nelson also unconscious, made our trio contemplative. Our three heroes standing under the pallid light of their Camels. And Benny-boys shining equipage of mortars, mines, machine gun pistol, ammunition and bayonet. As in their past mis- adventures they sought solace once again, sharing in the knowledge that clutching victory however small from the jaws of defeat was a salvation of sorts.

Raphael’s depiction; ‘Julian receives Australian Embassy staff at Bellmarsh’ also deemed unnacceptable by Archibald Panel. ‘Too pictorial and no relevance to contemporary norms’.

What now? Terry opined, the glow of his Camel transfusing it all in an eery glow not unlike a Tintoretto altarpiece, or perhaps a work of the late romantic Lorraine, diffused in sepia tones and the haloes of four Camels being puffed with exhausted vigour by all assembled. ‘I dunno, spose the only thing we can do is follow this cave and see where it goes’. Terry pointed to the former entrance. ‘That right of way seems permanently blocked, but’, Ces interjected, ‘What about these two, can we carry this baggage’? 

They all looked at the two figures, Julian had a serene expression of calm, after the torment of Bellmarsh and his recent liaison with Pamela Anderson. Whilst Brenny-boy, architect of the massive new AWM ‘Sons and daughters of glorious Anzac wing’ just looked harmless. ‘That was his trick’! Ces interjected. “He’s got this far by representing nothing and yet it got him a top job! They all nodded in agreement.  ‘That’s the good thing about Stralya’, opined Quent.  ‘You can get to the top of the tree just by sitting on yer arse. That’s an anointment to us! ,From where? said Benny boy. ‘From God’. There ensued a period of reflective silence. 

Tintorettos fine, ‘Julian looks to Australia from Bellmarsh’, deemed innaproprtiate in reflecting contemporary Australian values of tax cuts to the wealthy and the boons of negative gearing and real estate in growing the economy.

‘All right then, we’re a bunch of lucky Bastards but if we stand here all day we’ll just be entombed, we’d better’, we saw the glint of Benny’s bayonet directing us forward. ‘We might as well push off, cos’, he laughed, ‘we can’t survive in Camels alone’. 

We all sighed in agreement as we stubbed the dregs of the Camels one by one. We looked about picked up what we had, and formed a stretcher of sorts for Brenny boy. Whilst Benny boy as insouciantly as ever just picked up the limpid form of Julian and threw him over his shoulder.  ‘Onward’ Benny Boy commanded, and we trudged onwards into the dark, 

Will their trudgery become drudgery? Will it deliver them from evil or worse?

Find out in the next tautological episode, ‘a step in the dark’, or ‘three mis-steps and you’re un- steppable’.