Felicity Wandsworth Wopkins. (The Heyington Pl Wandsworth Wopkins’s).

Dear reader, just in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a leap year. You’ll have to wait another four years for another Feb 29th Installment. Still will it be worth the wait? You be the judge. We’ve rounded off this long February with a transcript of a recent diary entry I enjoyed reading by Felicity Wandsworth (nee)Fortescue Wopkins, from Heyington Place. (Not to be confused with the Kew Fortescue Wopkins’s, who are also delightful conversationalists and truly integral to the ongoing success of our bridge club).

Felicity writes;

Tarquin and Griselda, will need a place to stay when they’ve finished at Melbourne.

Malcolm has been in for six months now, and things are looking grim. There was an expectation that this newer urbane, fresh-faced, sensible PM would be able to arrest the decline of debate in our parliament, elevate the principle of fee speech, and advance us towards the deserved enlightenment of a bold new era. There’s mutterings that he’s thinking of changing the ‘inequitable system of negative gearing’. That’s really got some of us worried in the Real Estate Institute. Some of us are a little anxious as we’ve got half a dozen houses on the negative gear-pot and though we probably, (the truth be known) we don’t really need them, it’s a pretty good start for Tarquin, and Grisleda, who’ll need a place to stay in town after they’ve left Trinity and Ormond. I feel a little sorry for their peers whose parents just aren’t in the position to ever ever afford a place in the city, but you see being baby boomers, we have an expectation that the prevailing flow of legislation will always, and evermore go our way. And besides there’s the enduring principle we learnt at Uni, “why shouldn’t the poor pay” it’s their fault they’re poor in the first place.

Mr Christensen, another ambitious Queenslander

We’re a little peeved in your caving into the likes of Mr Christensen, another agressive, repulsive ambitious Queenslander and cannot under any circumstance agree with his bigoted stand on ‘Safe Schools’, and the analogous inference to “grooming school aged kids for sexual deviants and encouraging normal people to go gay or LGBT’. We feel his ilk are an affront to decency and the sort of pluralistic society we like to be part of. Though we can accept this much, that provided the right sort of people are in power, (and I think you represent us Mr Turnbull), a right thinking liberal minded aesthete and polymath as you are, we feel that it’s really a waste of energy getting too upset about these strident homophobes in your party. Because I think the target of their diatribe are those povvo kiddies an state schools.

Tarquin, Griselda and Cressida in fancy dress as younger children. The National Trust garden party. Como. Tiggles is on the left.

We like to think, though the odd person at school was undeniably ‘queer’, the right people, the nice people, the well mannered people, who send their kiddies to Grammar, Scotch, even Wesley, know that there’s always a nice position for their slightly bent progeny in the Arts, the Australian Opera, the ballet, or perhaps even within the management of the ABC itself. And though you still only have three females on the front bench, we have it on good authority that our other daughter, (Cressida), who I’ll modestly admit, won the Alliance Francais competition in year twelve at St Catherine’s and first class honours in the international baccalaureate is going to get a posting in the diplomatic corps after she’s finished arts at Melbourne. All through the delightful informal chat we had with that nice clean-cut and very ambitious man, who is our new local member. Hard cheese for Mary Woolridge, but that’s the problem with feminism, there’s too many of those old style feminists who just don’t get the winds of change.

Oh and that business about refugees is truly dreadful, but then its really none of our business as most of them are muslims, and we know they don’t get on in the mainstream. And besides, they’re a bit beardy-weirdy. Though I must say on matters of education since we had that little indigenous kiddie staying with us for term three of his scholarship, we have a real handle on aboriginal issues and sympathise with the government in trying to do all they can to help those wretched, impoverished, dysfunctional needy people. It was funny, as bow in the eighth eight he made quite an impression in trials, and we’ve decided to proceed with our donation of a coxless four to his remote community, so that they may enjoy what we freely do. He really turned out to be such a nice boy and got on famously with ‘Tiggles’ our long haired King Charles Spaniel. So I’m glad you’re not going to tackle that one on our watch.

‘Not sure which one stayed with us for that term, but I think he’s the one in the foreground. And so glad that they will have a proper racing four to help them develop teamwork, character and self reliance’, ( Felicity)

So from us, though we’re not happy with all of your policies and though we’re a little worried in thinking that you’re just a nicer version of Mr Abbott, we don’t really mind if your free up media ownership. I mean Rupert has so much already, the rest wont make a jot of difference, and for all the other stuff that really matters, well, i’m not too worried. All my nicest friends are on boards that really make a difference and they’ll ensure that whatever transition takes place it’ll be thoughtful, considered and ensure that none of us are ever jolted by cataclysmic, reactive change. That’s what that nasty man Abbott did, and we know that you Mr Turnbull will have none of that.

Another poem from the late Adrian Mitchell, a poem that i feel sure our poetry editor Ira Maine (who has been on leave for some time) would appreciate and perhaps be able to make comment on.

A Girl called Music
A girl called music
She drifts where she’s not allowed.
She can do a soft-shoe-shuffle
On an illuminated cloud.
She’s the imaginary milk maid
To the snorers in city attics.
Her eye is the porthole in the washing machine
In which a coat of many colours does acrobatics —

She makes the bread rise
And the Sun go sideways
My tender submarine
Adores her tideways —

Originally dispatched on 24 January 2014

こんばんはの友人(Konbanwa no yūjin) [Good evening my friends]

This is a work of fiction. Any deliberate similarity to real people is coincidental and without prejudice. Anyway, much of it mirrors Alice in Wonderland (“things are getting curiouser and curiouser”) and the windmills are not really evil giants, just stupid ones.

At a public meeting at the beginning of the Intervention (mid-2007) Jupurrula asked:

Why is Kevin Rudd using John Howard’s shoes and piggybacking his policies?

Napaljarri and others were heard to ask Why does the Government hate us so much? What did we do to them?

Is this what we deserve?…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRD8ofq3xUY

Jungarrayi asked at the first public meeting in Yuendumu called by the NTER (Northern Territory Emergency Response):

Why aren’t you going after the perpetrators instead of us? (Responding to the much publicised allegations of wide-spread sexual abuse of children in remote Aboriginal communities which allegations were used as a politically opportunistic trigger to declare the NTER- the so called Intervention)

To which one might add: Why couldn’t they find the alleged paedophile rings? Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? What happened at the Gulf of Tonkin?

Where are the Children Overboard? Where have all the flowers gone?

Oh,when will they ever learn?…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEU-YQaqKw

An Aboriginal Health Worker (who had been employed at a remote Aboriginal community clinic for over two decades) who was getting some medicine out of the secured pharmacy room was asked by a ‘new’ kardiya (non-Aboriginal) nurse: “What are you doing in here?… you’re not supposed to be in here!”

Japaljarri had some decades ago, worked for the now defunct Yuendumu Housing Association during the height of the much maligned Self-Determination era. He’d been a plumber’s assistant.

Japaljarri’s hot water system needed a new element, so he went to the local Shire office and filled out a requisition form. Six months later a kardiya contractor turned up after having covered a distance greater than the distance between Paris and Amsterdam to fit the element. “Who fixed your hot water system?” asked the kardiya. “ I don’t know” replied Japaljarri. The kardiya then drove back to Alice Springs.

At Yuendumu’s inaugural LRG (Local Reference Group) meeting (part of the Intervention) called to decide on the LIP (Local Implementation Plan), a brick wall was drawn on a whiteboard. The bricks were labelled ‘Education’ ‘Employment’ ‘Health’ ‘Law and Order’ ‘Housing’ ‘Garbage collection’ etc. No bricks were labelled ‘Ngurra’(Home/Land), ‘Kuruwarri’ (Yapa Law), ‘Purlapa’ (Dance/ceremony), ‘Jaru’(Language) or ‘Walalja’ (Family)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFZq7AduGrc

Jampijimpa asked: What I want to know is what is behind this wall?

Once again one of my favourite quotations from Kim Beazley Sr.:
“In Australia, our ways have mostly produced disaster for the Aboriginal people. I suspect that only when their right to be distinctive is accepted, will policy become creative”

 Jim (my first geology boss), enlisted in the Australian Army at the tail end of WWII. He was put through a crash course in Japanese and sent to Japan as an interpreter. They’d enter a village, and a meeting would be arranged with the local leaders. Jim’s commanding officer would start off: “How do you perceive the post-war relationship between Japan and Australia to evolve in the foreseeable future?” Which Jim would render as: “Tenki no yoi hi. Dono yō ni anata no inasaku wa,-jō kite iru?” (A nice day. How is your rice crop coming on?). “Arigatō. Hai, sore wa hijō ni yoi tsuitachidearu. Inasaku wa umaku yatte iru” (Thank you. Yes it is a very nice day. The rice crop is doing just fine.) came the reply, which Jim would translate into: “They say that just like a cherry tree, the relationship between Japan and Australia could blossom into a lasting friendship in the post-war era”. Jim claimed to have been the most popular interpreter with the occupation forces. He spent the rest of his life interpreting sedimentary geological structures. He was good at that too.

If only, the Australian socio/political occupation forces had used interpreters like Jim, policy may have become creative. Might the relationship between kardiya and yapa, like a cherry tree, have blossomed into a lasting friendship?

Well may we paraphrase Jupurrula:
Why is Tony Abbott using John Howard’s shoes and piggybacking his policies?

Many of these questions remain unanswered. Do I have the answers? Absolutely not (maybe just a little).

Do the assimilationists and interventionists think they have the answers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAg0anPwWbM

…I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken  Oliver Cromwell 1650…

How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?

How many times must a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?

Watashi no yūjin. Kaze ga fui ni okeru kotae ga aru (My friend. The answer is blowing in the wind)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA

Sayonara,

Frank-san

PS-…Why do you come here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a8MRbHf5pA

ACL’s Marriage Facts. Absolutley Factual.  We at PCbyCP had no idea that God created Marriage!! We are educated now.

Nurture the Australian Christian Lobby They’re endangered.

Don’t think for a moment that the Australian Christian Lobby is an isolated reactionary sump , a mouthpiece channelling the bigotry small mindedness and fascist ideology of a few conservative ministers. The ACL stands for all of us!! For we true christians are alone and under attack. The boffins wont tell you, the Defence White Paper wont describe it, but we know at the PCbyCP Institute that we are under attack from ‘Gayma rays’.

Good to see Bill Shorten is on board with the ACL. Clearly Bill’s presentation was based on absolute FACT

‘Gayma rays’ are insidious and they are released from hell and unleashed as punishment by a vengeful god on all humanity Kiddies in school are not safe,. Those in the defence force are not safe, and unless steps are taken to stem the insidious, corrupting march of homosexuality, we are doomed. Ireland has been paralysed by ‘Gayma Rays’. Since the referendum that allowed gays to have equal rights in marriage to “normal” folk. ‘Gay-ness’ has infiltrated into every nook and cranny of Irish life, and there’s a rumour, (Unsubstantiated as yet) that even those who serve in the church have been turned “Gay”.

Someone else has noticed.

The ACL is quite right in appealing to have race hate and vilification laws repealed less we get infected. As spokesperson and leading Christian Scientist Ms, Viola Vitriole suggested; ‘We have proof now that homosexuality is completely unnatural and against the laws of GOD’. Viola was very pleasantly dressed in a twin set and pearls which clearly indicated an individual purporting strong and laudable family values. She opined: ‘Quite simply these Gayma rays are ALIEN. And you know what happened to Sigourney Weaver and her crew in Alien. We have proof!! (Holds up astrological images rather like the recent disclosure of Gravity Waves) It’s all about the hole that’s been punched in the astral envelope by wicked thoughts. It’s not a sunspot, But something much worse. The BIG FRECKLE!”

The big freckle’? We asked.

The Big Freckle Unleashed! Factual Image, (ACL) demonstrates Gayma Rays penetrating the ionosphere. This condition scientifically referred to as “Freckle Punching”, shows Gayma Rays unleashed on Ireland and the U.K. Gayma Rays unleashed by a vengeful god through the medium of Sunlight. Widening Hole, (the freckle) is big, brown and expanding exponentially!

‘Yes indeed, our wickedness has punched the big freckle!! You see, we all know about sun spots, but the earth has a protective layer of ionosphere put there by GOD. Ever since the Village People performed, ‘You can’t stop the Music’, and Heath Ledger appeared in ‘Brokebank Mountain’, there’s now an enormous hole in the ionosphere. It’s Big, It’s Brown, and it’s just growing and growing!! Just last year it got way way bigger when Conchita Wurst won the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. And as a consequence it’s letting more and more ‘Gayma Rays’ into the environment. Asked to produce scientific evidence for this phenomena, Mrs Vitriol replied; ‘I don’t need any, its GODS will to punish the idolatorous, the unclean and the sinful’. But that makes up all of humanity we replied; ‘That’s why the earth must be cleansed, of Gay people. They are a threat to everything we stand for’.

Former PM and Cardinal protecting family values by locking the door on Sin.

Asked who god lived with? she replied, ‘the holy host’, and asked how they came to live in heaven she replied; ‘ever since womankind was released from Adams rib after the harlot Eve seduced all of mankind and gave us sin’.

We were hoping for a sensible argument based upon love respect, reciprocity and humanity, but she snapped back, ‘Don’t you understand the bible’? We were flummoxed, Viola continued; ‘It’s all about hell and damnation for non believers, and clearly as you, (PCbyCP) don’t believe in the tooth fairy ether you should rot in eternal hell’.

‘People will marry their animals, I already know of a man in Adelaide who is engaged to his gold fish Tootsie, and if recent reports from Adelaide are true, people are turning to their pets for companionship and solace. These pets are under threat from indecent Gayma Rays. There’s bee a spike in IMP’S, (Improper marriage proposals) from the afflicted. It ‘s unstoppable. It must cease now’!! ‘We must protect the land, prevent this plebiscite. If the WOG, (Word of God) is unheeded, and God, the lord, maker and nurturer eternal finds out we don’t believe in him anymore, he’ll go like Tinkerbell, Thats what the ACL is worried about. Do you really want to kill GOD!! Think of all the good things that have been done in his name’?

(PCbyCP) I think we’re better off without him.

And besides being a deity is well inhumane, and just a little un-edifying.

‘Foghorn psychosis’; Agressive, bombastic and insecure.

Dear reader, though it pains me I’ve got to tell you something you already quite well know. The country we live in is just getting a little bit slow.

Every way I look at it, this country demonstrates all the hallmarks of ‘ABI’, Acquired Brain Injury. Now I know it’s not nice to use words like, “retarded, or disabled’, nor is it proper to refer to anyone, let alone an nation as “not the full stack of bricks’ or, ‘a few twigs short of a load’, not the ‘full bottle’, a ‘little slow on the uptake’ or as Foghorn Leghorn was fond of saying; “bout as sharp as a bowling ball’. But I say this much, unless we understand that our country is slow, and has “special needs,’ we cannot begin to reconstruct and assist in its rehabilitation.

I know you’re familiar with all the tell tale signs, The country is easilly distracted, and can’t focus on one thing for more than a few seconds. I know quite rightfully that a specialist I went to suggested , “foetal alcohol syndrome’, but the native inhabitants assure us that it was never befuddled when they were in charge these last fifty thousand years. So I suppose we’ve got to face up to it, we’re not really very good parents, and we’ve dropped the ball so to speak.

Let’s look at just some of the hallmark symptoms. Rather than invest in new technologies, we put our hand up for the worlds biggest nuclear waste dump. It’s like the village idiot putting on a sandwich board, ‘kick me’. If you’re not a very clever country you worry about your status in the olympic medals tally, and spend billions on elite athletes. You do this whilst nationally you’re top of the league in obesity and preventable diseases, etc. If you’re a really really stupid country you obsess about gay marriage whilst your idealogical rump closes its manufacturing sector down. If you’re a stupid country you’ll go for broke on population increases because only through building more houses and shopping centres can you maintain economic growth. Because, no one in the “not the full stack of bricks’ country is encouraged to be clever. And besides being “clever” is shorthand for being a ‘bit of a dickhead’.

CSIRO Climate Staff on the wrong side of the fence begin a global search for intelligence.

A stupid country slices it education system and finds ways to destroy its excellent public health system. If you’re a monumentally stupid country you pull apart your research wings and forelock tug to big interests, who inwardly despise you whilst the the other one percent simply don’t care. The symptoms are plain to see, it’s ABI on a national scale, and I’m really very scared.

I used to be so fond of this country, but now, it’s not even interested in anything “we”, the public have to say. It’s  sort of disengaged, autistic, ‘out there”. And it used to be such an engaging little country. I know it was always obsessed with sport, but it was outgoing, enthusiastic, and eager to indulge in all manner of experimental and outrageous activity. Now it’s just sitting in front of the telly, watching the test pattern and reality TV.

To see such a decline in a short space of time, It’s depressing. And we thought, that a new Prime Minister would be just the trick. We’ve had almost half a dozen these past few years, but any mother will tell you that it’s worth searching for a specialist who understands and can tap into the unrealised potential that lurks within. But the current one is not proving much better either. Seems to have attention deficit issues as well. And if you ask me , the entire health system, once the very best in the world is sort of kind of being second rated.

Possible sign of intelligence, Shortlisted for CSIRO CEO position. Failed intelligence test.

Is there a cure?

Three Wise men, a possible joint tripartite CSIRO  CEO position was muted, but sadly failed the intelligence test. search for a new CSIRO CEO continues.

Absolute front runner for CSIRO CEO position, but fell short due to emotional instability.

Recently it was suggested by a philosopher , not an economist or a doctor that the problem lay trapped within the ‘collective subconscious’ of the country. I had no idea what he was talking about and asked my friend who’s a paediatrician, and she suggested that it was perhaps due to long term dietary deficiencies. I was flummoxed, so what do we do? ‘Well you need to feed it brain food’. But how do I know what food to give? And she replied, ‘ask it’?. Never thought of that, so I asked the people who were supposed to look after this country the last fifty thousand years and they said; ‘respect it, listen, and the rest will follow’. I asked them do they respect it?, ‘Yes’. And do you listen to it?, ‘Yes’. And have you tried to tell the vast majority about it? ‘Yes’, they replied, ‘but no one is listening’. And why? ‘Well it’s tricky, but they don’t want to listen, because if they listened really hard and started treating the original australians with dignity and negotiated a treaty that provides a dignified and resolute future, it could be transformative, and establish a very clever country indeed. And that’s scary’.

Why so scary? I naively asked. ‘Because asking is risky, when you don’t know what the answer is’.

Intelligent, forthright and hard Hitting. The NEW CEO of CSIRO Climate Science can walk the walk and talk the talk!!

But why answer at all then?.. ‘Ha ha, (they laughed), ‘You’ve gotta start somewhere’.

George Bush famously speaking too soon.

Frances Sullivan head of the ‘Truth, Justice and Healing’ Council. Not likely to repeat George Bush’s mistake. And perhaps a little disappointed that his motto was not, ” Truth, Justice and the American Way”. Wry expession suggests that Frances is aware of absurdity in his working life.

Dear reader it is sometimes an almost burdensome task just keeping pace with the extraordinarily well informed comment that comes to our desk. No sooner do we delude ourselves that (for example) the vexed issue of aboriginal australia is well and truly (“Mission Accomplished”) solved in the tradition of George Bush that we are reminded of a sinister or banal reality, (take your pick) from our correspondent of the mid north in ‘Musical Dispatches’. Similary G.T Beauregard has a handle on what makes the deep south tick, and in synch to his perspicacious and sardonic insights Paddi “O” Caermeda gives us another oblique view upon the catholic hierachy. Which suggests sadly,  that all is not quite as Frances Sullivan from the ‘Healing, Justice and Truth Council’ would like us to believe.  We could suggest that ‘dignity, a heartfelt apology and reasonable compensation’ might have been inserted amongst these three, but Mr. Sullivan assures us there is only room for those designated three as the holy trinity, (or trifecta ) if you’re a betting person in matters of the church. Cecil Poole demonstrates to all of us that he has his finger held firmly on the poetry pulse (and very sticky fingers they are indeed), whilst we have been told that Ira Maine, our esteemed poet laureate is busying himself preparing for a his annual celebrated debut at the Melbourne Fashion Festival. And just the other day that sage from the near north, Tony Emo, sent us an exquisite piece on Rome. Of the ancient sort, and what the Romans did before the iniquity of Bunga Bunga parties and Berlusconi’s neon-lit decadence. (We’ll try and get an edited version onto these pages in due course) Strangely, there are eerie similarities between Rome and the here and now. Who would have thought? But what captures our eye is this geological tale on the back of Paddio’s piece on Cardinal Pell’s incapacity to get back to the nurturing bosom of Australia. It gives the piece a certain earthiness. As our master of the dispatches writes:

‘An absolutely spot on article on that Pell business. Far more pertinent than the drooling poor taste headlines.
As dreadful as that kiddy fiddling business is, the complicity in doing a massive Hood Robin (shifting wealth and power from the poor to the rich) may well have deleterious consequences of far greater scale. But, then how do you measure evil?

So Port Fairy was once called Belfast!

Old Volcanics in Western Victoria. These dry stone walls were built by ancients who clearly were guided by superior intelligence from world’s unknown, and the voice of the almighty (WOG).

Many years ago we travelled back to the NT the long way (via Port Campbell where I visited a well being drilled by Beach Petroleum) and we came across some small towns (west Victoria, south east South Australia?) with Irish names.
It is a potato growing district, and I recognised the bright red soils of the Old Volcanics (as distinct from the New Volcanics which cover much of Western Victoria)
I had seen these before at Thorpdale in South Gippsland, also a potato growing district.

Not being all that familiar with Irish town names, I can’t recall what the places we came across were called, and they appear to be too small to be easily found by googling.

Maybe you can help. (it bothers me when I can’t remember things)

Frank.

‘Walk for Little Feet’, has its origins in Warrnambool. Not to be confused with the band Little Feat who hail from California, a godless place brim-full with vice and sin.

A leprechaun. Perhaps the beard, red hair and funny hat were employed by the species of small humans aeons ago as camouflage against clerics with tendencies. Clearly their strategy has worked. Their numbers have grown, though there is no decision as yet, to cull them.

WE might have asked Paddio, but as he’s busy, we’ll submit that all irish towns in Victoria have very predictable archetypal Irish names. For instance, just down the road from Fryerstown in cental Victoria we have the imaginatively named, “Irishtown”, allegedly once a bustling metropolis, but now, sadly a caravan, and the ruinous remains of what may have been one of the hundreds of pubs. Whilst further afield in western Victoria, there are towns other than Belfast, (Port Fairy) and Killarney and Koroit, with real Irish names such as Ballykissangel, Tipperary, and Limerick. If you’re not sure where to find these towns, just indulge in several pints of Guiness, wander down to the bottom of the garden, and ask the “Little People”, and they’ll tell you, to be sure to be sure.

Tomorrow we promise to get back onto serious issues. The Australian Christian  Lobby beckons. And I thought, (silly me) the issue of our time was tax reform and calling the one percent to account.

Original Gravity Wave HALO receiver developed by PCbyCP Institute popularised as a childrens toy in the 1950’s. The much larger prototype proved the existence of Gravity Waves

Dear reader, these are troubled times. You’ll agree with us that the commentariat, (the chattering classes and the intelligentsia) are up to their goatee beards, silk cravats and beret’s in spirited dialogue, with opinions on everything.  The IPA, the Grattan Institute, The Lowy Institute, the flat-earthers, the Australian Christian Lobby, (ACL), special interest groups and charities have got everything covered. That’s why, as a society of free thinkers we’re so well informed. It’s clear to see that all of them write, expound, and articulate with absolute certainty, upon topics, (fill in here) that they know absolutely nothing about.

That’s why we at the PCbyCP Institute are committed to speak with great authority on  subjects we also know absolutely nothing about.

You guessed it. The existence of GRAVITY WAVES in deep space.

Gravity Waves in evidence in the 1950’s. Coincidentally the same period in which the PCbyCP Institute conducted their experiments

You may have felt them influence your day to day life, and our lady readers may have felt gravity waves wreaking havoc upon their hair. You may have suspected that gravity waves alone could account for the absurdist reality of the Abbott Government. Though Einstein first postulated them, we knew  years ago, at PCbyCP  that you didn’t need a super hadron collider or Ligo measuring unit to prove their existence.

Why is this so?

Because gravity waves were discovered by us in our research laboratory, at the PCbyCp Institute. And the equipment we used was none other than a 1956 Radiola ‘Olympia’ wireless and gramophone connected and adapted to a field telephone set. This device, the first ever Hi and Lo graviton wave transponder, (HALO) was fixed to a high intensity bakelite console and uprated with a Bristol Jupiter twenty cylinder radial engine to ensure maximum deep space radio wave penetration.

It was all set for a trial, but we needed a medium. An individual attuned to the minutest galactic impulses. An individual with hearing so acute, but deaf to the curse of Background Noise. With hearing ONLY to the noise of deep space, and the whispered, spoken word, we postulated of before the big bang. None other than, the ‘Word of GOD‘!!

Incredibly, we were offerred the services of Cardinal Pell, who, at that time was just a novitiate serving with a recently ordained Father Rissole. With the inducement of a fully secret upgraded hyper drive quantum confessional, Pell was happy to oblige, and  just two electrodes were implanted into his cereberal cortex. The novitiate, was chosen because he betrayed impulses bereft of conscience and emotional effect. And though he was one hundred percent compassion neutral, his reactions to minor external, (deep space) impulses were staggering. This  suggested even in the earliest instance, the existence of gravity waves.

Young Cardinal Pell, (back row rhs) about to leap onto the sporting field as ruckman in the Saint Buttolphs first eighteen. “The Cardinal Sinners’. Note distinctive football gear, generously designed for the order by the Minister for Innovation, (The Rt. Hon . Christopher Pyne. MP.) as a very young man. Allegedly in this photograph but hidden from view by cassocks.

However it was only when we put the electrodes in a loop configuration above his head , ( which curiously resembled a mitre) and harnessed the power of Victoria’s under-utilised synchrotron that we got some outstanding results. Previously we’d only detected minor variations, but with an upgraded AWA  deluxe, (the 1967 Chorister Model), with stereo return, gramophone and teak storage cabinet, we were able to detect the very existence of gravity waves themselves.

“Timmy”, the choirboy. Fatefully gave his life in unlocking of the Gravity Wave ‘WOG’ secret. His parents received this nice card posthumously in recognition of his service.

The test was very simple, we attached a 12 volt car battery to a choirboy and asked the Cardinal, (who was a novitiate then) to press a little red button. We then told the Cardinal that it was in actual fact a 240 million trillion volt charge, and requested he should never ever press the button, as it would release a devestatingly fatal electric charge. Due to the sensitivity of the equipment the Cardinal was heavilly anaethetized, and to all intents and purpose clinically dead. Yet, tuning our sophisticted recieving mechanism towards the area beyond Alpha Centaurii, known in astronomical terms as ‘the quiet space’, the Cardinal convulsed and inadvertently pressed the button, and the choirboy, who though not inflicted with twelve billion trillion volts, still DIED HORRIBLY through a process of thought directed vicarious immolation. As though the Choirboy had actually suffered a real 240 million trillion volt charge!!!

After detailed examination of the charred choirboy and the inanimate Cardinal, (who was a novitiate then) it was decided that only the existence of gravity waves could explain the reaction. A first for the PCbyCP Institute and a first for australian innovation. And because we are publicly spirited and philanthropy is foremost in our view, we forwarded this research to NASA.  And Eureka, you the public, were supposed to be the beneficiary.

Sadly, we  are devestated that the vast bulk of  our original research and experiments have been classified Top Secret by order of the Innovation  Minister Mr Pyne.  We naively believed that the novitiate Pell volunteering to perform these experiments would capture the imagination of an entirely new audience of conservative, reactionary flat-earthers, unsympathetic to post Copernican Science.

Original photograph of experimental WOG receiver in PCbyCP Institute laboratory. Subjects were made to feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’ in a homely environment prior to testing and probing by our technicians.

We assumed that they, (the clergy) would  be attuned to gravity waves as an act of faith, as evidenced by their own eyes through the exultation of Cardinal Pell, and release the findings to the world at large. But they didn’t. They adopted a code of intense and unassailable secrecy! Though unsympathetic to the scientific method they understood intuitively that gravity waves are indeed the ‘Word of God‘, (WOG) and consequently very powerful. Thus explaining Pell’s reaction to things in the temporal world that are ‘truly strange and miraculous to behold’. The power unleashed was so immense it was felt that no human could be trusted nor survive further experiments. Thus, the Cardinals experience as a medium to the WOG, (‘Word of GOD’) has been airbrushed from the historical record.

These gravity waves  emenate from ‘the quiet space’, and their power and influence upon mortals must remain utterly secret. Only the Cardinals and Pope know of this. That is why when the good Cardinal is instructed by god, ‘thou shalt not fly to Australia for any reason, lest of all to give compassion and ending to generational suffering and absolute bastardry’ his word is final. To transgress gravity waves and the ‘Word of God‘ (WOG) is FATAL!!

A Curse on my Former Bank Manager

May you computer twitch every time it remembers
money
until the twitches mount and become a mechanical ache
and may the ache increase until the tapes begin to scream
and may the pus of data burst from its metal skin

and just before the downpour of molten aluminium
may you be preening in front of your computer
and may you be saying to your favourite millionaire
yes it costs nine hundred thousand but it repays every
penny

and may the hundred-mile tape which records my debts
spring out
like a supersonic two-dimensional boa-constrictor
and may it slip under your faultless collar and surround
your hairless neck
and may it tighten and tighten until it has repaid every-
thing I owe you

Adrian Mitchell, from “the apeman cometh”
Mitchell died in 2008, an obituary can be found here

Ngurrju-mayi?

One of the first sentences one comes across when attempting to learn Warlpiri is Ngapa ka wanti-mi (Water is falling i.e. it is raining).

In Luritja and Pitjatjantjara the word for water is Kapi. The indigenous band ‘Coloured Stone’ has a song ‘Kapi pulka’ (Big Rain) …. “ rain, rain, rain on my ngurra”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC5EerCaiTc

Not surprising, water has a deep cultural quasi religious importance to the people of the Central Australian Desert.

In 1964 as a student I was ‘assistant geologist’ on Planet Oil’s Casterton No.1 exploration well. At the time the well was being drilled, the annual APPEA (Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association) conference had just been held in Adelaide. Casterton is half way between Adelaide and Melbourne. My boss, Jim Cundill, a very placid likeable man, was the perfect host to the significant number of conference delegates who took the opportunity to call in at the rig. To my great surprise, I witnessed Jim suddenly go apoplectic and banish two characters from the site. What was that all about, I asked …. (“didn’t you see the forked stick one of them was carrying?”).

Turns out that some speculators had hired the pair as “oil diviners”. “You’re drilling on the wrong side of the road, the oil stream is over there” one of the characters defiantly shouted as he hightailed it off the lease. For those that don’t know there is no such thing as underground oil “streams” and if you miss an oil field by less than 100m, it isn’t worth finding.

When West Australian Jim started his Geology career in Canada, he was seriously ribbed by his Canadian colleagues. Apparently Queensland has the highest number of water diviners/dowsers in the world. The fact that much of the Great Artesian Basin is in Queensland may have something to do with that.

Geologists in general have little time for the mumbo jumbo of the “electricity in the elbow” or whatever. Jim’s circumstances manifested itself in a far more extreme reaction to these snake oil salesmen.

Before I get accused of (heaven forbid) having a dogmatic view on water diviners, let me make clear that I much respect people’s right to believe whatever they choose to, provided that in so believing they do no harm. I was told that the U.S military did a thorough study on water divining sometime after WWII. What they found was that on “home ground” water diviners had a better than average success rate. When practicing their trade in unfamiliar ground, their success rate was no better or worse than random probability.

Underground drinkable and abundant water isn’t easy to find. There are too many variables. Myself I’ve upset a few hydrologists in my time, by asking them where they kept their dartboard! (all with a big grin on my face- of course).

Bruce Farrands, the now retired owner/operator of Rabbit Flat Roadhouse, has been assigned the Jangala “skin name”. The Jangala/Jampijimpa father/son pair are the rain-makers. In the middle of a several year drought, Bruce complained to an old Warlpiri man that he’d been dancing and dancing and he only managed to raise clouds of dust. “Were you wearing trousers when you danced?” asked the old man. “Yes of course” “Well, that explains everything. To have any chance of success you need to dance naked!”

Don’t know if Bruce ever followed this advice, but the drought continued.

The bore field Yuendumu derives its reticulated water from is about 10Km to the south-west. The reservoir is in the Carboniferous Mt. Eclipse Sandstone which usually is what in the industry is colloquially known as “as tight as a fish’s arsehole” ( i.e. watertight). Groundwater at Yuendumu’s bore field occurs in ‘fracture porosity’ which makes it all that more difficult to find and measure. The Power and Water Authority are seriously worried about the aquifer’s future, and are making a serious effort at reducing consumption and waste and attempting to find additional supply.

One of the steps they’ve taken is to replace all water meters on the community with ‘smart meters’. Before drawing long-bow parallels between these ‘smart meters’ and the ‘smart bombs’ that have rained and continue to rain over the Middle East, (and I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?- Clarence Clearwater Revival…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5zZKawkcBU

I will make some enquiries. How will the ‘smart meters’ help to reduce consumption and waste, or add to the supply of water? I want to know…

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain? – Clarence Clear Water Revival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUjT5Yt6TbU

As I’m penning these musings a nice steady  rain has begun to fall, and I haven’t even taken off my trousers! But then, in any case, it would have been to no avail… I’m a Jungarrayi.

Ngaka na-nyarra nyanyi,

Frank

PCbyCP welcomes back Paddy O’Caermeda.

What a delight it is for us to receive this installment from Paddy O’Caermeda, whom we are led to believe is champing at the bit to provide us with another illuminating take on the next federal election. Pity, if only we were in America, where electioneering is far from dull, typescripted and enervating. Paddy has got something to say about Cardinal Pell and Catholic Education. I Leave it with you to determine if he’s learnt, Rule 101# as a consequence of his education; the art of keeping a secret. 

We hope the two bottles of plonk stolen were of a higher standard than these.

My Dad turns 90 in a month. In that long life he has seen so much change. Born in 1926 his early childhood was blighted by the depression. His father was the son of an Irish convict, transported for seven years in 1854 to Van Dieman’s Land for stealing two bottles of wine. He was Catholic, and he married my Grandmother, in the Anglican Church in Bairnsdale, probably because she was already expecting their first child, and she was from Ulster Presbyterian stock. He was a labourer who was too old to serve in the First World War, but careful enough to save and put a deposit on a failed Soldier Settlement Farm in the Boisdale Estate outside Maffra in Gippsland.

My Dad’s early education was in a one room school on the corner of his father’s block and later at Sale Tech. My Dad’s childhood was poor, not quite as dirt poor as my Mum’s. She was the thirteenth child in a family of fifteen, and her father was a tenant farmer on a dairy farm in Allansford. He was Church of Ireland, converted to Catholicism to marry my Catholic grandmother, who could remember the dirt floor of the tiny cottage at Port Fairy, once called Belfast, where she had grown up. He owned nothing of the farm, his labour and that of his children went to benefit the Presbyterian landlord. It was oppressed Ireland in miniature.

Rural poverty and religion are the real ancestors I can claim. My Dad’s father became terminally ill when Dad was only 13. His older sister had attended the Convent in Sale, a strange reversal of the deal his parents had done when they married, the boys would be Catholic and any girls would be Protestant. The Nuns, Irish of course, came each day in a little horse and buggy to help nurse my grandfather and slowly they cracked my grandmother’s flinty Presbyterian heart, convincing her to remarry as he lay dying, so he could be buried a Catholic. My Dad’s family lie in the cemetery in Heyfield. My grandmother is buried with her eldest son, daughter and son-in-law in the Anglican section, my grandfather with his mother in the Catholic section. After being together in life, to be redeemed it seems they had to buried apart.

Dad climbed out poverty through serving in the Air Force at the tail end of the Second World War. The policies of post-war reconstruction, which included free tertiary education, made the difference for him and for me, my brothers and sister. He went to Hawkesbury Agricultural College, trained in Dairy Technology, and found a job at the Allansford Butter Factory. He met my mother at the Palais de Danse in Warrnambool, where each Saturday night the band would play. She was beautiful, he was handsome. They fell in love, but to marry he had to become Catholic. Despite his Presbyterian uncles, all Masons, warning him that he was letting the side down, he did that, for love.

They were good Catholics. Attended Mass every week, ate fish on Friday, and from their meagre income made offerings each week in the collections and the planned giving (called Sacrificial giving). They were part of the generation that built the wealth of post-war Australia, and along the way from their pennies and shillings built the schools, churches, presbyteries and convents of the Catholic Church. We children were all baptised, and when the time came, sent to the local overcrowded Parish school in Cheltenham. The year I started, 1963, there were 75 children in my prep class with one very overworked teacher. My parents paid for me to have this dubious privilege, there was no state aid for Catholic schools, and they kept paying in the weekly offerings, the sacrificial giving and the school fees for me and my brothers to go to St Bede’s, and my sister to Kilbreda, the local Catholic High Schools, where despite all the disadvantages we got a good education. Because education was the only way that the hard climb from rural poverty was going to be secured and Catholic education was the only way to secure a place in heaven.

‘Santa in Heaven’ His spirit lives on.

My parents, and their generation, were betrayed. I was never sexually abused and to my knowledge neither were my brothers or sister, and in the proper focus on the victims of abuse, we forget the thousands like my parents who gave their pennies and shillings to build the assets that the Church is so desperate to protect. It was the children of this generation who were raped and tortured by the clergy and it is the assets that this generation built that properly belong to victims as compensation, but the lawyers and the insurers don’t see it this way.

Tim Minchin’s brilliant and biting satire has focussed again on George Pell. I don’t know how culpable he is in this appalling story, and we may never know. What I do know is that his insensitive, brutal demeanour has become the public face of the Church that shits in the face of hard working people like my mum and dad, and treats victims of abuse at the hands of its clergy as lepers whose silence can be bought for a meagre bag of silver. He has earned his opprobrium, he deserves it. Not everyone agrees with me. I watched with amazement as Amanda Vanstone defended Pell describing him, perhaps infelicitously, as a whipping boy. Gerard Henderson was more predictable and his hagiographic claim that Pell was the first Prelate in Christendom to arrange for compensation for victims of abuse was appalling. Nothing said about how it was designed to limit the cost to the church, or buy the silence of victims, or lead in the warped logic of this terrible story to the destruction of John Ellis and the legal fiction of the Ellis defence.

But my greatest disappointment is Frank Brennan. I have known him nearly all my life. We joined the Jesuits in the same year, 1975, I was a tender seventeen year old, fresh from school, he was so much more worldly, having completed his Arts degree and half of his Law degree. To listen to Frank defend Pell, or suggest that Tim Minchin’s song somehow endangers the victims, or that it is impossible for the victims making their way to Rome to hear him give his testimony because the normal legal protections for Pell can’t be assured, drives me to distraction. Frank is a lawyer first and a priest second, he is playing the game of legal nicety forgetting that in the end it defends the indefensible and supports the strong over the weak. Pell has many supporters, the Catholics in Government might not be vocal, but their tacit support is palpable, the nods and winks to Christian organisations opposing reforms like equal marriage are part of the political climate that gives Pell and all he represents some comfort.

Far away from this in his retirement my old Dad still goes to Mass. Mum is too frail, but communion comes to her. Recently Dad attended a meeting at his Church on planned giving. He lives in a town popular with retirees so it was not surprising that many older parishioners were present. What was surprising was that none of the younger ones were there. The priest, a Vietnamese Australian, asked the primary school principal why. She told him that she had invited all parents by personal letters, and that in her view the Church had lost them and they weren’t coming back. Dad’s wry and in my view correct conclusion is that the Church is now full of nominal Catholics only interested in securing a cheap education for their kids. Perhaps this is why Pell and others are so keen to keep the assets that they have. Without the real estate, the tax exempt status and now generous State aid for the schools, there’d be no-one there.