And there, therein, we begin with the penultimate post, pre -election day. 

Is there anything in this election? 

Is it too close to call?

Have ideas and visions so powerful transformed the Australian political landscape?

Will tax reform negative gearing, and a Federal Icac be foremost just for starters?

Out of the darkness, a new future beckons for Australia

Will the climate get the reckoning it deserves? 

We have no idea and thankfully being Australia,  big issues like Climate change and knocking off flora at an accelerated rate are irrelevant. It’s the smallness of things we’re interested in. And that SMALLNESS stands us in good stead. To be a quiet place, where the quiet majority who worry about super, housing interest rates, their work, security, xenophobia, and smallness and self interest. They’d rather leave it to people who know better. And know what’s best for all of us, and may help themselves to a little bit of the cake along the way.

Bu there are much more significant things afoot beneath the irradiated sands of Maralinga. The final testament between two of our most powerful politicians, Sophie, (is that a professor in my back shed Mirabella?), and that titan of the Queensland Constabulary Peter Dutton. Now that the truth is out that Peter is half-human, half-crustacea, a victim of atom bomb testing in the 50’s we have Sophie and our unsung heroes the only witnesses to a terrifying state of play, The fact that all the Queensland front benchers and a sizeable rump of those in the senate, are mutants. Every Jack person of then defined by the radioactivity they copped whilst they were infants or when  their parents worked hard in cleansing the arid interior for a nuclear future. 

An Australia of big ideas and a thirst for innovation

Will they be able to turn the tide?

Will Sophies ordeal put her out in front?

Or are they both destined to perish, disappear from the political landscape forever once election day is done?

Find out in this next episode; Who dares wins or who wins dares to dare again’.   We continue with our saga,. tThe perils of our heroes in doubt and the forthcoming ordeal just begun…

‘I dunno Ces whispered to Quent, looks like we must be almost at the top’? No sooner had Ces uttered those word as we followed  in the footsteps of Australia’s bravest soldier ( EVER)  up the dusty dark steps than we arrived at a landing of sorts. On either side, a straight and level tunnel leading into the inky blackness. The question poised for our grim party to determine, Which way to go?

WE looked at each other, and then looked again… ‘So this is it’?  We looked at each other, we had arrived at a crossroads of sorts. 

It’s a bit like the election,  Quent demurred; ‘You can either go left or right. 

An Australia where even defenceless furry animals of all kind shall be Protected.

Yep,  and whichever way you go the left and the right turn up at exactly the same place. 

And that’s the trouble, no matter how long you might travel down in the right direction, you always think you should’ve gone in the left direction. No wonder people get confused on the ballot paper. Yeah! Opined Terry; in my day it was way simpler.  There was Labor and a Liberal and you could really tell the difference!

Hows that? questioned Ces. 

Well for a start Labor people weren’t as well spoken as Liberal people.  And Labor people also had the taint. The taint? queried Ces. 

Oh yairs, the taint of socialism. It made them hard to trust. Trust on whose side they were really on. 

 Hows that? enquired Ces, 

And even unspeakably ugly persons will have their right to a fair go

‘Well they were all a bit pinko. Only a man with enough courage and foresight, ‘MING’, would give nuclear a go. And if we’d stayed with the Coalition we’d be nuclear on everything by now! And I’d still have a job, rather than just the flunkey in an abandoned nuclear facility. 

He’s right! Ces quipped; we can’t stay the lucky country all the time without an opportunity to be made in either digging shit up out of the ground or blowing things up. That’s why they call it the big brown land, cos its strength is in its emptiness. 

An Australia of BIG IDEAS and confidence in REAL REFORM!

Yep and let’s hope nothing changes after the election, cos in a way we need people like Dutto and Sophie to remind us why we’re a democracy. And whys that ? Ces was determined to work this quandary out once and for all. ‘Well people can look after themselves and mates. The don’t need the curse of BIG GOVERNMENT ruining their lives.  Mateship would be gone in a fairer and more equitable Australia, and there’d be restrictions on digging shit up and chopping trees down and in the end we’d have to be cleverer’. 

WE all agreed that the last thing we wanted was a nation full of intellectuals and thinkers, TROUBLE- MAKERS!

An Australia of diversity and inclusiveness evident on the benches of parliament

‘Too right’ Benny-boy replied, ‘it’d be a nation of ratbags and they’d all be obsessed with social policy rather than looking after the real drivers of the economy, mates, and kickbacks to mates mates.  Did you get a gig in the ATT. (Benny was referring to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal), ‘Nup mate, not considered reliable enough. Thats a pity. Everyone is in on it, Why fer fucks sake would you wanna change that I arks YA’!

We are inclined to agree with our heroes assessment. With change comes the possibility of ‘real change’, and that would be dangerous for Australia,. Whilst Dutto and Sophie fight it out down below we suffer the real risk of incremental microscopic change in Australia.  Let’s hope it doesn’t happen and Rupert, Lord of Murdoch may yet decree, Australia, is safe and PURE from  dangerous ideas. 

Or just another middle -aged white bloke saving us from ourselves.

But will Sophie and Dutto go unanswered? They still lurk, behind the scenes, and the scenes are borrowed from the props department of Doctor Who. Will there be a doctor in the house? Find out in the next prescription-drug issue, For whom does the tolling bell toll in an election booth? , Or Try saying election in Japanese English to a houseful of angry lesbians? 

Mateship. Mates you can TRUST!

‘Closer and closer the election day creeps, each day so protracted its feeling like weeks,
with arguments lacking for eruditon, imagination and wit, the best we can do is wallow in shit’

Dear reader if this is the best we can do from Australia’s only poet laureate, Sir Rolf of Harris we really are at the nadir of ‘Australian Creativity’.

‘Australian Creativity’ you may ask?

Surely with Super releases for new home buyers, an increase in the offset levy for high income earners and the twin pillars of franking credits and negative gearing assured you couldn’t find a more epoch making high water mark of Australian creativity?

With the arts all but stifled and undergraduate degrees costing possibly more than it does per capita to keep indiginies in jail, this must be as good as it gets?

Luckilly there’s no Australia Council to guide and instruct and inspirec, but just the simple logic of greed. Cos ‘greed is good’, and ensures that the status quo of fat cosseted middle aged white male bastards is kept intact. Anything else might just smack, (OUCH!) smack of tokenism.

MATES who SHARE the SAME VALUES!

But what of our heroes,?

Are they mere prawns to be tossed upon the electoral barby?
Are they a sausage sizzle outside an electoral booth too far?
Is there hope for them?
Or are they, like all those older women who are not fortunate enough to live in inner-ring suburbs, divorced and car pooling as emergency accomodation destined to be cut off as a ‘forgotten people’? Cut adrift from all support and meaning as active agents in the political process, mere chaff to the wind, cos they were unlucky in love, unlucky in marriage, and just plain unlucky! Whichever way you look at it, they’re in a pickle, but at least not buried beneath the wastes of Maralinga. While there is still time, there is still hope. And where theres hope there’s hopelessness. So if hope springs anew, we return to Radium Springs and find out just what happened to Sophie and Dutto as they battled it out for the pre-eminent sinecure post politics. Will they like Christopher Pyne land a life long sinecure on defence contracts with a parliamentary pension? Or will they like Andrew Robb, be able to get a gig with a consortia to buy the Darwin port or a local hospital?. Find out and have renewed faith intact cos with mates, theres always a kick-back and the gravy boat is always full.

We return to the dusty, dark streets of Radium Springs.

‘Bugger you Dutto , you couldn’t find a crab stick in a Bain Marie’…

MATES! Who have a shared suspicion of science and TROUBLEMAKERS! ( Journalists and an informed public).

With that Dutto’s unbroken antennae twitched nervously. His crab-claw clickety clacked menacingly, and his rounded shiny exoskeletal head turned a bright crimson with rage.
“OH YEAH’! He bellowed triumphantly into the gloom. ‘Think you can evade me Sophie? You might be smart but you aint that smart. I can smell your cheap froggy perfume from here, and I’ll track you down’!
‘It’s not cheap I got it on that trade mission to France as Gina’s Coal convention convenor, ‘Briquettes to the Bois Boulogne’ when we were working on the froggy sub contract’.

MATES who know the value of LEADERSHIP!

‘What the’ (Dutto fumed)….. I own that contract’?
Dutto was incensed,
“Yeah, you THOUGHT YOU OWNED IT’!!.
From the gloom somewhere a maniacal laugh; ‘Like you thought you owned a lot of things…… Chrome Dome’!!.
What you didn’t know is that we had the Submarine the frogs ordered and we weren’t gonna make it diesel electric. We were gonna do it for Australia, the worlds first Coal powered Submarine, The Pepys le Pew. And you, you fat ugly bastard was gonna launch it till SCOMO stuffed it up by telling Macron to Stick his Gauloise up his Arch de Triomphe!

It was all planned fat head! And you and yer mates from the Sunshine State even the beet rooter would be none the wiser. So take that’!

From somewhere in the gloom a can of sun-ripened beetroots hit Dutto smack on his crab claw! You could tell it hurt, but Dutto being a Queensland Copper true and through knew what to do with it. With a dexterity more professional than one of Warnie’s googleys he sent the tin of beetroot flying back from the direction from which it came, and in doing so deftly sliced the tin open. From the distance you could hear and audible slop and the sound of an irritated individual flicking sliced beetroot from her shiny jackboots.

‘Is that the best you can do FAT-HEAD’?

And how to stop their HEAD EXPLODING!

Dutto snarled, ‘I’ll flay you alive and after I’ve cooked you. Ill feed you to the’…… He was about to say Crocodiles but thought of something worse; ‘the press gallery and after they’ve finished with you you’ll be as a happy as that uni professor you stuck on a shed on yer back paddock till you’d fleeced him of his funds, Wouldn’t you like that Sophia me old tart’?

With the word ‘Sophia’, the very word that the girls at St Catherine’s had taunted her for being “multi-cultural’ (A swear word to someone of Sophie’s sensibilities) there was an audible rumble, and from out of the gloom a shopping trolley filled to the brim with sides of pork, ham slices and full pork legs splattered all over Dutto’s crustacean self. ‘Heres more for your pork barreling’! And before she could finish the sentence, Dutto vanished.

By some artifice, he’d worked out where the voice was coming from and seeing his opportunity, slid down a sewer pit, and made his way to the source. Sophie had perhaps only seconds before a confrontation, crept from out of the darkness into the streetscape, and proclaimed, ‘Chickened Out? Couldn’t handle the heat? I thought you were a crab man, not a chicken,’?

And from behind her, more stealthily than the paperwork required to make a joy ride to anywhere a parliamentary privilege, she felt the claw tighten around her throat. Sophie had met her match, but that just made her more dangerous.

Will Sophie get out from Dutto’s clutches,? Will Dutto reign supreme in the dark world of Radium Spings?

Simon Birmingham sniffs the wind, could be changing direction for the Coalition?

Find out in our next pre-election episode, ‘Sophies got my craw’, or ‘Duttos daliance with destiny deals devilishly dangerous for undecided decorously clad desmoselles in un-distress’.

Dear reader, 

We leave our saga of our heroes Ces, Quent, Terry and their sidekick, the indomitable and highly decorated hero of Afghanistan, Fat Ladies and burying USBs in his backyard Benny-boy Roberts Smith, to give you an insightful update on the upcoming Federal election.  With only days away the Tweedle Dum,  Tweedle Dee contest is getting to the pointy end. And so far, as far as we can tell there has yet, ( safety first) not been one slither, an inkling, a crack of imagination from both parties. 

We asked our in-house psephologist, Alan Tudge what he thought of the chances of one imaginative idea ever surfacing and his comments were insightful. 

Tweedle Dee is trying to harness the womens vote against Tweedle Dum

 ‘Look here fellas talking about imagination is the last thing this bloody nation needs. We’ve got hedge funds, franking credits, negative gearing, and tax breaks  for high income earners and the fact that no one under the age of forty is ever going to be able to buy a home. That’s enough for just starters. Why then for fucks sake, ( Tudgey said this with almost as much emphasis as he did when he kicked his former press secretary out of bed) would we want to introduce the Trojan horse of Imagination into the mix? What fucken planet are you on? The public consistently for three decades have told us they don’t like imagination. It’d be like wheeling Barry Jones onto the stage and giving him another crack about the future, or getting that rat-bag Flannery to bang on about climate or even worse, someone like Ken Henry to bang on about tax reform.  These ideas about imagination are bat-shit crazy!! No! Take my word leave it to Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee. They’ll not upset the public, and look, this is gonna be a tight race, we’ve enough on or hands trying to bury our treatment of Sheilah’s in parliament and you want to introduce unknown knowns. 

Tudgey’s talent, Robo-debt auto-bot on trial.

Take it from me. Don’t mess with what we quaintly and euphemistically refer to as ‘democracy’. Keep it in the safe keeping of superannuation firms, big business and pollies who work hard for the lobbyists like Barnaby Joyce. At least that was we can pick the right people on the board of the ATT, The Fair Work Commission, and Sophie and Dutto can all look to a slice of the pie into the future. Thats how you grow prosperity, not on some fucking ideological delusion that the ‘trickle down effect’ is gonna make a wit of difference from people who don’t even know how to thank us for not punishing them more. Robodebt was my brainchild, and I gotta tell you after a few had topped emselves they’ve learnt their lesson, to be content with what we dish out to them. It’s why I whip the dog, kick the Sheila outta bed, and slap em round a bit, it keeps em keen’!

Both Tweedles follow NSW Rugby, which is sorta like footy

And besides, there’s always gonna be winners and  losers. If you’re a loser its cos you’re lazy and never had a crack’. 

We are indebted to Tudgey for this insightful insight and only hope that the electorate do the right thing and endorse Tudgey or at the very least the UAP who have the catchy slogan ‘freedom freedom freedom’ as their bond of good governance. Change at this time would be dangerous. And besides with some back benchers  we’ve never heard of owning upwards of twenty investment properties it would cause a market crash if ever we did anything about parliamentary lurks and negative gearing. 

Is this negative, is this nihilistic.. Not really, just real politic.

Real politic is when you’ve got two pollies who think, talk, and act the same, 

Real politic is when both parties asylum seeker policies are cruel and vindictive

Tweedle Dum has the advantage of Clean Coal.

Real politic is when you by necessity must keep the prison and judicial system processing indiginies

Change is dangerous unless it’s ‘plus ca change’. 

Plus ca change? The promise of a bit of  cash  in the pocket. That’s an election winning formula.

These blokes have strong appeal to the Womens vote. Just ask em?

Cant tell em apart!

Franking credits anyone? 

Malcolm ushered in a new era of Queenly sackings!

Dear reader,  Once again we are in the proverbial., 

Hawkie loved most of all……HIMSELF!!

Our heroes and Benny-boy Roberts Smith  find themselves still up to their armpits in merde.  Is that ‘merde’ you say? Yes  reader, a direct quote from another great global leader Emanuele Macron who’s got this thing going with Vladimir. One phone call and Vladimir might promise to be nice, cos at the end of the day whether its a submarine contract or a kleptocrats yacht, its nicer when its said in French. Pity Scomo cant understand French, it might make him a lot more electable, or at the very least he could choose to politely ignore the unkind things that are said about him in Parliament by members of his own party. But before we give SCOMO all the credit for being the  genius in suggesting first home buyers  dip into their super as the first plank of the Coalitions election policy there’s another bitter struggle for the hearts and minds beneath the desert wastes of Maralinga

Keating had a penchant for flash suits and ws the last PM to employ wit and vision as a political device.

No matter how hard they try, they; Benny Boy, Ces, Quent and Terry cannot rid themselves of the taint of real – politik. ‘What is real politik you may ask’? That’s the sort of politik where you scratch my arse and I’ll scratch yours. Whats that in plain English? Well thats simple;  ‘you wipe my arse and I’ll wipe yours’.  That according to our famous psephologist Ted. E.Whitten is what its all about. In politics its all about the law of the jungle. And in the jungle, the only thing that can be heard above the screech of the hyaenas is the dull, percussive, mordant sound of the ‘Drums of War’!

Is this a khaki election? Or just one where colour is so leached of empathy that its all a monochromatic sludge of over- worn slogans and knee jerk cliches? Surely we deserve more than this? 

Or do we?

John Howard showed a remarkable taste in friends

What effort have we put into the political process? For the baby boomers we’ve had it pretty good. Our investments since mummy and daddy have karked it have grown and now we ride the tidal wave of our era. Free education, universal health care, well paid jobs, not having to fight in other peoples wars, the present is a panegyric to our time. We are the exalted, the younger generation can fend  for themselves cos in our height, we are  beyond reproach. Its someone else’s problem. All this stuff about inflation is for the rental class. They can go and find an investment property and if they cant afford one they can hold onto a rung. A rung on the ‘ladder of opportunity’. Some of them are lower on the ladder of opportunity, and if they cant hold on they are losers, not winners . We only exalt the winners, whatever side you bat on!

But what of our heroes? We must believe in heroes, for without heroes of some kind the alchemy of politics doesn’t work.

Kev was way too clever and liked to tell us so….

Who are our heroes? Are they two late middle-aged men fighting it out for the blancmange of middle Australia? Or something more profound? An Australia. Of destiny and vision? An Australia of imagination and the gift of diversity? Or something a little less confronting? Win or lose our heroes may be the best chance we have of clutching defeat from the jaws of victory and achieving from this ideological wasteland our  Gallipoli Moment!

Whatever happens you know that its written in the sand.

And the sands are always moving so whatever is written is re- written. And written again. As a famous Bedouin tribesman once said. ‘It is written though I can’t remember what was written the last time it was written as the sand is always moving’! So we too must move in sync to the sand, As the hourglass expires, so we must prepare ourselves for the final hour, the last grain, the last tic of the toc and now that this is our time. And time flies.  Tempus fugit, or as Barnaby would

say; ‘Roll out the barrel, if its got pork in it it’ll float, fly, or go sky high. And land fair square! Somewhere in a Coalition electorate’.  

Julia was a woman and for that she was PUNISHED!

Have we got time for the central narrative, of our heroes mired in the morass of intrigue, back- stabbing, hypocrisy, cover ups and chicanery? Another day in parliament? No! The grim struggle for dignity and humanity against minds so corrupted by power and privelege they’ll stop at nothing. Can Dutto and Sophie be stopped? Or is it too late? So late that we’ve run out of room and only have this smallest of slots, as this is an election edition to provide just the scarcest of space to an utterance from our heroes. 

And Ces said; ‘Crumbs! Were in a right pickle now, and theres no easy way out’ . 

Too true. There was no easy way out. We could just make out the silhouette of Benny-Boy ahead and all we could do was shuffle along in the dark and hope for the best. It was comforting to know that Terry had another carton of Camels in his backpack and as he tossed us another round we lit up and as in a torch- light parade, we puffed along knowing that things could be worse.

 ‘Ya know’’ Terry said, ‘it aint all bad, I mean’, there was a pause as Terry searched for the right sentiment. ‘I mean we could be a Russian Conscript in the Donbas, doing Vladimir’s bidding, or just a misunderstood copper from Yuendumu with a Glock  that’s lable to go off who’s just trying to do his job. Or a policeman who gets by luck and stupidity to be the Defence Minister. Yep, and here we are us band of brothers, and Benny boy being led to the surface it can only get better from hereon’…

Tony was a strong man who also demonstrated a profound facility for character judgement.

 But no sooner had Terry cheered us with the prospect of being free than we heard a dull thud form deep below, we knew in an instant that either Dutto or Sophie had found a way of settling their argument. Or one way or the other, they were going to find where we’d got to and they’d be hot on our tails. 

Thats all we can give as our air time is paid for by the UAP, an they like to get value for money. 

So folks take if from Clive; ‘For the best election you wanna buy, Clive is not far away, 

he’s not in a Melb-ayne pity,  butta Brisbane City… 

Will Clive make an appearance to save our heroes? Find out in the next Capricornian episode ‘Coconuts and Pineapples don’t salad mix’, or, ‘Isn’t it TIME to reinstate the Brisbane LINE’!

Malcolm trusted his closest associates, and they returned the favour…

We acknowledge the UAP and Franco Cozzo Furniture in generously sponsoring todays editorial comment. 

In the beginning there was MING. (on the left, not the silly bastard on the right.)

Dear reader, we find ourselves after a period of unexplained delay back on track with the true saga behind our current federal election. 

Yes folks as the teals battle it out with the inner blues and reds we know that a much more Herculean task is afoot below the irradiated wastes of Maralinga. For there, hidden from the public more securely than a register of donations to both  the major parties, the hope of ever seeing a federal ICAC or just the promise of a fresh, new, imaginative idea ever coming from the cobwebbed bowels of a Canberra focus group and dull policy documents a titanic struggle ensues for the real hearts and minds of what we refer to euphemistically as the “Quiet Australians’. 

From the swamp came Harold!

And why are these Australians so quiet? 

Harold was a REAL PERFORMER! He was the first to recognise the SHEILAH VOTE!

Cos they’re entombed, beneath layers of rock in a stygian cavern with Dutto and Sophie as their jailers. If they can get to a ballot box and make significant change it’ll be a miracle, cos las time we looked Maralinga was pretty much sewn up by Barnaby and the Nationals. But whilst there is Barnaby and the existence of ‘Barnaby-Speak’, there is also hope. So hold onto your corflutes, and hold your breath as we continue with the true account. The minute by breath-taking minute of how our heroes, all three of them and Australia’s noblest greatest most decorated soldier ever Benny-Boy Roberts Smith must find a way through the miasma of politics, vested interests and sinecurism…… Because, where there is still hope there is hilarity. Read on……

Then, along came JOHN! Johnny was our first PROPER post war labor P.M, even though he batted for the Liberals

The door clanged behind us and from within the dark stairwell we could just see steps, ancient, dust covered and undisturbed leading upwards. ‘This looks like it’, Benny gasped, and just to make sure, we watched in awe as Benny taped up the steel door that had clanged behind us and for good measure attached a string of rifle grenades, a trip wire, a claymore, several anti tank mines and a roman candle.  ‘Whats the Roman candle for’? Ces asked. ‘Oh that’s just to distract them as they walk in, once it goes off the whole shebang’, he paused; ‘she blows, and that’s the last we’ll see of Sophie and Dutto’. He laughed somewhat too eagerly, he clearly enjoyed being on the job. ‘But what if it doesn’t work’? Ces asked with just a hint of incredulity.

Then came BILLY! Billy was not liked by anyone in Parliament. Still didn’t stop him from being P.M

‘Believe me mate it’ll bloody work’!  And for emphasis he threw something long and shiny from his backpack. We clutched it, thinking it was an explosive device, a wad of torpex or bundle of cordite.  To our surprise Benny had thrown us a prosthetic leg. ‘Hold the bloody leg and say after me, To the Fat Lady’s Arms and beyond, the bond, shall never be broken’! 

We smiled awkwardly at Benny, what else could we do? Benny had two taped Kalashnikovs pointed at us. We uttered the solemn words, and Benny exalted, ‘Thats done then, give us back the fucken leg’. 

‘But what’s it for’? sighed Ces.

‘It’s for good luck. Picked a pile of em up in Tarren Kwot, and they’re sort of like rabbits feet, they give you good luck, and’ , he smiled condescendingly, ‘they have other uses, Cmon!’

We barely had time to think of what other uses meant and just sidled up the steps. Ben had his night vis helmet goggles on and we just blindly stumbled forward, not caring for much other than the thrill of it ever happened of gaining the surface. Bit like finding yourselves after a policy desert in a federal election the day after. ‘The day after what’? Ces expired, ‘after the federal election’! replied Quent. 

After Billy came GOUGH! Gough gave First Australians (portions)their land back, so that PRISONS could be more fully integrated in to the NT economy.

‘But’’, Ces exasperatedly sighed, ‘whatever happens in a federal election makes no bloody difference. Tudgey will still have a sinecure, Barnaby will be slotted onto a lifetime pension for fucking up the Murray Darling and a sensible climate debate.  All the other hacks will be looked after and nothing ever changes.  I dunno’? replied Terry, ‘Theres always some change. 

What then’? blurted Ces.  ‘Well, there’s a change in the mood, and who gets to buy toys for defence, and build prisons. There’s always a lot of change, and  some parties just like to mix it up a bit. Yeah’, Ces replied caustically, ‘but is that real change or just window dressing’?

Terry took offence, ‘I was a window dresser at Myers in the fifties and the work we did kept the engine of commerce going though the post-war era. There’s so much more to window dressing than window dressing? 

Post GOUGH? Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. A safe policy bet and no threat of destabilising CHANGE!

‘Such as’? Ces asked dryly. ‘Well it’s the style, everyone wants a bit of style, it’s bit like Keating and his suits versus Scomo and his baseball caps’! Terry had made a point and it showed than in spite of the flim-flammery there was a prospect of real change. 

But will change be enough? Will the climb from the gloom be their doom? Find out in the next sartorially challenging episode, ‘Two suits and your straight-jacketed’, or…. ‘is that couture you’re wearing or just haut couture’? 

This is what Ukraine is fighting for!

Dear reader, we find ourselves once again in peril. 

People in the Solomons will regret not having a satellite hook-up!

With seconds ticking evil forces arrayed on either side are determined to destroy what’s left of a free thinking group of individuals who still believe in integrity, egality and the rule of law. They find themselves cordoned, isolated, quarantined and about to be liquidated. Does this sound like an average day in the Ukraine? Sounding like those who still believe in the overarching concept of a Commonwealth in the upcoming Federal election? Sounding like those poor citizens benighted by not knowing the right mates in the private medical supplies racket during the Covid crisis? Or those unaligned who just pay taxes so that Barnaby and his mates can parachute them onto obscenely remunerated boards paid for by those dolts who actually pay taxes. Does it sound like those poor denizens in seats who don’t get the taste of pork or ride in a barrel? Or just the ordinary citizen who can’t afford a lobbyist?

Anything can happen at election time, and it’s worse in other places. Take Japan for instance, where you can get into a whole lotta trouble just for saying ‘Erection time’.Yes folks all of this and more, for with the federal election coming, all these trenchant issues will be tested and we can guarantee that nothing will change. But for our heroes? Stuck beneath the irradiated wastes of Maralinga. Is there hope yet?  Perhaps a glimmer of hope and in finding that hope a chance. A slim chance?

IT’S COMPELLING!

It might be one in a million, It might be more remote than incarceration and punishment as the principle policy objective for first Australians by both parties, but therein, still lies hope. ‘To give up is to give up on yourself’ as the famous Luftwaffe Ace Hans Ulrich Rudel said of life. And for the ghost of Ukraine the spirit is the same, ‘prevail, because if you don’t, you FAIL’!

So set the controls for the heart of entropy and drive with us past the short -termism of the Federal election and back to the only contest that counts, the contest between good and evil. Between our heroes and Sophie and Dutto, and the conflicted thoughts of our greatest soldier ever, Benny-boy Roberts Smith. As he, V.C still emblazoned on his chest wades through the imponderable, the implausible and the impossible beyond his own recollections of what really happened on the  frontline, where he buried the USB’s in his own backyard. 

IT’S IRREFUTABLE!

‘’I don’t believe it’, muttered Ces, She’s still alive, she must be made out of’? Ces paused for a suitable descriptor. ‘Kevlar’, whispered Benny- Boy, and ‘Titanium’? Quent interjected. Whatever she was made of Terry had the final word. ‘She’s unstoppable, made I should actually say of spent uranium. She’s tougher than a T 72’. 

We thought about this and mused as to why the T72 the mainstay of the former Soviet Union was now not so tough a nut to crack. And before we could say ‘ Stinger” Ces raised the possibility that perhaps like the T72 the turret armour, (in this he implied Sophie’s head) was probably softer than the body armour. Whilst we thought about this and determined perhaps another strategy to get out of this mess, we were distracted by the drama unfolding before us. Dutto, now the full half crustacea, his antennae crushed by a well-aimed jack-boot to the head, and his eyes now gleaming, sinister red from stalks protruding from his head bellowed a triumphant challenge to Sophie.

 ‘You’ll never gain the upper-hand’, he emphasised this determination with a wave of his crab claw hand, severing the jack-boot in two as if it were cheese. ‘I have the formula’. 

Some people just don’t understand Freedom’s bounty

‘Formula’? We asked.

 ‘And I alone have the combination to set this place off, and you, you pathetic piece of confected rolly polly, cannot stop me’! 

Some people don’t get a very simple message!

‘Wanna bet you’, and pausing just long enough to make the insult stick ‘Crab-Man!! Are you gonna try and stop me? Once I leak your true identity to the press, you’ll be about as popular as Barnaby in the Western Australian National party women’s auxiliary! You’ll be more reviled than Dyson’s way with women, Tudgeys way with secretary’s and Christians track record on former debating team members. You’re finished Dutto!! And get used to it, your era of hiding in Queensland is almost over. You wont have to wait till the election. You’re FINISHED’! And with that another jackboot came hurtling through the air and hit Dutto on one of his eye stalks, which escaped damage by popping in to avoid severe ocular damage. 

‘Wanna bet’?… In one swoop of his crab-claw, Dutto picked up an old wheel hub, possibly from a Humber Hawk and threw it in the direction of Sophies utterances. We heard the clang, and from behind the building; ‘missed me crabby’!

Some people wilfully ignore a message for their own GOOD!

This made Dutto absolutely iridescent with rage. And clattering sideways, (as all crustaceans do) he grabbed the door he’d smashed through from the warehouse and with one almighty heave tossed that also in Sophies direction. It made a deafening roar as the entire apparatus smashed into the facade of another drab building enveloping the entire streetscape in dust and rubble. ‘Missed again, Mr Potato head’. This was too much! Twisting and turning, Dutto put caution to the wind and sideways scuttled at incredible speed, ( some crustacea have been known to propel themselves very quickly indeed) ‘Missed again Chrome dome’.. But Dutto was gone. Off down the street, determined to do Sophie once and for all. 

From the cavernous building that Dutto had opened we could see form within a vague light. ‘This is it’! Benny Boy whispered, ‘to the light, it’s our only hope’! And without waiting to qualify the decision, we leapt for it, across the dusty street, with the raucous crash of obscenity and objects being thrown from where Dutto and Sophie were, we clambered out of our niche and sped into the building. 

They Must WAKE UP and LISTEN!

At the far end, amongst packing cases, dissecting tables, bottles of formalin filled test jars, where objects in the half light, looked vaguely human and some more sinister. We crept to the only salvation that may provide deliverance, a cold grey door, begrimed and smeared with rust, and above it a flickering light, like the flickering of democracy’s flame in parliament, we saw the word ‘EXIT’. Benny was first to it, giving it an almighty heave it creaked and groaned, and we witnessed movement. ‘I can’t do it alone, you’ll have to help me’, and with all four of us, rebelliously. Resentfully, recalcitrantly the door by inches opened, and from beyond, all we could see were stairs going upwards to who knows where?

‘Last one in, close the fucken door’, and as we heaved it shut. Perfect silence. 

Otherwise, they’ll end up in Jail!

‘Quick up these stairs before Dutto finds were gone’. From the rear we could hear Terry humming the opening bars of ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Heaven or hell there was only one way down and it was upwards. Will Dutto sort his differences out with Sophie? Will he find his own stairway post parliament? Or is he just a permanent fixture of what’s not quite right about the ‘Drums of War’. Are those drums upbeat, or down beat? Find out in the next compelling episode, ‘Dutto always rings twice’, or,  ‘Sophie aint into Sophistry, but she’s sure into sinecures’. 

Preparing the ‘Drums of War” the most powerful Queenslander since Bjelke’s wife Flo.

We return to our saga, still, (if you can remember how this story began) no closer to finding the heinous villain who so cruelly defiled our Tea-lady Mrs Culthorpe on secondment to our nations parliament as an intern. With no resolution in sight, we must wait as Vladimir surely does for a victory of sorts. Resistance seems futile. Even with Australia’s bravest and most noble soldier ever, ‘Benny-Boy’ Roberts Smith our heroes, and their new side-kick Terry seem no match for the over-arching power and obduracy of Australia’s most powerful individual who goes by the name of ‘Dutto’. More powerful than Twiggy and Gina put together, Dutto knows everything. And with his finger on the trigger, and a chorus grafted from the ‘Drums of War,’ our heroes have discovered the hideous truth, That ‘Dutto’, all along was a Queenslander, Yes! 

In spite of their hideous deformities this small band of Queenslanders RULE the entire nation!

But there was worse to follow, that Dutto was born at Radium Springs and has a mutational claw. Dutto has demonstrated to them his claw-power and like Barnaby, Pauline, George, Clive, Bob and Matt he has demonstrated the awful truth that all Queenslanders are DIFFERENT! Their leaders to a man and woman all suffer a hideous deformity caused by being irradiated as kiddies at Maralinga and  they’ve regrouped in the only state where such hideous and vile deformities of personality and physical presence, would go unnoticed. Queensland.

The pall of the nuclear age has returned to wreak havoc. Only our heroes know the truth.  But dead men tell no tales. Will this be their death provoking final moment, or just another day of election 2022.

Unstoppable, and in spite of their hideous aberrant mutations they melted into Queensland society where their deformities would go unnoticed!

‘Ha ha ha’, Dutto laughed in a sinister, and triumphalist manner, ‘Once this election is over I’ll have all of you off to the Solomons”! He paused relishing the prospect of his first military campaign, using us as ‘human shields’. ‘Whichever way you look at it, you Benny-Boy will lead. If you get wiped out by the Chinese I’ll just say you were renegades trying to annexe the Solomons to Queensland just as we did new Guinea back in the 1890’s. And if you fail, as you surely will. No one will be the wiser.  You’ll be snuffed out faster than Sam Dastyarii did when he went one step too far at electoral fund-raising’. Dutto, then, inextricably, spoke an entire sentence in mandarin. We think it was mandarin, but before we could ask him he sniggered and snarled, and his claw hand snapped viciously in the air. 

To impose their very own skewed logic to the political process

‘SILENCE! He bellowed, and as we sat in terror, wondering what was next as his claw- hand started clicking, and from his chrome-dome head, smooth and waxen like the full-moon twitched.  Then to our utter amazement from his forehead sprouted two feelers. The feelers, like antennae spiralled out from the skull-like orb. We could almost detect sparks of static electricity, as he focussed with all his might on something beyond the dusty dark forlorn streetscape, 

‘What is it I whispered to Ces’ ? 

‘Dunno, he’s trying to hear something. Or feel something’? chimed Benny. ‘Yup, it’s like a yabby looking for  sea slug, or a cockroach looking for a corner cupboard or’, chipped in Terry.

To impose their irradiated IRON- WILL and determination to SURVIVE! AT ANY COST!

 ‘It’s like a prosthetic leg being banged together with another prosthetic leg’. We didn’t have the heart to tell Benny that his simile was a little far-fetched, but just smiled encouragingly.

All the while Dutto, half-man, half-insect, half-crustacea. (Well now you’re asking how can you have three halves? Well Dutto being a Queenslander can approximate anything if he really believes in it) . 

Dutto twirled around, he beckoned with his normal hand, finger to his lips, a “ Shhhhhhhh”! Move and you’re breakfast’! 

We gulped, we’d been down here so long we weren’t sure if it was breakfast or dinner time, and that reminded us that we hadn’t eaten in so many days…..and though there was salve in Terry’s Camels, they weren’t really filling in a satisfactory way. ‘That’s why smoking is a poor source of nutrition’, Ces surmised. 

Deformities of mind, body and soul that were inescapable!

Then, from the corner of the street, we saw something. Dutto saw it first. A movement of sorts. In the middle distance, concealed from our view by an assortment of packing cases long abandoned. We could see Dutto’s feelers, antennae, twitching furiously and then we noticed his eyes, always pin-pricks, darkened sultana’s attached to the bun- like visage of his face aglow. And to our horror, we could see that they’d turned a dull cold deep-red. Being part crustacea, he was now more fully crustacea, and crab-like the eyes began to glow and then the most extraordinary thing happened. They emerged, from stalks just as a mud crab, or a mollusc would. It captivated us, one moment there stood Dutto more human than crustacea, and now he’d changed before our very eyes to become hideously the ‘full crustacea’! The eyes, protruding, the antennae twitching, and the crab claw clacking, he moved sideways to get a better look. As he did so, the noise, a noise eerily similar to the sound a rodent makes as it scurries inside a partition wall had us spell-bound. ‘What could it be’? I whispered to Ces. ‘Dunno’, came the standard reply. ‘Do you think its’?……. The whispering trailed off as the nearest crate burst open in a blinding flash, and then before our eyes had time to adjust to the blinding light we heard something whistling above us, and cowering crouching and compressing ourselves to the side of the wall we saw an object hurtling down upon the twitching, convulsive ghastly man-thing that was Dutto and with a resounding plop it hit him fair square on the head. Dutto recoiled with the impact and we could see his antenna, which were only seconds ago twitching and sparking with intense activity had crumpled like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The object, a crumpled jack-boot. As we recoiled with the horror as a greenish goo insectivorous and alien oozed from Dutto’s temple we heard the triumphant cry.  “Thought you’d got the best of me Potato-head? Well you aint, Im a survivor and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never get the better of me’! The voice was high pitched and repulsive in its own cadaverous way and we all realised that in that instance ‘SHE’ was still alive. And whilst she prevailed there was still a chance of escape. But we also knew that it was another gamble, another impossibility, another forlorn hope, cos try as we might we knew that the irrepressible Sophie was back!

Finding safety, security and acceptance in a shared and hideous past erased from the public record. (or any press non-aligned to LORD MURDOCH of RUPERT)

What will happen in the next episode? Will it be a reckoning? Will Dutto, like Scomo recover from his frank character assessment for those within his own party, to be absent on every count and yet still emerge victorious? Only the tea- leaves know, and sadly like the Ms Culthorpe’s stint as tea-lady in parliament we may never know the culprit. For the only thing we did know, could know and might ever know amidst the known unknowns was the fact that we were still alive. But only just. Find out in the next episode;

‘Dead or Alive? With an election on, we’re only half-dead’, 

United in the ETERNAL and UNYIELDING truth of ‘KING COAL’!

or, “Barnaby’s Choyce”!

Dear electorally charged and challenged reader.

The problem with foreign people in Australia is they don’t know about respect for Australian Institutions. Dual Citizen M.P’ s are TROUBLE-MAKERS!

This is another one from Frank. Frank from the North West frontier. Not to be confused with the biblical ‘Frank- in sense’, who wrote about economics under the nom de plume, ‘Galbraith’ or the winner of the last Federal Election ‘Frank of the Fully Franked Dividend’!

In this dispatch Frank is seriously questioning both the morality and the execution of  Australian indigenous and border policies. Why is Frank doing this you may ask? We believe it’s because Frank at the end of the day, whichever way you look at it, taking everything into consideration, in the cold light of day, and not to put too fine a point on it is a ……….. ( wait for it)…………a……………..FOREIGNER!

That’s the problem with Frank.

SCOMO wouldn’t even hold the hose, cos he knows that with Germans, (or Dutch) or any other foreigner, they don’t know our ways.

Because he started off as a young individual from Holland, where Dykes always leak and a finger must be at the ready to plug the leak. And then to make matters worse he spent years in Argentina, a nation blessed by beautiful weather, systemic corruption and a safe haven for those who may seek refuge and new identities post war. From there he made his way to Australia.

This is Frank’s problem. If only he’d just accepted Australia and forgotten about his foreign past he’d be a ‘good Australian’. Instead, cos of the foreign taint he bangs on about justice, equity and a fair-go. That’s Un- Australian. So we caution you to read this missive as an Australian and quietly chuckle, “There he goes again,” and accept Frank for being deeply flawed. And being foreign he’s always asking questions? He doesn’t understand the Australian virtue of accepting the way things are and just shutting up as the electorate is supposed to do.

Australians have a mighty tradition that dates back to a time before Ku Klux Clan gatherings at Tarren Kwot.

At the end of the day, when pressed Frank probably doesn’t even know the Don’s batting average, and couldn’t tell you which horse won the 1933 Melbourne Cup. He probably, if you scratch the surface couldn’t tell you which footy team he barracked for, and if you scratched a bit further he doesn’t harbour a deep and unresolved HATE for those he thinks have jumped the queue. So in this light be sympathetic to his viewpoint. But we urge you DON’T be swayed. At election time there’s all sorts of crack- pots having a go at the ‘Lucky Country’. And why are they having a go? Cos they wouldn’t be happy in any situation. Not even a knock shop with an extended happy hour. And being foreign makes em no- hopers! But we tolerate em just the same, because at the end of the day we’re not only the ‘Lucky Country’, but the most easy going, fair – minded bastards you’ll find this side of the black stump. And that’s why we’re in furious agreement that it’s an undisputed OUTRAGE that the lady who was the CEO of Guide Dogs Victoria got sacked for backing Josh. We at pcbycp are 100 percent behind the only man who can save Australia from what goes on in the far- canal, ( its adjacent to Guadalcanal). And that’s Clive and his message of ‘ Freedom, Freedom , Freedom! ‘Clive of Australia’. Onya Clive!

Queensland translation; ‘Freedom ! Freedom! Freedom’!

Frank writes;

Amici,

On 24^th April 2015 (one day before Anzac Day) The Monthly published Chips Mackinolty’s ‘Another Gallipoli’. As the world is witnessing yet another refugee tsunami (this time emanating from Ukraine), Chip’s article is well worth revisiting and pondering on.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/chips-mackinolty/2015/24/2015/1429838385/another-gallipoli#mtr

Mackinolty is a ratbag. Cos he questions ‘AUSTRALIAN VALUES’!

Am currently reading Behrouz Boochani’s ‘No Friend but the Mountain (writing from Manus Prison)’.
As an Australian citizen, my response is confined to a feeble “not in my name”.

Our Chips, (Rafferty), not this one….was a REAL AUSTRALIAN!

Australia’s asylum seeker policies and assimilationist attack on remote Aboriginal Australia continue unabated. The ‘Stop the Boats’ mantra, which I think it was the Koori Mail so cleverly parodied with ‘Stop the Votes’, continues to enjoy bi-partisan support and to top it all is now being embraced on the other side of the world by that joke of a Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Sam Cooke- A change is gonna come…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4

Ciao,

Refugee boat on Christmas Island. (Now being refurbished as HMAS Apathy), an “Attack Class” nuclear submersible.

Frank

Dear reader we return to our saga.

Lest we forget. The stunning victory gained in Flanders.

No preamble here as this is ANZAC day and solemnity and truth is the order of the day.

Dutto’s ‘Brave New World’!

(If you are eligible for an ANZAC Day Order as distinct from an Australia Day or Queens Birthday Order, we suggest you apply to our pcbycp ‘Order Authentication Service’ where your order will be vetted, calibrated and indexed against other order holders. Steam- cleaned and verified as ” authentic’ within two weeks or your order returned. A $200.00 dollar surcharge applies to all Orders lodged post-election 2022.)

Queenslanders generally hide mutations through the artifice of public office.

For a while it took us minutes to take in the spectacle of Dutto as he really was. A half crustacea, from the props department of ‘District Nine’. But what made us tremble more uncontrollably was the voice. It was Dutto allright. It had that instinctive Queensland twang to it. And yet it also sounded different.  Eerily different.  As if he’d gone the ‘full crustacea’. There was a rasping to his voice and it went to the very core of our souls. A penetrating, insinuating and coercive voice, that seemed impossible to resist. It went like this;

‘Well well well Benny-boy, we meet again’ 

People of ‘Occupied Countries’ often do not understand the bounty of ‘Freedom Freedom Freedom‘ ! ! 

Dutto said this in a manner so flat it was flatter than the irradiated wastes of Maralinga. . He emphasised his address to Australia’s greatest ever and most decorated soldier wth a snigger. Whether Benny liked it or not, he knew that Dutto had him taped. Whatever Benny-boy had done, thought, enacted and even planned Dutto knew. Dutto made it his business to know everything. And what Dutto didn’t know; ‘wasn’t worth nuffink’. (T. Abbott c. 2015).  

Benny stood up, he dropped his weapons to the ground. He walked a step forward to the ghastly apparition, and with one mighty impulse, he tore off his fatigues and threw his tattered shirt to one side. With his chest emblazoned with the sacred V.C he knew that like garlic to the vampire he at the very least was, “PROTECTED”!. 

‘Ha ha ha,, you think that’ll work’? Dutto sniggered. 

People of Occupied Countries often fail to understand the benefit bestowed upon them by ‘THE RULE OF LAW’!

‘But…… you, you, you promised me protection if I stayed with Kerry and upheld the Anzac tradition”

“Anzac tradition’? Dutto scoffed.

Benny’s lantern jaw dropped.  And from Lips hardened through drinking from prosthetic limbs he ghasped; ’HOW DARE YOU’! ‘Do you…… do you…… besmirch the honour, the unassailable sepulchre of ANZACKERY’?  

‘Ha ha ha ha” Dutto laughed demonically, “Anzackery’? He paused, his cranium aglow with power. ‘I  fucken made Anzackery’! 

For a moment Benny looked utterly crest-fallen. Just as crest-fallen as he felt when he buried the tapes in his back-yard. His world. The world of mateship, heroics and honour had collapsed like an election promise. 

‘But but’…… For Benny this was a bigger shock than punching his girlfriend, snotting his wife and threatening to top his mates if they squealed. ‘But….but,,…. but’, 

As in Afghanistan they need to understand the legend of ANZAC in upholding CIVILISATION and ‘Australian Values”!….. to lift them from the curse of POVERTY!

‘Save your breath’! Scoffed Dutto.

Benny looked shaken, shrunken and dispossessed… ‘but… but… Dutto…. why are you here’? 

Here, the voice boomed in a crustacean kind of way, Dutto moved sideways, (as a crustacea or mollusc does)  for emphasis. ‘Why am I here? You fucken wanna know what a bloke like me is doing down here??? I’ll fucken tell ya. I know EVERYTHING so it’s only fair that you might know a bit about myself’!!!  

He paused, his claw clicked and clacked menacingly…

And the the truth implausible, un- hearable, incomprehensible came as a thunderclap.

‘I was BORN HERE’!!!

Benny fell to the ground. He collapsed and writhed on the dusty surface. His whole world, a world of bravery, medals and knocking off wops in far-flung places for Australia evaporated. It was piteous. It was sad, it was epithetic, it was to watch, inwardly degrading.

People of Occupied Countries need to be EDUCATED, so that the message of ANZAC is understood and obeyed as an unasaillable FACT!

Ces offered him a Smartie to cheer him up. 

‘Yes Benny-Boy’ Dutto replied implacably .. ‘you and yer mates might as well know. When they shut this place down I was born. Born beneath the atom bomb as you might say!  My deformities kept me away from the outside world. My parents, two lab-technicians on secondment from the CSIRO’s Myxomatosis lab, who had experiments too important to leave, perished here. They perished alone when I was a young man. The only way I could survive with my deformity, and ineligibility for the NDIS, was to seek cover. So I sought cover in the Real World. That’s it Benny BOY, … YOUR WORLD!! 

Dutto emphasised ‘YOUR WORLD’ with a crushing sense of irony! 

He continued, clearly he’d had a long time to think of this soliloquy. He looked God- like in his black Victoria Police Special Response and Public Order Surveillance gear. 

“And where could I go where such a hideous deformity would go unnoticed?  Only one place in Australia?  Queensland’!

‘Clive, Bjelke, Barnaby, George, Matt, Bob and Pauline are all different!  Not just because they’re Queenslanders, but like me, they’ve prevailed in spite of their DEFORMITIES’!!

That’s it Benny-Boy! We Queenslanders are DIFFERENT!

We dare to be Different because we are different!! Clive, Bjelke, Barnaby, George, Matt, Bob and Pauline are all different!  Not just because they’re Queenslanders, but like me, they’ve prevailed in spite of their DEFORMITIES!!  And as this Benny-boy is ANZAC DAY, you can participate in something very special I’ve longed for. No matter how much Sophie tried to cruel it for me, I will always survive! That’s what we Queenslanders do.  No two-bit Victorian  Fair Work Commissioner can change the unalterable fact it’ll always be a Queenslander who runs this country because unlike you and your pissy mates we believe in RIGHT’!!

He had a point.  In his star-trooper, storm-trooper uniform he looked pretty cool in a Bruce Willis kinda way. And scary too. Just his crab-claw was enough to scare the be-Jesus outta us. 

‘And you know boys, I’ve got news for youse, after this election I’ll be Supreme Commander of this country’!

‘But won’t the P.M be a bit of a problem’, Ces tentatively and respectfully asked. 

To understand that in failure, abject and total failure comes the benediction of “Clutching Defeat from the jaws of someone else’s VICTORY’!

“There will be no more P.M. I have a coup planned, and in a flash parliamentarians will be given the boot and anyone who doesn’t obey will be shipped off to the Solomons. There’s a lot of unexploded ordnance left over by the Japs, and I’ve gotta feeling the Chinese ‘ll want it cleared before they turn it into the world’s biggest  off-shore REAL ESTATE OPPORTUNITY!

‘But, before I sweep all of you on your way I want you to celebrate ANZAC DAY. And I want you to think of the sacrifice made by all those diggers who died so we could have ‘Clean Coal’, Bet 24/7 and Midday television’! 

‘What do you have in mind? You power-crazed War-mongering Bjelke-ite’? Ces blurted.  Benny was too distraught to say anything he just shivered in a state of deep shock, as though his entire persona had turned to an LGBTI nuanced serve of rainbow-coloured custard. …

Dutto was undaunted. His ambition unchecked.  “I want youse to sing along with me. A little tune my parents taught me before they KARKED IT!  it was on the Hit-Parade back in 65, and it symbolises all that I believe in.. have you ever heard of a song called ‘Two little boys’?… 

This was it. A song more hideous than anything Cliff Richard ever sang and worse even than ‘Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep’. We had nowhere to hide. We couldn’t escape. And for dramatic effect, Dutto picked up Benny’s Kalashnikov with his crab claw and just sliced it in two. The pieces falling to the dusty ground more suddenly than the turret of a T72 ‘cooking off’ when hit by a Stinger. 

Only the NOBLEST shall be custodians of ANZACKERY!

We were stuffed! And as we began to sing, ‘Two little-boys’.  We knew Dutto, his humour more sinister than the sign-writer who welded ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ above the holiday park portal we were not gonna be around when the music stopped playing.  So as we sang, we slowed the tempo just long enough to give us a chance. An impossible chance, but one that symbolised like Gallipoli and Singapore a victory of sorts won from a crushing defeat.  That was in our minds upholding the ANZAC SPIRIT! And the HOLY GRAIL of ANZACKERY!

But were we up to it?  Did we have the mettle? Did we possess the right stuff?

Terry passed us a another Camel and lit it up. Defiant to the last at least he knew the verses, as none of us could remember the verses to ‘Advance Australia’ lest ‘Two-little boys’, and we droned on.. 

Will this be their last chorus? Is there room for an encore? Find out in the next melodically challenged episode, ‘Rolfs Riff is Ruff’ or “ Tie me kangaroo down un-sportingly, and don’t let the bugger loose Bruce’ …

‘Jam-Land’ uber allies.

Dear reader if you thought the last episode was cut short it’s because we had to, (as this is an Election issue) pay an undiscosed sum to Jam-Land. What ls ‘Jam-Land’ you may ask? One of Angus’s off-shore enterprises. Angus has a handle on what goes in and what goes out. And like Vladimir and his mates he makes sure he gets a cut. That’s democracy ‘Australian Style’. 

And we at pcbycp think its a guarantee of the right message getting through. Ours is not as strident message of ‘Freedom Freedom Freedom’. Our message is simple and fatalistic; ‘Apathy is comforting and why bother?”

Supreme Commander of the Southern Hemisphere, and remote islands inhabited by fuzzy wuzzies.

We believe it strikes just the right chord. Speaking of chords our heroes are down to their last note, and they’d better play it well.  With the hideous monster/man creature and the impending doom all around it’s their last throw. The cards may be all marked. The roulette wheel may be rigged and the one arm bandit is having a hard time getting on the NDIS. But like fools bound for a victims future it’s the only choice they have be it Hobson’s or Buckley’s. But despair is just another four letter word as is hope, life, fear and dead. So why worry, and read on… 

We return to our saga, beneath the irradiated desert sands of Maralinga in a space excised from the map, as is Angus’s offshore intersts, a place they called ‘Radium Spings’…And all because we were trying to find, (if you can remember back that far) who it was who cruelly defiled our tea-lady Mrs Culthorpe when she was on secondment to the Nation’s parliament.  

Yanks in the Solomon Islands worried about global warming way back in 1942. Before the bounty of ‘Clean-Coal’.

We knew that if we did so much as breathe heavily the claw enhanced humanoid would detect our movement. From our niche we could see that this creature was clothed in a metallic black. It wore jack-boots sort of like a storm trooper of or the military garb as worn by the Victoria Police public response or pedestrian crossing emergency response utility officer. They not only wore guns, tasers, truncheons and rpg’s, but tear gas projectors, dum dum projectors and smoke grenades. Some of them, even wore ‘have a nice day stickers’ on their rifles just to reassure the public they were there to protect them. 

AWM Finest hour at Singapore re- enactment for ANZAC Day 2022. Brendan Nelson the short bloke dressed in Japanese officers uniform.

The crab-handed humanoid jumped once more into the air. It was amazing to witness such athleticism, and then with an earth shattering crunch see it land heavily just metres in front of us. We could see the crab claw, twice the size of a human hand twitching, and from within a visor of sorts which we could see was a cybernetics enhanced night vision helmet display apparatus. We could hear the soft cackle of radio signals, communications relays, and laser guided toast warmers.  Whatever this crab, humanoid apparition was it was decked out in the latest up to date gear. But was it friend or foe? Benny was twitching the butt of his Kalashnikov. He always carried a spare, not the red taped one he used in Afghanistan, this one just an ordinary gaffer taped one with ‘have a nice day’ stencilled on the magazine. He also fondled the handle of the 1942 potato masher grenade he’d purchased at Kandahar after exchanging a barrow load of prosthetic limbs he’d picked up ‘in the field ‘ in Tarren Kwot. Whatever  was about to happen Benny was ready for action. And he was doing it alone. We just trembled, being civvies, we had no confidence in being able to stand up to this humanoid crustacea thing. 

The humanoid kept turning this way or that, craning its reptilian neck in either direction desperately seeking what it could only have been disturbed by  “US’.  It made a another ear-piercing howl, and stamped its feet again. Impatiently it rocked back and forth. it was menacing. it was hideous. And worse still from the visor of its ultra hi-tech helmet we could hear it humming a tune. A ghostly ghastly tune, yet strangely familiar. ‘What is it’? whispered Ces. ‘I dunno’! whispered Quent. ‘I’ve heard it before’, whispered Terry. And sure enough it made itself familiar, as from with the helmet we could hear a mumbling chorus, ‘Two little boys”

Wise men in charge of strategic policy Singapore 1942.

Christ he’s singin ‘Two little boys’, what does that carbon date this thing at Terry’?

‘Reckon it’d be 65! That was the last time we led a team of investigative scientists down here, and they were never seen again, Could it have something to do with this’?

Wiser men in charge of Strategic Policy 2022, Dutto; ” Jeez SCOMO the water’s rising in both the Sth Pacific and those bits of the electorate who vote Labor. Proves the existence of a Coalition GOD’! (studio laughter ensues)

‘I reckon so’,… the thought of what may have happened filled us with terror, and as we crouched, cowered and cringed.  The creature did a very strange thing, it began to move silently into the street, crouched down, and deliberately and with much dexterity crab- like it began to unscrew the helmet. We could hear the screwing, it was worse than anything from ‘Cats’, and as inch by inch, the helmet unwound we wondered what would emerge from inside? A human head or something much more sinister?  But we knew one thing, friend or foe we were in for a big shock! Benny twitched the handle of the potato masher grenade, and Terry passed us all another Camel to smoke if every we got out of here. Ces put his behind his ear. Quent shoved his up his nose as he’d seen GI’s do it in war movies and Terry just lined it up on his lip. 

Japanese prepare the official Gaudalcanal re- enactment for the AWM. Officer saying; ‘this is not the far-canal, this is the Guada-canal’.

With a dull ‘psssssht’, the helmet came off, and from within we could only see one thing, a bright gleaming dome. The light, sepulchral and diffused shone and the glimmered, like a carbuncle or exoskeleton, with a febrile intensity. Curiously we felt drawn to it,  as a punter is drawn to Crown Casino and yet, the horror presented itself. It was worse than another life-form it was more terrifying than half-human. It was more foreboding than the island of Doctor Moreau. It was, as it emerged in its gleaming skin tones, of white, puce and pale-yellow the dome of Australia’s most powerful law officer. The paralysing, penetrating, putative punishing progenitor of plausible paradoxes poised perilously perpendicular to procedural principle’s of public protection. The dome of ‘Dutto’. We could hear the whistling, ‘Two little boys’,  and with a slow deliberate gait it turned to us, stood upright the head emerged and it said; “ Well well well, fancy seeing youse again’. 

Brewster Buffalo’s re-engineered and up-graded by Lockheed Martin and British Aerospace for defence of Northern Australia and in public/privete sponsorship to the AWM 2022.

Will this be Mr Potato-heads final flourish? Will Mrs Potato-head put him back in the box? Where’s Sophie? Do we have a choice?  Find out in the next epoch defining episode, ‘Dutto or Dust”, or, “A Queensland Copper is Pure GOLD’!