Down and down… and then further down.

 

How much further down can this series get?

If there is any more down than deep down we can be glad that Universities, hospitals and not just just over inflated “ Big Build Projects” have been handed over to Downer.

Another example of the trickle down effect. And Downer knows how to spend all that public infrastructure money on its shareholders and make little projects really really bloody big. In the end just like PWC it’s a win win for Contractors and consultants. And an absolute bonanza for the shareholders. It’s beyond rent- seeking, it’s Big Businesses who know the business of making business, from thin air. And what might the thin air be? That’s it, the supine, compliant, dolts who are the Australian electorate and taxpayers. Another clear win for the ethos of Angus and its patron saint Angus Taylor, who made this sort of inner networking respectable.

And of respectability, What’s the cost of respectability these days?

Getting a public relations firm to kick your credentials can be pretty pricey, unless you’ve got rich mates. Benny Boy Australia’s most noble soldier, warrior, Prince of the Pathan, has mates and Kerry ‘s not short of a quid or two. Perhaps that’s why Benny is silent as they trudge downwards. For his cohort, there seems to be something wrong, and whichever way you slice it, a pall hangs over our undisputed national hero. Is Anzackery on the wane?

Is the unquestionable truth of Anzackery under question? We hope not, because that would make Australia un-Australian and such a thing, is too horrendous to contemplate.

We need an aussie who represents contemporary Australia. An aussie who is white, middle aged, suburban, big and undaunted. To be a hero. So that we may prevail against savages. If it were revealed that the savages were more civilised than Benny Boy and the god head of Anzackery it’d deal a mortal blow to white men across the Empire. Worse than the loss of the colonies. Worse than the fall of Singapore. Worse than Brexit, Megcit and ball tampering. Australia would be revealed as just another dot of posturing stupidity at the Bottom of the world and we know, rest assured that that will never happen. Because that would require self reflection and insight, and gladly we are leached of such trivialities.

So we return to our saga, and divulge one more time, what fate awaits our three heroes. Undisputed common heroes and the guardians sent to administer justice, ‘Benny Boy’, ‘Brenny Boy’ exalted leader of the AWM and Julian, (‘no mother it’s not I who would bury USB Sticks in the backyard’) Assange.

 

It was Ces who noticed the silence. And nudged Quent,’ what’s with Benny Boy?

‘I dunno’, Quent replied, ‘he’s not his usual self. Wonder what’s got into him’?

Terry overheard the whispering, and replied, ‘he’s probably dissed that I haven’t passed round another packet of Camels. That’ll cheer him up.  Hey Benny, would ya like another camel’? The trio waited for a reply. Whereas in the past a mighty hand would be thrust forward and Benny’s booming laughter would instill in them all a sense of inner confidence, the non-response left them feeling anxious.

‘Jeez that didn’t work? May be I’ll try another strategy’. Terry offered the first inducement for Benny boy to speak. ‘Hey benny, did ya hear the one about the wog who was rolled off a cliff?  Knocked his teeth out and then bought up the top of the cliff to be rolled again’?

They all waited for the reply.  Whereas once it would be a booming, “ Yeah they knocked the rest of his teeth out and then gave him lead filings’!!!  But now. All of a sudden, their talisman, their hero was subdued, and it worried them, only the dim light of the bayonet to guide them.  Benny’s trudging, and the sound of the stretcher carrying Julian and the hurrumph as he shifted the weight of Brenny Boy on his shoulders. Indeed benny Boy undisputed national hero was a giant of a man, but some inner force had subdued him. And armed to the teeth, lethal and primed to shoot, it had our heroes worried.

‘I say Benny’ Ces chipped in; ‘don’t you think it would be good when we get outta this that we goin on a special op back to Kabul and resurrect the sprit of the Fat Lady’s Arms’? Ces had timed his offer to perfection and thought that with the term ‘Op’s only carried out by ex-soldiers, it might trigger something. An inner resource in Ben, just as ops had triggered the enthusiasm of Zac Rolfe in gloriously killing Kumanji walker at Camp Rolfe, ( formerly Yuendumu) . It was a desperate gambit, but with Benny subdued it was worth a go. A depressed serviceman, as Tacitus sagely said;’ will upset the equilibrium, the espirit de corps’. And none of us wanted that.

‘Hey benny, are you all right’? It was Terry who got to the point.

‘I mean is something not quite right’? And then undaunted went to the chase, ‘RUOK’?

Benny said one word. ‘Nup’!

We all waited, still more silence,

‘And why’s that’? Terry enquired.

‘I’ve lost my passion for the service’.

‘Oh’, we were all flummoxed.

 

‘Yep I’ve been thinking, I’ve lost my passion for King and Country, I don’t want to kill anymore, I’m sorry for what I did rolling wops and killing peasants, I want, I want’. We all gasped at this denunciation, this reversal of a national hero and felt very uneasy, as though the very foundations of our world , our belief system, and integrity had been taken from under us.

‘I just want to be’…

The pause at the end of that half phrase was excruciating.

We trembled at the disclosure that was coming. Anticipating with every fibre of our collective being a denouement, a fall, a reconfiguration which from hereon, the poles of our emotional world would be irretrievably reversed.

‘I wanna’

We could hear the agony, the torment that Benny was going through and it pained us.

‘It’s just I wanna’…

The anticipation was beyond excruciating and finally Ces cracked, ‘all right then What EXACTLY do you wanna be’?

 

‘ A…… A’……. he stammered trying to get the words out.

 

‘I wanna be’,

 

 

‘A ballet instructor’.

We all stopped shuffling. The Cave, the passage, the tunnel, took on another dimension. It became a void as our souls leached by the physical presence of the deep earth and a fallen man, recoiled in shock at this final disclosure.

‘A ballet instructor’? Terry was the first to enquire.

‘Yeah ballet. I fucken love ballet. I was thinking Stravinsky’s fire dance when I plugged the bloke at Whiskey 18 and then the interlude in the nutcracker when I rolled the wop off the cliff. And finally, (he seemed happier now), I exalted when  I killed them three wops outside the Fat Lady Arms when I thought of the slow movement in Orpheus. It really got to me, and it made all of the killing’, he paused again, ‘irrelevant’,.

‘I’m really into ballet..

It sustains and nourishes me,

Nothing else MAKES SENSE’!

We were flummoxed, nut greatly relieved, he truth had come out and it was wearing a tutu.

Will this mark the turning point of Anzackery?

Will Ben’s renunciation lead to a different kind of SAS, one with feelings and the appreciation of light and love?

Find out in the next episode,

‘The killer wears a tutu’

Or ‘Line em up and don’t shoot till you see their ballet ruses’?