RAAF Taipan Fleet, less than ten years old at only 1.5 billion cheap at twice the price, to be scrapped.

Who was Terry the linesman? 

Enigmatic would be an understatement, Terry was a man of few words. Acting as if by instinct and performing a task that he had under-performed these past seventy years you could tell as he activated the levers, (for this conveyance was all levers and toggle switches) that he had practised the operation of this machine for many years. 

A man of few words, much to Sophie’s liking, we gleaned this much, he liked it down here, and as fragments of his bio from snippets  of dialogue  filled in the blanks we realised the depth of strategic thinking that had taken place deep down almost seventy years ago. Way back to a time when Australia was poised on the cusp of being a ‘Nuclear Super Power’ and the future promised everything from ‘ Nuclear farming” to “ Nuclear families’. 

“Yup” he said phlegmatically, pointing to his long service badge, ‘started this gig in the late summer of 52, been ere ever since’. 

In wet, cloudy, or sunny conditions with a light breeze when the F35’s software package is ‘unstable’, the fighters perform a very valuable function as back-drop to Flag-waving.

‘Unbelievable’ we all sighed, ‘that’s seventy years service, seventy years of doing’?, …. We didn’t like to hurt his feelings, but aside from Sophie we wondered what he’d been doing this last seventy years. 

And even though we thought about it, seventy years it seemed wasn’t long enough. It were as if Ces opined: ‘Like it was yesterday’! And that was eerily true. It was as if the last seventy years had been compressed and we were still fighting or preparing for the same wars, and we’d forgotten about what the last one was really about. 

Terry conversationally filled the gaps in our line of questioning; ‘We think the last one might have been about fascism. About corrupt business and military conglomerates tied to unstoppable State based power over-riding ordinary defenceless nations and democracies and exerting their arbitrary will to plunder and rape them for natural resources’.  

Abrahams tanks at a trifing 1 billion help Queensland farmers clear open forest for cropping.

 “Like East Timor’? Quent enquired of Terry.  

“No,  well,….. yeah sort off, yeah but nah but East Timor was different. That was after we’d let Indonesia rape and plunder  them on our advice and then we thought we’d have a go for saving them. ‘For saving them what’? Quent  enquired. “Well helping take away their oil and gas resources for their own good’. ‘Own good? For the people of East Timor?  No silly, where’ve you been this last seventy years, Terry chuckled, smacking his forehead for emphasis;  ‘For the shareholders of Australian companies’! 

‘You see Quent, we can’t let the Yanks have the gravy all the time, that’s the important part of a strategic alliance. Occasionally as a consequence of paying billions for antiquated second rate materiel from our favourite ally we can help ourselves and deserve to because of the inalienable right’! 

RAN decision to re-float and re-fit AE2 from Sea of Marmara based on sound advice and strategic forward thinking. ‘Cheaper than buidling a new type locally”. ( P. Dutton)

“Inalienable right’? said Quent timorously, (get the joke). Well it’s our inalienable right to do as we please because of the spiritual and unquestioned God- head of Anzackery and the nobility of Gallipoli to never question as a matter of principle either the procurement of weaponry at horrendous cost, or the strategy of minds immeasurably greater than ours who like to dress in khaki, shout orders, and have shiny boots. That’s what civilisation is all about, and that my dear fellow is what China wants to take from us. And that’s why THEY MUST BE STOPPED!

So what… er…. the next war is about is it gonna be all Chinas fault?

In actual fact China is completely responsible for EVERYTHING’! 

‘Everything’? Yup, if there’s another war let’s make one thing perfectly clear. In the final analysis, taking everything into consideration, whichever way you look at it, taking Australia’s national interest if there’s a war beyond all reasonable doubt it’ll be ‘THEY’ who started it. 

And from my analysis of pan-global strategic studies that’s the  only one way you can look at it’! 

Decision by RAN to re-float and retro-fit HMAS Australia 1, is based upon sound advice from the Pentagon. And cheap at only 15 billion

‘Isn’t that a bit presumptive’? Ces enquired tactfully. 

For a taciturn tram-driver Terry had a lot of insights. Perhaps he’d been locked in a think- tank all these years. One thing was true, it proved Australia was wise to  spend up big on tanks that wont work, helicopters that wont fly and submarines that’ll be decades outta date. As a deterrent it gave China the middle finger. And proclaimed we ‘re not scared of your bluster and if you think we don’t care we’ll do a ‘Maginot Line’ on you.  It’s way more emphatic as a signal than diplomacy. And we knew with our leaders that diplomacy with China wouldn’t work and , why? 

A great tradition. RAAF Brewsters ready to defend Malaya from the rampaging Tiger Yamashita.

The truth was in Terry’s reply to Ces about the nub of the problem. 

“China’s in deep trouble for changing the world order! And, (he paused for further emphasis )  for getting  way too UPPITY”!!

The very same aircraft awaiting ‘systems upgrade’ one week later.

Is China too uppity? Where’s Opium as a diplomatic tool when you need it? Is AUKUS all A and not a lot of UKUS? Find out in our next compelling episode, “Materiel well-being aint diplomacy” or ‘Diplomatic Tools can go KRudd!!! very quickly’!  

Scomo knows that the next election will be fought on ‘Family Values’

Dear reader, once again our heroes find themselves just seconds from oblivion.

On blokes ‘YOU CAN TRUST’

 ‘Oblivion’, you say? Is that the Coalitions’ carbon policy? Or just Dutto and his mate Mike talking up “Drums of War” with China? Who’s’ who’s China Plate? And is Barnaby’s stop-over in Washington gonna be the proverbial bull from the China Shop? Who’s gonna run the cheese-shop when Barnaby’s not there? Will it be Matt or perhaps the most articulate of all Billy Bunter’s sidekicks George ‘the member for Manilla’, Christensen? With George on board it’s gonna be a rollicking laugh a minute as conspiracy theorists go into overdrive on what’s afoot. Afoot? Who’s foot? And who’s mouth? If you’re not confused yet it’s just the beginning and whatever our heroes do, they’re in a hard place, with a hard nut.  Either way they’re sweet-talking to the toughest nut on the front bench of the Fair Work Commission. And it’s got em nowhere. Yes folks Sophie, ‘Is that your testimonials in my hand’ Mirabella. We return to our saga, stuck in tunnel way below the desert wastes of Maralinga with Sophie and ‘Benny-Boy’ Roberts Smith. 

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s getting closer? Is this the new nuclear dawn for Australia? Or just the coal lobby going deeper than the usual rorts of kickbacks, deals and mateship clauses underwritten by Angus and his mates in the Cayman islands. Read on….

On Blokes who stand on PRINCIPLE!

Whatever it was we could hear  the sound of steel wheels screeching and grinding to a track long left unused. Seventy  years it had lain dormant till this moment. We could literally feel the layers of dust and rust being ground upon bogies left to reside in a siding.   And now, with new impetus, re-tracing a path that had been unused for over seventy years. Like Lenin on his train back from Berlin, this train, this conveyance, this machinery was bound to a victims future, and the victim was well and truly us!

‘Closer now, it seems like Santa had come to visit us at last’!  Ces whispered;  ‘only 12 days now and I’ll be buggered if we can get out of this scrape I’ll believe in  not Just in Santa Claus but the Easter Bunny! From now on I’ll even believe in the Tooth Fairy if we can get outta this jam”. 

On Blokes who look after their ‘little lady’, even though he might dump her after the ball.

“Jam are you talking? There’ll be  your raspberry jam spread all across these walls if you don’t shut the fuck up’! Sophie snarled as she waved the MP 40 at us, and you could see here every nerve tense with anticipation as to who or what might be driving this steel-wheeled conveyance. Could it be one of Dutto’s operatives looking for unexploded ordinance, to re-direct to a rampaging China? Or just Scomo looking for a photo opp? Not knowing made Sophie even more dangerous. 

Nervous and thinking the worst we took stock of the fact that Sophie, had stopped pointing the machine pistol at  us and had started waving towards the shimmering disc of light. It was as if she were catching a tram, and yet miles from Melbourne, we felt a new wave of anxiety. If it were a tram would it accept Myki, and as we didn’t have an up to date card, could this result in another round of fines and inevitable incarceration?  As citizenry we knew that we were on the wrong side of history and unless we were being fined, corralled and fed to the prison system, we were just an annoyance in which big business had to try and make a profit on. ‘That’s purpose is the business of government these days’ Ces mused. However, there was reassurance in Sophie’s stance, and comfort in knowing that the source of this light, and the sound that reverberated down the ‘rockish’ chamber was a known force and perhaps , not a portent of evil after all. 

‘Family Values’!

Closer still , and beyond the shimmer, we espied the outline of a human form.  So there was life down here? Perhaps the phone call had got through? Deliver us from evil? Couldn’t tell but we hoped to come off one better than Christine Holgate, and if we could do that, we held a glimmer of hope that our postage stamp wouldn’t be marked : ‘return to sender”. 

The little train stopped, and out of it a man dressed in biological warfare suit and PMG emblazoned over his breast pocket in grey overalls said: ‘Hi I’m Terry the linesman, looks like you might need my help’?. The operative was clearly not a figure of consequence, but just a flunkey, who for countless years had waited for his calling. Sophie looked at us with a sneer, ‘Allright then, take us to the end of the line, and I’ll cover all of you with this’. She waved the MP40. Meekly, we obliged her and clambered onto a little trolly with bench seats. The light lit up the gloom all around us, and silently he released the handbrake and enveloped in darkness from behind and light to the forefront we sped on wheels long dormant into the gloom ahead. 

In this wasteland, down here, it would have been like seeing Father Christmas jump over the  moon, but we had got used to anything, and this un just another trick in the puzzle? Or a brand new stratagem from above, from powers unknown and immeasurable designed to lure us in and crack us? Crack us or just leave us for DEAD? 

Blokes you can TRUST who are into ‘Blind Trusts’! (when a surgical truss was all he was after).

Find out in our next nut-cracking suite, “if you see the jaws of life you’re most probably dead’, or ‘most times what goes around comes around except when it doesn’t’. 

The patriachy is full of Noble Men and Noble causes!

Dear reader, another pearl from Frank.

Normally, we’d pad this dispatch with breathlessly irrelevant asides, but as this one hits the mark, we’ll dispense with the preliminaries and let Frank open the proceedings.   He writes….

The Northern Territory has just recorded its first Covid-19 related death.
Great fears are held for NT Aboriginal Communities with low vaccination rates, should the currently fairly contained virus get loose.

In the olden days the Boers had “Unky Kruger”! He knew a way through sticky situations!

In Yuendumu about half the eligible population have had the first vaccination and a quarter have received two doses.
So I had a long conversation with an Indigenous man in Alice Springs. This man just lost his job because he refuses to be vaccinated. Vaccination in the NT is now a mandatory requirement for some job-types. The fact that currently there are no known cases of Covid-19 in Alice Springs makes no difference. Rules are rules and must be obeyed and applied, which axiom pre-dates the pandemic.

The man is highly intelligent and has a sharp understanding of what goes on around him, so I found it hard to reconcile this with his accepting conspiracy theories and social media mis-information re Covid-19. The microchip nonsense and genocidal agendas, the use of Indigenous Australians as guinea pigs and so on. Forced vaccinations of Aboriginal children and armed confinement. Compulsory vaccinations as a “power grab”, as if there is much power left to be grabbed. All stuff fact checked and debunked by such reputable sources as Reuters.

So as my conversation progressed, I came to understand why this man came to such different conclusions to mine. He’d spent a lifetime being lied to and patronized by bureaucrats and politicians and other people from the dominant society. A litany of broken promises and falsehoods had signposted this man’s life. So many times, he’d had to swallow the bitter pill of being told how to live his life “for his own good”, that he isn’t buying the message to get vaccinated “for his own good”.  He’s lived his life with a continuous risk of debilitating illness anyway, so adding one more disease to the list is no big deal. He prefers to have his breadwinning capacity seriously curtailed to once again giving in to pressures to be told what to do.

Barnaby’s Father in law is standing for Parliament! Old Patrician values to keep us PURE from the taint of thinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXKu6kForKI

If you believe, pray for us, if you don’t, please cross your fingers and knock on wood for us.

Veel bedankt

Frank

Bob represents the entire top end who get the symbolism behind a ‘bottle o Coke’ and a’Pie n Sauce’! Australian Values’!”The AUSTRALIAN WAY’!

”

PS- 60 copies of My Yuendumu Story left. No.6 bestseller at Red Kangaroo Books.
Volume 2, half written, give it half a year or more to get into print. Might aim for my next birthday in August.’

Dear reader we return to our saga, a train approaches and for our heroes, a last chance, on a platform with no name, to a destination unknown, and no ticket in their hand. Will this be the end?  Or the beginning of the end?  Or the end of the beginning?  Or the preface to the beginning and a footnote directed towards the end? Like the Coalition’s Climate Policy it’s open ended and plausibly meaningless, which ensures its status as a document of our time. Read on…..

Indeed the light was growing from a pallid incandescence to a deeper throbbing glow. Within a moment Sophies Sobrani wasn’t the only object illuminating the gloom. 

‘Yes!!  It’s a fuckin light allright Sophie affirmed, it a train. A fucken train  and this is what I’ve been waiting for. The phone call must have registered without anyone answering, and here, (she pointed towards the light) evidence of just how advanced Australian know-how was in the 50’s. All by itself, valve technology, and seamlessly running as it was designed. A train to take us out of the past and into the Future! But Im afraid for you boys, you’re gonna have to wait behind’. 

With that statement we could hear the click of the safety catch, and the gleaming gun metal of the MP 40 as she pointed squarely at us. 

‘Ah Sophie, if it’s a train might there be people on it? 

Christian as a top debater at St Custards College for Boys. Unaware the he would be promoted from Attorney General to the status of Blind Trust. The highest tier for any Australian politician.Even higher than Cinq Ports!

Ces, ready for such an ultimatum was quick off the mark. Though not as sharp as a fully accredited Fair Work Commissioner, he had done a bit of debating in distant schooldays and with the same precise logic that propelled Christian Porter from Federal Attorney General into the heights of a blind trust, he threw his all in to assuage the gun-happy Sophie. If this was a card game, the pack had been dealt and the roll of the dice was immaterial. But as a last chance, everything rode on the next move and rather than play the victim which would mean certain death, he tried to appeal to what mattered most to Sophie, her image. 

’Ah Sophie, if it’s a train might there be people on it? People who might think it was un-sporting of you to just shoot us here in the spot. Now I know that you work for people high up like Angus and Xi, but if you graduate from your position of Fair Work Commissioner and want to run  the United Nations as Mathias does, or go onto bigger things, you might need to think about your public image.  Even in Australia, people don’t associate, he paused, ‘yet, knocking off opposition just cos they disagree with you. I mean it’s very non-woke, but you’ve gotta think of your image long-term. Is killing us worth it’? 

Sophie was up all night designing these placards. A proud moment in her public life.

We could see Sophie mulling this over, a chance to be rid of the three wise men, and the perhaps if word got out, the consequences. If there were passengers some of them might go soft- cock and dob her in or worse, claim our deaths for themselves and thus get promotion over the top of Sophie. That was the thing that really worried Sophie about getting enough credit for doing things HER own way! That’s why it still rankled her that in years past when Julia tried to carbon tax, Sophie didn’t get credit for her Ditch the Witch placard. She’s been up all night doing it, and felt that it as he most important piece of public service she’d done to date. 

Rather than give a direct reply (she was cunning we could tell) she changed the subject, ‘See that train up there? Quent replied; ‘Might it be a tram or another light rail conveyance’? 

‘Shut up!  Of course its a bloody train’! Sophie replied, ‘but not one you’d be familiar with.  Australian rail, this one is unique, it always comes on time, and we don’t have trouble with the rail unions and you wanna know why?

Why?

Because it’s all entirely automated. 

‘Ditch the Witch’ was a 3.am inspired flash of genius!

And controlled by its driver, a fully automated 1950’s cybernetics industry robot, one we affectionately call…..’Bjelke’!. 

Sophie rightfully claims credit for both poster designs, (now on display at the National Portrait Gallery) as her own.

Yes he’s had a few overhauls but in the end, for this environment nothing beats valves and oiled components for durability and reliability. 1950’s Australian tech, never surpassed. And when they take out the satellites, this valve technology will still perform flawlessly, and keep performing for the next thousand years

‘Charlotte’, who promoted leadership roles for women in Public transports heyday.

A thousand years that sounded eerily familiar.  In her tight leather jacket and knee high jack-boots, the belt and the rake of the officers cap she either looked like a dwarf rendition of ‘Night Porter’, or just a size challenged member of Victoria Police. For those readers not old enough before Christian Porter and his bags of cash, there was a starlet called Charlotte who performed a very sexy S&M routine as a night porter on a train in the olden days where people liked to go to rally’s, salute and generally dress up in uniform and march eastwards. A. Bit like the state of  Victoria, but with more theatre. That’s cos they weren’t, (having fun in public places) banned as in Victoria. 

The dim, dark dungeon like cavern became suffused with a glow.  The glow that only an incandescent bulb could give, like the fog lamps on an old Bentley or the sulphurous glow that French cars used to have before the euro squashed the colour of national characteristics under the dun- coloured miasma of standardisation. It was warm, and redolent of hope, whatever it was. A train, a conveyance, a monorail, an articulated trolley-bus, its warmth and shimmering progress was redolent of hope, and with all the despair of Sophies monologues we had reason to hope. For without hope, (akin to the Coalitions Australian Way climate policy”) we mere mere chattels.

‘What is this light from yonder’? Sophie ghasped. (Quent saw his opportunity in celebration of AUKUS) ‘Oh  say….. Can you see? By the dawns early light”? 

Charlotte talks to Mike Paluzzo (Border Force)  about maintaining punctuality and character checks on enemy aliens and untrustworthy citizens who are caught travelling without a valid Myki

‘Is Dawn Fraser with us’? Quent quipped, ‘I had no idea there was a swimming carnival on’? 

Are Ces and Quent off for a swim? Hard to find a public pool in the outback but is that all on Sophie’s mind? Find out in the next absorbing episode, ‘Sophie’s train might have blood on the tracks’, or ‘Choo Choo and it’ll make life easier to swallow’. 

“Tudge-ea’ (trans) ‘To behave in public as an upright and god- fearing citizen, to uphold ” family values’ whilst quietly rooting your secretary and installing Rob-Debt to victimise and kill the poor’.

Dear reader , we return to our saga, Ces and Quent determined to get to the bottom of whoever it was who defiled our tea-lady Ms Culthorpe when she took on an intern-ship in our Federal Parliament. Like the absence of imagination in our public policy there’s an all pervading sense of hopelessness as our heroes, Ces and Quent, continue in their fruitless quest to find compassion within  the soul of their captor Sophe Mirabella! Realising how tough a nut it is to be a Fair Work  Commissioner they are resigned to be slotted by the anointed one.  Awaiting their fate they stand stoically as Sophie makes a call on the ancient PMG phone, both of them know whichever way the coin falls, (into the slot), Fate, is not in their hands!

Ces, bruised and battered, was  not for stopping. With a sense of urgency in keeping with those who know they have only seconds to live he stood undaunted. And by cut or thrust of Sophie’s legalistic logic sought common ground. But the ground, was but quicksand under his feet. An  irony amidst the obscenely dry wastes of Central Australia.  Has the sand run through? What of the hourglass? Is our glass half full or empty? Read on, and try not to be surprised in this ‘Tudge-ean’ episode of politics and the dirty art of maintaining message when the airwaves are full to the brim with the emptiness of digital media.

Ces continued his desperate line of questioning; 

‘Well then, what are we doing here? If you already have this slotted for a quick sale, why all the subterfuge about national interest?’  Ces paused for emphasis, ‘seeking preferment as a member of the Fair Work Commission’? Ces’s interlocutory probing was clearly having no effect. He paused and tried a counter approach; 

In this episode of ‘The Hand- maids tale” Tudgey suggests his secretary dresses in red as a ” Fallen Woman” so that he can have compassion for her when he stones her.

‘Oh and bye the way, if this helps at all in your megalomanic deliberations have you paused to consider it’s only twenty days till Christmas’?

‘Bah! Humbug’! And for effect she flicked the ash of her Sobrani in Ces’s face, no mean achievement as he was standing back so as to avoid another bruising encounter with her jack-boots

Tony to Tudgey; ” Jeez Tudgey can I have a crack after you’ve finished with her’?

Sophie snapped back like a whip-crack, and her tongue was almost as sharp as the kick in the shins Ces suffered the last time he tried to reason with her. “That’s just window dressing, to keep the journos, troublemakers and shit stirrers off track. People who don’t share my vision for Australia. People  who are still wallowing in the Whitlam era of pinkish optimism. People who still believe in a fair go and all that BULLSHIT! Baby boomer fossilised detritus, like YOURSELVES !!People who just don’t get it that the world has changed!  People who are weak with sentimentality and compassion for those lower on the social advantage ladder. People who are on the lowest rungs on the ladder of opportunity cos they’re lazy, don’t know hard work and deserve to DIE!

They’re a waste of Time, Space and Energy, and’ …….she tuned to us with that evil grin, ‘people like you’!!

Tudgey’s missus and Tudgey share an ‘open marriage”….shown here with little Tudgey Jnr

At that moment from the furthest reach of the tunnel we saw the faint glimmer of a light, and as it grew we could hear the sound of wheels.  A sound of steel upon steel.  Like a tram, that distant and distinctive screeching sound you get when it negotiates a corner. The metallic dissonance of steel wheels and and the merest hint of of electric motors. “A tram”, A tram is coming” ! Ces exclaimed, look see that light? It’s drawing closer, cant tell if it’s a few hundred yards or a mile off in this gloom, but look it’s getting closer. Ces was spellbound by the shimmering incandescence, and waxed poetically in spite of the fore circumstances, it’s as if, as if it’s a HALO!

Scomo to Tudgey; ” Jeez Tudgey, if only you’d worn the Aussie Flag Face-mask. Sheilas cant touch Ya, and ya can’t hear em squealin either”

The halo of an approaching tram, or for those familiar with underground rail a light rail,  perhaps even an articulated trolley bus? A halo renders precise identification impossible, (like the Coalitions climate policy). We can only timidly conjecture , (as Labor’s climate policy promises) as  to the distinct type of vehicle. But vehicle or not, a shimmering disc of light, some may say “ ‘Halo’ is better than nothing and perhaps these three wise men, Ces, benny- Boy and Quent aren’t’ as buggered as they think. For whatever is coming down the line, as Xmas approaches it could also be Christ’s second coming? A remote possibility, but in the face of things like finding a sexual predator in the corridors of Parliament, not beyond the bounds of hope. Find out in our next Tudge- ean episode, “ I created Robo-debt and it created the monster in me’! Or, “ Three wise men, of the modern-era expose incest, Frankenstein and murder!’.

Will the high viz and attractive Aussie flag face-mask be enough to get the PM over the line? We think so!

Dear reader, once again we plunge back into our saga. Our heroes held hostage by Sophie, and like imagination as a non- existent force in public policy, there’s no sign of any change to the status of our victims. Stuck and isolated, they await the answer to their fate. Telegraphed to them by an operative “out there’ who may still be manning* the antiquated PMG Pay-Phone set up when Australia was set to become a Nuclear Super Power way back in the 50’s. Are those days gone for ever? Or with Sophie at the helm of the Fair Work Commission, can she bring the golden era back? Find out in this next episode, and get a feel for the glacial pace of change in or nations parliament. For change is confronting, and by doing nothing we are at the very least, ‘arguably’, SAFE!

As we recall. The phone was sort of answered, yes indeed a 1950’s taped message, if that’s an answer. What Sophie really wanted was an operative on the inside, who could help us, doomed below the very desert wastes in finding a way out. So we waited…… waited…… and waited. Ces looked at his watch, ‘you know Sophe, its only twenty five days till Christmas’. 

‘Bah!!! Humbug’!! Sophie replied, and for good measure she pulled back the safety on her MP 40. We had to hand it to Sophie, she knew her equipment and was dressed to Kill. 

Will contempt for transparency and a trust for blinds be no barrier to a post politics sinecure? We think so.

For the umpteenth time the recorded message replayed, we waited another hour, Sophie tapping the receiver and giving us furtive looks. We wondered why she just didn’t slot us there and then, but knew as a fully accredited Fair Work Commissioner, process was  paramount. 

Stellar performance should be remunerated post politics

Ces had had enough, he put it to Sophie; ‘What’s it with you Sophie?  Aren’t you rich enough already, what’s with this power thing’?  Ces sought compassion, reasoning surely within Sophe there must be some shred of compassion? Ces proffered the next question; ‘I mean Sophie, with all respect, do you really wanna be like Angus?   He’s establishment, He’s got connections, as Energy Minister with Cayman Island trusts.  He’s making a packet from the Murray Darling and rivers of gold from his dealings with mates like Nev, Twiggy and Mr Wu, but is it really what you wanna be doing? Does this espionage, and world domination thing, (there was a pause as Ces searched for the right epithet) does it…… nourish you as a person’? 

‘Ha aha ha’. Sophie convulsed with laughter, ‘What are you on about, you think I care about humanity? I’m into MONEY!! Get me? It’s always the money. Fuck humanity! And whilst we’re here, when I meet up with Xi, you lot will be just a memory, cos we’ve got this situation in the bag. Crown is just kids stuff, this is the real deal’! And to stress the point she kicked Ces viciously in the shins.

Will base hypocrisy and contempt for the public and due process be enough to win an election? We think so.

Ces  doubled over in pain , holding his bruised legs he hopped about until recovering he blurted, ‘I mean whilst were down here is there anything else we need to know’? He continued against all the odds, searching, delving into a crack, a hairline crevice of compassion. ‘If this is the face of a new Cold War with China, what’s really in it for you? Or was that Cold War rhetoric bullshit that you and Dutto and Pezullo confected just as a smoke screen’?

Sophie turned to us, Ces stepped back lest he get another savage kick in the shins.  The fiftieth rendition of ‘Blue Hills’ over the receiver was in progress, and we could tell she was getting annoyed. 

‘Yep all that cold war rhetoric was bullshit designed to keep the public off the scent. Back then,  as now it was BIG NUCLEAR that really matters. And as far as we were concerned if you were Russian, Yank, Chinese or Pom it made no difference, we had to go nuclear, OR LOSE ‘!!!

‘Lose what’? Ces enquired

‘PROFIT!!. Nuclear doesn’t recognise international borders, it’s in  a way’, she flashed her Argyle spandex and lurex encrusted hand- bag for emphasis,  The JEWEL in the CROWN’!

Ces exasperated; ’Are Crown in on it’?

‘Just another silent partner, you don’t get rich by hanging round with soft spoken professionals, lawyers and journalists, she looked in our direction for a corrective sneer, or people like YOUSE’!

Will naked self-interest, dog whistling and confected conspiracy theories allied to the lowest common denominator be enough to win an election! YOU BETCHYA!

‘So you, you, you, are you the new nuclear envoy who would sell us down for just a bit of plutonium ,is that all there is, have you no national pride’? 

‘Oh I’ve got pride allright, but its nuanced!  Put it this way Angus and I have great friends who happen to go by the name of Vlad and Xi!  Get me’!!

‘We’re all of us in this together, its bigger than the UN, and we don’t have to deal with the bureaucracy and’,  turning to Benny Boy, ‘barrack room lawyers either. And, with substantial reserves of uranium in this shit country,  and just a few native title claims that we can rub out with the next bit of corrective legislation. And, with Gina on the line and Xi in a mood for growth, Angus is keen to do business’. 

‘Business? 

Yep at any cost’. 

At any cost, how the till rings!  For who the till tolls ! Is this all that Sophie has in her bag. Find out in the next diamond tipped episode, “Three  (more) Jewels for Gina’, or : You can have any colour you like as long as it’s GOLD’

Will bags of cash from a corrupted system of donations, lobbyists and vested interests be enough to win an election? If it didn’t you’d have to scratch ya head and ask the reason why?

* We, the editors would like to apologise for this antiquated term, but under the circumstances we felt it approprate to reflect 1950’s values which exist only now in the corridors of our Federal Parliament

The year that was….Regretful departure of former Attorney General, seen returning betting slips and IOU’s to Crown Casino in lieu of blind trust.

Dear reader, we return to our saga.

Our heroes Ces and Quent in company with arguably Australia’s bravest and most decorated soldier ever ‘Benny-Boy’ Ben Roberts Smith. Prisoners to arguably the most powerful woman on the bench of the Fair Work Commission, Sophie (‘I never pushed the old duck over’) Mirabella.  Will they be pawns to her Machiavellian Machinations? Has their time run out? Will Sophie come the raw prawn and have em cooked, slotted, sliced and diced? Find out in this next thrilling episode: More blind than a blind trust, or, when you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, where’s you’re Christian Porter? 

Waiting for the old PMG phone to answer is testing their nerve. Sophie, greedily picking up the accumulated florins and shillings before stuffing them into her glow-mesh and diamond studded handbag,  (a keepsake from Gina), has a machine pistol levelled at them whilst the other hand clutches the receiver.  It’s all a bit NBN, nothing is happening, but expectations are high. 

Ces and Quent reflect on why Sophie is doing this? Why hadn’t they been slotted before, ? Could it be that as prisoners who knew too much they could be useful?

Regretful departure of Glady’s who is yet to be offered a vacancy on the fair Work Commission.

The phone to be un-answered, could be their ticket to freedom. The rail-tracks vanished into the gloomy distance, and the cavernous, desiccated void filled them with a feeling of dread. A dread undiminished by the hope that perhaps the subterranean rail way gave them a slim chance of escape. Though they knew that rail travel in Australia since the standard gauge was implemented at Albury in the 70’s was in serious decline. 

They waited,  and waited some more, Sophie clung to the receiver, 

Although we had no idea whom she may be talking to we gathered it must be someone right up to the top of the line, perhaps Angus, and then upon consideration of the surreality of this situation, perhaps Xi himself? In the age of super-computers, warp speed and quantum computers the irony was excruciating. Here we were stuck deep down below with a PMG pay phone. It was like Scomo’s climate policy, cept this didn’t have the glossy brochures. It was, at the end of the day….. just a phone. 

P.M texts former Test Captain Tim Paine a condolence message and offers him a possie on the bench of the Fair Work Commission.

With Sophie’s index finger poised over the ‘A’ button. We waited for an answer. Every atom of our being twitched in anticipation. All we could hear was the electric hissing of wires bleached and desiccated out on top. Somewhere along the vastness of the sun-bleached Nullarbor. Somewhere, some-place, on the end of the line was perhaps an individual. Perhaps even an individual like ourselves. Lost, isolated and caught up in a spiralling web of international destiny and interplanetary intrigue. Mere prawns upon the pan strategic chess-board. Chess board, or cheeseboard, if we waited much longer we’d go off!

We waited.   Then all of a sudden the line went ‘click’ and we could hear something on the end of the line. Our hearts raced.  there was something on the other end and unlike the NBN it WORKED! And through the ether, the reliable PMG handset allowed all of us to hear something on the end of the line. On, (for repeated emphasis) on the end of the line.   It seemed by the sound of an ancient tape recorded message. 

And it went like this;

 “ You have dialled the joint Anglo-Australian testing facility at Maralinga.  This is a restricted site and only personnel accredited with the Australian Nuclear Taskforce and provided with full and certified AUKUS clearance may proceed beyond this point.  To do so will result in a criminal prosecution, fines to the order of five hundred pounds and a criminal conviction under the Enemy Aliens and Person of Suspect Skin Colour Act of 1955. 

Please wait whilst we attend to your call’. 

Sad, tragic, and epoch making departure of Alan Jones, contender for Fair Work Commission?

And as soon as it started we could hear the the song from Blue Hills, clearly this tape was very old and it was a wheeze that amongst us, it was Ces and I who could whistle along and ask ourselves, why Blue Hills? Until it dawned upon us that it was binary code. Beamed  out into the void on magnetic tape.  Wireless all those  years ago, ever reliable as the communications standard for anglosphere operatives. It all made sense. Sophie was at the head of something so ancient, it as positively new and refreshing. Like AUKUS it was grounded in EMPIRE!

‘Well Sophie, how long do you think we’ll have to wait’? Ces enquired? 

‘Shut up fuck-face you’ll wait your turn, and let me concentrate!!!

Sophie was the personification of  concentration, she held the receiver as if her life depended upon it, and in the background the theme to Blue Hills was replayed, “ please wait and your call will be answered, the dull phrase repeated itself again and again.    We waited, and besides, down here what else could we do? 

Regretful departure of ‘Member for Manilla’, George Christiansen. “The Colossus”, (cepting Clive Palmer) of Queensland. A cert for Fair Work Commission.

What were we waiting for? Where’s Samuel Becket when you need him? If he was existentialist we were hypo-existential and our situation beyond surreal. The waiting had become a torment, yet we knew that the long wait. Like Scomo’s world breaking climate policies when this was all over it would feel like it they almost didn’t exist. The questions remained unchallenged. Do we exist? What is existence? And was AUKUS around in 1955? Why hadn’t we heard of it only recently when Scomo snotted the French President?  Existentialism, isn’t that a French concept? Why aint it a swear word yet? Don’t be fooled by a silly old Kant. Existentialism like climate change is crap. Find out in the next horological episode; ‘a ticking time bomb might never go off’, or ‘the hands of time might have Parkinson’s’. 

Spider-webs have inspired prison designers for centuries.

Dear reader, another one from Frank.

In this edition Frank draws a a parallel between spiders, their intricate webs and the ensnaring effect of a system designed to process, and monetise, (for the army of white bureaucrats) indigenous children from birth. From this we learn two things. That the researchers in the US who trialled the experiments with drugs on real spiders had way too much time on their hands, and that caffeine seemed to produce the most deranged spider webs. However, (and this is the most salient point), it proves that organisms under the influence of drugs, (humans included) make GREAT ART!

We wonder should caffeine be banned? It would do wonders for the prison system. And for Melburnians in particular, it would accelerate the process of criminalisation of the citizenry. A boon for the private prisons, the construction industry, manufacturers of surveillance equipment and makers of smart uniforms. To suggest, (with a tinge of irony) that there might be humanity in in-humanity.

Frank writes:

Hola amigos,

One of the most powerful political weapons is the diversion. There have been many examples of this in Australian Politics which I won’t bore you with.

Our judges, drawn from the academies of visual arts voted Caffeine induced spider webbing as the winner.

Non ‘spidery’ prison designs are popular in both Australia and Uighurstan. The jury is out as to whether they will be as effective as “spidery prisons”.

Vic police trial ‘Spider-man’ type web emitter to capture a member of the public before paralysing the victim and using the inert body as a food source for the criminal justice system.

Last month the Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner called out U.S. Senator Ted Cruz who had made some ill-informed statements about the NT’s Covid-19 responses. Ultra conservative Senators don’t like to be told they got it wrong and emanating from Texas and spreading like a virus there has been a concerted cyber campaign demonizing the NT’s treatment of Aboriginal people in relation to Covid-19. Untrue allegations of forced vaccinations and military occupation and even deaths (so far, the NT has ‘dodged the bullet’ and hasn’t had a single Covid related death) have elicited much anger and empathy worldwide about this ‘dreadful inhumane’ treatment of Australia’s first peoples. There is even much being made of people “suffering” 40-degree heat in overcrowded houses. The overcrowding predates the pandemic and 40 degrees is normal this time of year.
The ADF (Australian Defence Forces) at the locked-in communities don’t carry weapons and are involved in transferring infected people to quarantine facilities and supplying food and other necessities to people isolated at home. They wear khaki camouflage gear which is much friendlier than the police in their Ninja black uniforms which also predate the pandemic.

I took a trip to Alice Springs yesterday. To return to Yuendumu I was required to be vaccinated (which I am) and to have a negative rapid antigen test within 72 hours of returning. At the walk-in testing site in Alice Springs, the painless test took all of 10 minutes. There was no need for the book I carried in, just in case (Ralph Fold’s ‘Crossed Purposes’). There were no roadblocks. I was told that because Alice Springs had no known cases of Covid-19 it had been decided to trust community residents to do the right thing.

Members of the ADF trial purpose-built spider web emitters on Afghani’s before distribution to NT and Victoria Police.

In relation to Child welfare and protection, the NT Government is developing an information sharing database dubbed “Care System”.
The fact that the NT Government allocated $64 million to develop the Care System, I think is somewhat ironic.

From My Yuendumu Story (page 30). “A complex web of laws and regulations and protocols is now used to ensnare Indigenous children, a web once caught in, it is very difficult to break free from”

This is how the authorities tout the system:
“ It will do this by ensuring agencies like Police, Territory Families, Housing and Communities, Health, Education and Attorney General have access to the same information through a single case file.
This “holistic view of the child” is expected to “increase opportunities for early intervention”, while improving interaction with non-government, private service providers.”
Nothing about the child and his/her extended family.

In other words, it will be even harder to break free from the web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9CTCs8_66U

The Right hand image, a spider’s web woven under the influence of marijuana. The spider wove the left hand web after the expenditure of $64 million.

Judges agree that LSD is ‘cosmic’ whilst caffeine demonstrates the ‘degenerate tendencies’ found in modern art.

There are many reasons to be concerned about the treatment of Australia’s First Peoples and their descendants, such as how the NT government deals with child protection and how the Federal Government is intent on further disempowering NT communities by the euphemistically named “Economic Empowerment” amendments to the NT Land Rights Act.
Anyway, time for a nice song:

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

Adios,

We, (the editor) wonder why alcohol was not trialled on spiders?

Frank

Olden days cricket broadcasters practising Wireless skills.

Dear reader, we return to our saga, our heroes no closer to finding out who defiled Mrs Culthorpe our Tea-lady, and Sophie, in spite of innumerable setbacks as indomitable as ever. Stuck with the task of trying to find pre-decimal coinage to feed the old PMG payphone, and only Ces and Quent old enough to know of its complex workings, we wait. In the gloom. Deep down. By what appears to be a railway track, going who knows where? And, ‘where will this end’? We hear you say? 

Keith Miller, gentleman on and off the field proof-reads Princess Margaret’s tour itinerary

Like the PM’s Climate enthusiasm, we have no idea, as we just make it up as we go along, and that’s why we’re the truly lucky country. Led by second tier people. Because to be first tier, might result in us throwing off the mind-shackle of monarchy and all the toadying colonialist rubbish that some of those old men cling to. Perhaps they’re right? Perhaps this editorial may be wrong? Either way, the currency still has Her Majesty’s head on it, and it’s comforting to know at the very least until her sad demise, we wont have to re- purpose our currency for the arrival of ‘jug-ears’. 

But all this is an aside to the peril awaiting our heroes, at a siding in the middle of know-where?

Strap yourself in and be prepared for one hell of a ride with Australia’s arguably most principled ex politician, Sophie Mirabella, as she goes right to the top to ensure that whatever happens Australia has a NUCLEAR FUTURE!!

Read on….

By this stage our clothes were a dishevelled mess, and our pockets hanging out like so many rabbits ears made us wonder why Benny had not on trained impulse slotted us with his Steyr right there and then, 

In the olden days, girls copped quite a few short pitched balls on the chin……

‘Sorry Sophie we’re outta luck, hang on’… Benny exclaimed; ’I’ve got an idea, all I want youse to do is just stand back, When I say “ Now” look between the train tracks” you never know someone in the 50’s may have dropped the odd coin and after all these years it may be waiting to be found. And besides, I wanna try out this new flare I was given for use in Tarren Kwot, its said to illuminate more powerfully than a star shell, white phosphorus and White King, our first line of defence against the Mujahideen, bet you didn’t know that’!!

We were spell bound, Benny’s training had prepared him for any circumstance, and we could tell just there and then, though slotted by Sophie, we were being treated with dignity. That was at the core of the SAS credo, and hard cheese on any little Afghani who dared quastion it!

‘Stand back’! Benny took the cap off the flare, it fizzled, fuzzed, spluttered and quietly went out. ‘Bloody hell, what the’!!! He turned it over in the dim glow of his night vision head set. ‘Should’ve known, made in Australia, not a a patch on the stuff the yanks have’. 

K.P and Warney, gentlemen on and off the field

‘Stop wasting time’!! And in her fury Sophie punched the phone set, and to our astonishment, she must have tricked a spring, for from the bottom of the phone an aperture disgorged a stream of shillings and florins, which went clattering onto the floor. Greedily we picked it up, “What a jackpot’ we roared. ‘Yes”! Sophie gleefully stuffing the coins into her Lurex and diamond encrusted handbag, a token from Gina,  ‘its ALL MINE!!!!  And, this means we’ll be outta here! Just a quick call! I have incredible influence, and the world will hold its breath’!! 

Tim Paine, ( former Captain Australian X1)uses “tradesmens entry” to pack up his things and get outta cricket” for upsetting C.A’s executive image of themselves.

Standing in awed silence, we watched as she put two coins in the slot, the receiver whirred and clicked and we waited.  The anticipation was palpable. Sophie was near rope-able, and we were pulped.  Will our pulp be just grist to Sophies mill?  find out in our next refining episode, “slotted to coin a phrase”, or  ‘Toss up and be short – changed’

Former Test captain demonstrates new Urn-phone. FAIL-SAFE! (accredited by ACB)

Warney, Spin bowler, test legend in “Phwaaahhh moment’, after sending a salacious text message. (Content censored by ACB)

Dear reader, we return to our saga, our heroes Ces and Quent trapped deep down below the desert sands of Maralinga, in the pursuit of our Tea-lady Ms Culthorpe’s’ penis wielding oppressor a forlorn hope. They find themselves beside a subterranean train track with Sophie, (arguably Australia’s most powerful Fair Work Commissioner) waiting for something to happen.

In their current predicament they’re short of ‘two bob’ or two shillings to put into the old PMG pay phone. In an exctasy of fumbling they turn out pockets and wallets in search of an illusive pre-decimal piece. Have they run outta luck?  Is finding an old two bob piece as hopeless as finding an Australian test cricketer who doesn’t have form on the mobile?  Find out in this next communicationally fraught episode, and read in anticipation akin to the conga-line of aboriginal deaths in custody enquiries just grows and grows.  Because there’s always improvements to the system that can be made, and efficiencies won from the triple bottom line in monetising the criminal justice system is always good for the share-holders.

‘I aint even got ten cents’, Ces fumed, as he turned out the inside pocket of his safari jacket. Quent was in similar bother, feeling the lining of this tweed jacket, and giving the elbow pad a good squeeze, just in case his uncle Waldo had secreted a florin or two on game day, cos access to the footy in the olden days cost you two bob. 

Jeff Kennett discusses Johnny Howard with Andrew Peacock in the olden days when phones were referred to as “bricks’.

‘Hurry, you useless bastards’! Sophie jeered.  Benny-Boy was eerily silent as Ces explained to him that in the olden days when Australia was a manufacturing giant, producing Qualcast, AWA, PYE and Hills hoists, the shilling was the one with the merino on it, cos Australia rode high on ‘the sheeps back’. This was a difficult concept for Benny to grasp, and Ces was at pains to explain; ‘in the olden days we didn’t have a complex economy like we do now with the twin streams of mining and real estate’. Ces elaborated, ‘whilst the florin had the coat of arms….. ‘Jeez’! Benny enthused, ‘like the Fat Lady’s Arms’? ‘Nup’! Ces replied, “it was the Australian coat of arms”!! 

‘Oh yeah Benny replied enthusiastically, ‘I seen that’s the one with the Crown on it’? 

‘Nup mate that’s the different coat of arms other than the main driver of governance, economy and social policy that’s Crown Casino. Very similar, but if Ms Culthorpe had done her stint at Crown, she’d probably be managing director of the ethics and internal gaming enforcement agency, rather than a physical and mental wreck endured as a federal parliamentary intern’.

Sophie chipped, in, ‘she should consider herself lucky, if she’s still your tea- lady she’s still got a job, which is better than I can say for ‘Tudgey’s’  secretary, last thing I heard she can’t even get a job in a fish and chip shop’!

Mr Whu accepts “Bjelke Award” from CCP for establishing Australia’s newest Police State. And the ‘Leunig Award’ for turning a blind eye to the sacking of another cartoonist for daring to do what cartoonists do.

‘That’s a bit unfair’, Ces opined; ‘fish and chip shops are a noble profession’! 

 “Yeah” Benny chimed in, ‘being able  to deep fry fish and do a hamburger at the same time requires multi- skilling, ever seen a politician do that’? We paused, there was one politician in Queensland who had form, but decency prevented her name for ushering from our lips.  Even in a stygian downstairs environment we were still bound to codes of decorum. 

‘Well then’, Sophie demanded,’Have you got any coins? Cos if you aint, it looks like time’s up for youse’… she pointed her hand-gun and her bejewelled trigger finger at us, ‘because if you aint got any coins, boys it’s the proverbial end of the line’!!! 

End of the line sounded kinda final.. ‘You mean we’re gonna be slotted”? Ces enquired. 

‘You mean it’s where we cash in our chips’? Quent probed

Loose lips, can SINK SHIPS!

‘Is this where we play the Last Post’? Ben quizzed.

‘Yep boys you’d betta think of something quick cos as a Fair Work Commissioner, I’ve given you plenty of rope, and you know what they say in China’?

‘That’ll be a 24, a 12 and a 35 with oyster sauce’? Ces replied, 

‘Nup, it just means for crimes against the state I’m your jury, judge and executioner, and you’re gonna be dealt with right here and now, and there’s no use for crying ‘foul’, or ‘no ball’, cos in China they don’t get cricket, sandpaper, text messages or Umpires. THEY JUST GET ON WITH IT!!!!

No Blue, Red or Green tape, it’s an efficiency you’d DIE FOR’!

Mobile phone etiquette is well established

Is this it?  Is this the final leap? The last train to Clarksville? Where the hell is Clarksville anyway? What is this Monkee business?  Find out in the next rail-wayed episode; ‘Two tickets to Taiwan and no returns’, or ‘Steel wheels are not easily punctured’.