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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To impose their very own skewed logic to the political process

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

‘What is it I whispered to Ces’ ? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deformities of mind, body and soul that were inescapable!

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

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

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

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

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

or, “Barnaby’s Choyce”!

Dear electorally charged and challenged reader.

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

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

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

That’s the problem with Frank.

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

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

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

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

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

Queensland translation; ‘Freedom ! Freedom! Freedom’!

Frank writes;

Amici,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Cooke- A change is gonna come…

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

Ciao,

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

Frank

Dear reader we return to our saga.

Lest we forget. The stunning victory gained in Flanders.

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

Dutto’s ‘Brave New World’!

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

Queenslanders generally hide mutations through the artifice of public office.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Anzac tradition’? Dutto scoffed.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Save your breath’! Scoffed Dutto.

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

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

He paused, his claw clicked and clacked menacingly…

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

‘I was BORN HERE’!!!

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

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

Ces offered him a Smartie to cheer him up. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only the NOBLEST shall be custodians of ANZACKERY!

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

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

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

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

‘Jam-Land’ uber allies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wise men in charge of strategic policy Singapore 1942.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These children all had; “Working with Josh certification’.

The days were impossibly grim. 

Each day brought another funeral parade of non-ideas. Tired ideas. Ideas clapped out, worn out, and over-wrought. 

Another apathetic, exhausted, spiritless resignation to the entropy of minds capped by the reassurance of  saying ‘NO” . And “it’s just too too risky’!

The public address systems blared on and on; ‘For your safety stay indoors, for your safety stay indoors’. . 

However, due to a clerical error they were subjected to interference from Labor’s ‘Faceless men’. And….. made face-less.

Old fears were re-awoken, and like a dark impenetrable cloud the fear seeded and spread, offering a comfort in insecurity and shallowness  Until the hearts and minds of the hapless denizens resigned themselves to the grey-grim inevitability of it all. They, who had no voice were paralysed by the threat of ultra-violence if they ventured into the streets. The foolish believed change was coming. The realists just aged and grew old before their time. And worried about their deposits secured in special accomodation homes at the standard rate.  The fear grew and grew until every germ of imagination and humanity was cauterised by the fear. An exctasy of fear. A catastrophe of fear.  A fear so paranoiac, a fear so punishing, perfidious, penetrating,  it became a paroxysm of pervasive Pompeiian proportions

The fear of contamination whenever they gathered en-masse. The fear of retribution if they stood outside the herd. The fear in the office, the workplace. The fear of those who held the reins of administrative power. The fear of those who would pursue and crush them. Destroy them if they strayed from the path of meek compliance.

 Are we talking about day 55 of the Ukraine Invasion? 

Guide dogs have a natural instinct borne by countless aeons of evolution to vote Liberal.

No folks, it’s just week two of the Federal election and as any good Scout-Master or Guide Dog instructor will tell you it’s important to have friends in high places who will do their utmost to keep the Tweedle-dums in power lest the Tweedle-Dees get a grip. Cos as we all know ‘plus la change’ and all that, it makes no difference. With a supine and compliant electorate no change is the best change you’re ever gonna get. And ‘Blessed Be’ the  safe sinecurists on governmental perks. If you’re not in the game you’re a loser! It’s a skin-game. And as far as we can see it pays to be white. Whiter than Bleach, and more pristine than Chesty Bonds T-shirt. Culture wars? Yep culture war….ts and all. 

But what of the truly dispossessed?  No we’re not talking about them, they choose that kinda lifestyle, (Tony Abbott,c.2014). We’re talking about our trio stuck beneath the desiccated crust of Australia’s most illuminated spot. Will they ever escape from their subterranean chamber of Horrors? What is this strange human-like creature with an exaggerated claw for a hand? Does it stretch the bounds of imagination? Do you believe in Sanity Claws?

Is there time left yet to stem the decline of every principle of goodness trashed by the three pillars of opportunism, greed and mateship? Can our heroes prevail?  Its up to Benny-Boy and his stock of weapons if there’s any chance at all. So let’s roll the dice, the fluffy dice stolen from the rear- view mirror of SCOMO’s Commonwealth limousine, and take one last throw. As the PM said to the prospective member of Warringah, at the trans  sex swim carnival speedos; ‘ There may be something in it’?

WE at pcbycp would like to endorse the ‘Inclusion foundation’. We tried to set up our very own foundation but discovered via our accountant you needed a significant amount of money to be eligible. The inclusion foundation works well, as most Coalition policies do for wealthier members of the community. They need support for they are vulnerable to tax creep and “faceless men’.

We return to our saga, read, if you dare……

‘Shhh, don’t say a thing’, whispered Benny Boy. ‘I’ve got youse all covered’. 

It was reassuring to know that with this strange, and foreboding claw-man monster thing we still had Benny at our backs.  A lot of former members of the SAS would agree with us. Better to have Benny behind that in front, where we couldn’t really see what he was up to. But we knew one thing ,Benny was on our side. 

Josh also supports those allied to the Leaping Tiger award. The ‘Leaping Tiger’ has displaced the ‘Leaping Wolf’ award amongst some members of the Chinese Scouting community who worry about Labor’s, ‘Faceless men’.

But is Benny-boy really on our side? If you felt the introduction was longer than the episode, just get used to it. This is an election edition episode. And after sponsorship, kick-backs, lobbyist payments, endorsements, sneaky party donations,  more kick-backs and phone calls in car- parks, restaurants, outside safety deposit boxes and down by the old mill that’s all you’re gonna get!!

‘Faceless Men’ cannot be trusted. Josh has provided punters with a ‘nine point plan’, in Mandarin to identify the ‘Faceless Men’.

Just remember one thing. If in doubt, if you’re really up against it.  If your tax return comes back a dud and you owe zillions cos you’re not a multi-national or Angus Taylor with offshore tax havens it serves you right!  That’s what this election is all about. Fool you for being an idealist. Being an idealist is So tawdry and twentieth century. So resignedly, and with no hope of anything innovative, clever or inspiring stay tuned to the  very next episode, 

‘Tweedle Dum aint so dumb at all cos he knows how to win elections’ and/or  ‘Tweedle Dee’s got a dog whistle, and he borrowed it from ‘Johnny One Note” 

A well-aimed leaked text message can be electoral GOLD!!!

Dear reader we return to our subterranean saga, with our heroes in more trouble than the vexed gender debate coming our of Warringah, they know that whatever hits them next will be ‘below the belt’.  

Stuck deep below the radioactive desert wastes of Maralinga with none other than Australia’s most decorated and bravest and principled soldier ever, ‘Benny-Boy Roberts-Smith’ they seek refuge in the dark labyrinthine streets of a moth-balled nuclear city aptly named “ Radium Springs”. A city created  so that a chosen few, selected for their perfection of mental, physical and emotional perfection could prevail and thrive and prosper post a nuclear apocalypse. A project, stalled, mothballed, forgotten and locked away for decades only to be rediscovered as the headquarters of two of Australia’s most powerful individuals, ‘Dutto’ and ‘Sophie’. What perilous truth awaits them? Will the protection offered by Benny-boy and subsequently Kerry Stokes be enough to save them? Or, like the rest of the population, must they wait while others selected via the aforementioned criteria are parachuted into grotesquely over-salaried sinecures of the AAT The FWC, Boards of Rivers, Lakes, Philanthropic Trusts, to realise as Lindsay Fox famously says, “no one ever goes broke from giving’.  Because as was not famously recorded in the transcript, what he really said was; ‘No one goes broke from giving, if they’ve got tax kick-backs, skewed philanthropic trusts, monopolies on transport and links to high end rivers of gold from Government as a win win situation’. 

In pre-texting days you had to rely on sign language and sheer physicality to hide the truth!

Like Lindsay’s edited transcript, Will our heroes complete story, (warts and all)  ever get to the editorial desk of our newspapers? Do they care? Will anything change?  Don’t lose heart for with an election anything can change. And there might even be from a crack, a fissure, a snap in the public debate to reveal just once, a glimmer of imagination to public policy. We live in hope and the time is right. So do not despair, glacial change is quicker under global warming, and in the end the clean team, clean-coal and clean living, (without the taint of LGBTO, Trans Inter sex Mutant and Cyborg) will win in the end. If you don’t believe us look to the PM for leadership and another tranche of leaked text messages. 

Text this you say’? Do so and Dare to WIN. 

In the olden days even mobile phone messages could be leaked.

We return to our story;

We stood aghast as the door, the great steel warehouse, 1950’s corrugated shuttered industrial door was rent like butter as a great claw, sliced its way out into the dim streetscape. At first we couldn’t see anything, but the as the dust settled, we made out the shape. We breathed a sigh of relief as the shape, we could tell in the half light and at distance, was human. Such a relief as all of us imagined radioactively enhanced scorpions, brown snakes, cockroaches, funnel web spiders, anything that was vile, hairy, and slippery and equipped with claws, talons, or stinging venom enlarged hundred-fold. Whatever it was its shape was distinctive and human and in that at the very least lay hope. 

‘Stay still’! Benny whispered, ‘if it comes towards us I’ll plug it with this RPG!

Macron and Scomo have different interpretations of Truth, it’s often lost in translation.

‘Isn’t that risky’? whispered Ces. 

‘I mean what if you miss’?

Benny smirked and borrowed one of Terry’s Camels* before lighting it up, GI style with a flick of a non safety match against the rough soles of his boots.  ‘I never miss,  and besides’, he grinned menacingly, ‘If I do miss the first time, I’ll get him one way or another’! With that he fingered the machete hanging from his combat belt, and tapped a delicate tune upon the stick handle of his treasured 1942 Potato masher Grenade outsourced from the prosthetic limb supplier of Kandahar. ‘I always carry some back up, you never know when it might come in handy’, and then pausing for effect, ‘a tight scrape’. 

‘But’, murmured Quent; ‘How do we know it is evil?  Surely, there is just a chance, after being bottled up here for decades, the creature, whatever it is will be happy to see us, it may also, theres a chance, offer us a way out. 

Bullshit’!, Benny could no be swayed, ‘it’s fucken evil I can tell you!

Hows that’? Murmured Quent, 

Sometimes the truth is so truthful it’s best left alone! Stick to text messages MAAAATE! The ‘simple truth’ can be bloody DANGEROUS!

‘Cos I told you so, and I have a sixth sense. 

Sixth sense? 

Yep mate, I have a nose for these things’!

We gulped Clearly Benny-boys years of training and discipline and selfless duty had prepared him for a situation like this, and who were we to question?  The most damaging weapon any of us had carried was a letter knife and a box of paper clips. 

‘He’s right’, Terry whispered, ‘I don’t know what they’ve kept down here, but I know it was never gonna be , he paused for further emphasis, ‘quite right”.

And in the end, like an Anti-Corruption body the public aren’t interested in truth, so we can all have a laugh!

‘On some of the experiments they did work on trying to fuse animal and insect parts onto human torsos for,  what was the term they used? ’ Greater Efficiencies”!  I dunno, it was so many years ago, but there was this bloke who got his old fella caught in the air conditioning compressor belt and they took him away, and the next thing there was a call for brown snakes and mulga snakes and rewards offered for those who could bring em in alive, it caused quite a stink, but if you think of this laboratory and the mind does funny things to you’. 

Just then Terry paused mid stream, for the steel door was tossed like a tissue and the figure, impossibly large, and covered in a dark indeterminate fabric, could be seen standing tall, stamping its feet and with its claw-like hand, waving at something in the air. We couldn’t make out what it was doing, Was it trying to communicate? Did it know we were observing it? Did it like Benny have a sixth sense? Whatever the case it gave a mighty heave, and in one bound jumped fully across the street, landing with a terrific thud just metres from our niche. It then jumped into the air again, with incredible agility some ten feet and in doing so let out the most sickening ear – wrenching scream. A scream so beast-like, so alien to our human countenance that we recoiled and crouched in abject fear.  Even Benny-boy was taken aback and we could see him nervously fingering his V.C service-ribbon. We needed leadership, we needed direction, and we sensed we needed salvation. With no salvation at hand, not even a well aimed Prime Ministerial text message leakage, we knew something worse was about to happen. Who was this monster? What evil was afoot? What crime against justice, humanity and notions of fair play were about to befall us?  And this, in only week one of the election campaign. 

If you aint gotta mobile or dog-whistle, try the Ukulele! It’ ELECTORAL GOLD!

Only you, dear reader can stomach the truth whist you still have stomach enough. Find out in our next intestinal episode, “ One more jump and you can forget your hop- skip’, or “Transex vexed-text ex’.

*Respected servicemen and SAS elite do not bludge ciggies off mates, they  ‘borrow”.

Lib candidate doesn’t want ‘povvo’ people living in Brighton. You can’t argue with that!

Dear reader,

another missive from our faithful correspondent from the North-West frontier. In this-un Frank urges us to think clearly about who we might vote for in the upcoming federal election. We of course know that voting entails a philosophical commitment to the democratic process, rather like the belief in  “Clean Coal”, and the ‘Ladder of opportunity’!

Why is this so you may ask?  Could it have something to do with the sneaking suspicion that big money, the lobbyists and the numbers-men have the game sewn up? Or is the electoral system really working for the average punter?

Lib candidate for Tone’s old seat of Warringha doesn’t like tranny’s. You can’t argue with that!

On that count we don’t know. Cept to say there’s a lot of independents in the air this time round.

And, politically speaking’ there are known knowns and unknown unknowns. That’s the best we can do with what we have.  And a bit like the Ben Roberts-Smith case it’s hard to get to the bottom of things when there’s a whiff of corruption in the air?  Apparently most Australians now believe the political system is corrupt. We reckon they’re just narked cos they didn’t get a parachute onto the board of the AAT or the FWC. Whichever way you look at it most of us don’t now how lucky we are to be living in ‘Strayla’, and Boris has paid us the eternal compliment of borrowing our offshore detention scheme. Onya Boris!

And SCOMO aint gonna dis another sheilah who wants to have a crack at Parliament. And dog- whistle on TRANNY’S! ONYA!

So ultimately what’s the problem? 

The Lucky Country?  You  betchya!

But Frank aint so sure. He writes; 

 

Hola,

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”- Oscar Wilde.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX-YTIsj4Iw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMbQsKJ64S0

Albo’s the full-bottle on employment figures and imaginative policy! We arks Ya!

Australia is about to have another Tweedle-dee Twiddle Dum election.

Two days before going into pre-election caretaker mode, the Federal conservative Government signed a deal with the Northern Territory’s Labor (before you pedantics have a go, that is how they spell it) Government signed a $A872 million deal to “accelerate gas production in the Betaloo Basin”.

Barnaby can’t see the point in an anti-corruption agency! If he was made to his head would explode! ! !

The NT Labor government has not followed up on their promise to close the Don Dale youth detention facility nor has it done anything about increasing the age of criminal responsibility from ten years. As far as I can ascertain spit hoods remain legal in the NT and the so-called paperless arrest laws remain in place. There appears to be no political appetite on both sides of politics to amend laws that give police virtual impunity, nor to disarm community police of their unnecessary and insulting lethal power.

Clive is taking a leaf from SCOMO! He’s for CLIVE!

There is nothing that our ruling classes do to indicate that Australia signed up to the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment nor that it had endorsed the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Craig is a man of…… How the fuck do youse spell principle?

But don’t despair. There is something we Australians can be proud of! Australia’s Border Protection and its efforts at disrupting the people smugglers’ business plan!
Never mind the business plans of the fossil fuel industry, the welfare industry, the Aboriginal industry, the pork barrelling industry, the child welfare industry, the prison and justice industry, the offshore detention processing industry.
Some in clear breach of U.N. conventions Australia has endorsed.

In a clear case of mediocrity paying the sincerest form of flattery to greatness Boris Johnson has announced that Britain will imitate Australia in disrupting the people smugglers’ business plan. So called Illegal arrivals by boat will now be processed offshore in Rwanda.

Never mind the business plan of the human traffickers who have swooped on hapless Ukrainian refugees.

As for the election: What shall we do?

Keith Pitt, (Member for Hinkler) will keep the bastards honest!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11po9xKBsbw

Myself, I will once again be using my vote to help vote someone out, rather than to help voting someone in.

Chau,

Frank

A bonus bit of music from Nicaragua:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yarz-zkIru8

Coles and Woolies enjoyed a duopoly for decades.

With an election coming on, anything can happen. 

The issues facing our heroes seem irrelevant. They pale into insignificance against the major issues suffered by average (non trust fund beneficiaries) Australian, working families and the vexed question of franking credits. 

It’s not because our heroes travails are irrelevant, but with an election their fate is inextricably tied up with the fate of the nation. The fate that shall determine whether one bland white, average middle aged individual will succeed over another white middle aged bland individual. This is the kaleidoscope of Australian politics. No matter how changed, how cosmopolitan the population becomes you can rest assured that a bland middle aged bloke will win in the end. Its called the ‘ ‘white bread syndrome’. No matter how many gluten free, non hi-fibe, fructose , vegan, paleo loafs are for sale, it’s no match for the plan white, sandwich loaf.

And that’s a comforting thought.   It doesn’t pay to think big. Imagination, vision, and principle won’t win elections. A  more equitable tax regime, a sensible approach to climate, and the prospect that at least someone below the age of 40 can afford a house in our capital cities is not gonna win an election. 

Labor and Liberal worked a very reliable duopoly for decades

What will win an election,? 

The party that decides to do the very least. Promise bugger all. Promise that by doing nothing everything will stay the same. We at pcbycp are very proud of Australian policy direction through the term of the Coalition and would say why change it? Its been very good for lobbyists, Angus Taylor, a few mates who have the inside on energy policy, Angus Taylors family and very good for a handful of mates who have earnt taxpayer funded sinecures with the AAT, FWC, and Boards in general. Good on em we say!  Mateship is the core principle governing this country and there’s nothing wrong with helping out a mate, provided they’re white sliced, or a sheilah who knows how to shut her mouth during ‘secret men’s business’. 

Then, along came Aldi.

Is Mateship  the glue that will keep our heroes Ces, Quent, Terry and their sidekick Benny-boy together, through thick and thin?  Without mateship they’d just be four middle aged men in search of a taxpayer funded sinecure, or worse.  But in a cruel twist of fate they find themselves pitted against two of the most powerful individuals in the Australian body-politic, Dutto and Sophie. And above this comic parade of power, intrigue, espionage and high finance, sits Angus. As they say in the SAS ‘Whoever Dares Wins’, Angus wins every time…. Do our heroes have mateship enough to crash through, or are they just out-Towked for not being of the right stripe? Read on,   and this fudamental truth, will opaquely speaking,  dissolve itself. 

The story continues… 

Don Chip was sort of, the first of the independents way back in the late 70’s

Whilst Ces, Quent and Terry sought refuge in the doorway, they watched as Benny-boy casually walked across the darkened and dust begrimed street. The only illumination coming from the still burning embers of the Victorian Police Special Response Vehicle. It was eerily quiet. Only seconds ago, we were paralysed the dull thud of a drum, and strange unsettling noises. Noises half human, half beast from within the dark grey monolith of a building, too begrimed and coated with decades of dust to read the sign over the great warehouse doors. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we could discern, from beneath the giant steel doors a slither of light, 

‘There’s something inside’, whispered Ces

‘I know’, replied Quent, ‘but I’m not altogether sure I want to find out’. 

‘Is there any other building we can find refuge in Terry’?

‘I dunno’, Terry replied casually lighting up another Camel, ‘They’re all much the same and as I haven’t been on the ground for donkeys I can’t really remember which building is what’. 

‘Then this building’, Quent pointed to the facade, in which a huge X was displayed on the concrete facade. ‘What building is this’?

‘Oh that, that’s Building X. It means experimental facility’. 

The Australian Democrats were big on principle until they lost their principle through politics

‘What kind of experiments’? 

‘Oh the impact of radiation, 

On people’?

‘Who else”, Terry paused, ‘and some species of local animal’.

‘Whaddayou mean some species’?

Well we tried to work out the effect of radiation, whether it would be good or bad for kangaroos, wombats, etc. 

Good or bad? 

Well you’ve gotta understand that in the 50’s we could only see good with radiation and nuclear in general. There was never anything ‘bad about nuclear, just the odd mistake’. 

We looked at each other, ‘then what happened?

Well we we shut the facility down, we locked up the building  and just kept enough energy going to keep basics like refrigeration, air distribution, basic lighting, and stabilising’.

‘Stabilising’?

 Yeah, there’s some pretty unusual organisms, a bit like cryogenics, you know to keep the genie in the bottle’… 

‘That’s bullshit, lets take a look’. 

Benny crouched behind us was impatient to get moving, ‘With Sophie and Dutto not accounted for I say we move NOW’!

Clive is more successful than the Democrats ever were cos he’s ditched principle

‘But Benny, it’s a little risky, and ….

And just for god measure he lined up the door with his rocket propelled grenade, and let one go. 

Nothing happened, the RPG just fell to the ground fizzled and went out, ‘Jeez, just like an election promise’ sighed Ces. ‘Yup’,Quent replied: ‘like Turnbull another dud’. 

Then, we heard it again, the dull throbbing, and from within, the sound of chains, metal sheet, something dragging , and the sound was edging to the door, on the other side, whatever it was, was struggling to get out…. And then the booming started over again, with a menacing deliberation, until our ears were overwhelmed by the deep booming cacophony.. Do something Benny, we pleaded. 

‘Allright then’, Benny did as he was trained, loaded another RPG, and covered the door with his Gatling gun… the grenade exploded we could see it had blasted a hole in the door, and from within,  a blood curdling shriek. 

And then as we watched paralysed with fear a claw rent the metal of the door like tinfoil, and with an almighty heave, creaking and groaning, the door burst open. 

And what did we confront, What hideous spectre loomed before us? 

Was it the Minotaur, or something worse. 

SCOMO knows what wins elections. And it aint principle!

Find out in our next genetically modified episode, ‘Elections are not all fun….d’, and ‘Scomo’s Fomo’!

Only one certainty, more shit was gonna hit the fan about SCOMO!

Dear reader, we find our heroes once again in deep shit. Shit of the fundamental, environmental, physical, metaphysical and spiritual kind. It’s an unedifying predicament akin to a fair character assessment of Scomo. With more bases to a fair hearing blocked more assiduously than evidence in the Zac Rolfe’s murder trial, whichever way you look at it, it pays to have mates. And our heroes all 3.5 of them are led and take comfort in being led by Australia’s most decorated and noble soldier EVER Benny-Boy Roberts Smith. Whichever way the omelette is baked Benny-boy will be at their side, on their backs, and over and out. There might be no other way out than all in, and back to front, but forwards is backwards and in between when you’ve got seconds to live and your choice is commandeered by Sophie. Sophie or Hobson’s the coin is two-sided, and you’ll lose the toss, so we must toss-on as tossers do… 

Nice guys don’t get to become leaders

‘What was that sound’? Ces Whispered, ‘I dunno’’ murmured Ben. 

‘Is it coming from there’? Quent pointed to the low dark slab of a building. ‘I think it is and I don’t like the sound of it’, whispered Terry. 

‘I dunno’, muttered Ces, ‘but this gives me the creeps’. 

‘Yeah, and if that banging isn’t bad enough, if that horrible banging could stop we could try and think straight, but after all we’ve been through things just seem to go from bad to worse’. 

Indeed Quent was right, it’s often difficult to emphasise with people in dire straight’s that’s why we at pcbycp support the Federal Governments glacial response to bush fires and natural disasters. To rush impetuously and support citizens in the act of survival or recovery could skew the governmental process, and take politicians minds off the main game of investment portfolios and tax payer funded sinecures post a parliamentary career.  (ed)

Nice guys have their Goose COOK-ED for them.

‘Too right Ben’, Quent sighed, ‘it’s almost as if just as you thought there was no more shit to tip onto Scomo’s character, another pile of shit is dredged up and added to the last, till there’s nothing you can see but just a pile of shit’!

Benny laughed, ‘That’s the technique we used to identify the enemy in Afghanistan, if they were thrown into a cess-pit and didn’t drown they’d have to be working for Isis’. 

Scomo gives two attractive sheila’s advice on working with Dyson

‘Yup’, muttered Terry in fulsome agreement, ‘finding terrorists and witches aint changed much as ASIO strategy all these years, cept the witches aint all wearing britches’. 

We all paused, this was a controversial and strangely contemporary statement from  a man who’d been entombed beneath Maralinga for sixty odd years. 

Real leaders look after mates who run Leadership foundations that don’t exist. Onya Chris. Who the fuck is Chris Hartley?

Was Terry making an oblique reference to lgbtiq and trans sex, intersex and mutant gender definitions within government, or was he just referring to changed underwear requirements since the 50’s? We decided not to question him on his line of thinking as there may be a tendency to spend the rest of this descriptor debating the vexed question of trans and inter sex definitions of witches. We leave that task to a higher authority, the  Fair Work Commissioner and its exalted board member Sophie, and with Pru Goward and her mates all parachuted onto the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and any other publicly funded sinecure. We knew that an individuals rights, provided they could stump up the fees for legal representation were in good hands, it was a comforting thought. 

‘Still, I don’t like the sound of it. What is that sound? Could it be code’? postulated Ben? 

‘I dunno but its sounding a lot like the Drums of War’.

‘People who’ve lost everyting in bushfires and floods can fuck emselves. Mates who demonstrate leadership, and don’t even have an office or a postal address deserve 18 million handouts. It’s the only way kiddies will learn about leadership. The bigger the prick, the bigger the leader. A philosophy that’s held me in good stead these years’!! (Unpublishd extract from ‘My Way or the Highway” SCOMO’S unpublished biography: Happy Clapper Press. Amway Publishing . 2022.

‘Yeah, cept these are more like Bongos in which all the skins are being split, and someone’s tried to re- skin the bongo with….. I dunno. Paper, bits of plastic sheeting, or’…. 

Benny filled in the pause  with something obscene or unimaginable, but it betrayed in just one instance his experience as a professional soldier, ‘Or’.. he added with a sanguine wheeze … ‘with human skin’!

At that utterance we all froze. 

The thought though hideous and ghastly beyond imagination, had a measure of truth in it. Knowing that in some way, Sophie, Dutto, and most likely Angus as ring- leader there’d be a close link. To break that link, or discover just where the path of iniquity, corruption, vice and depravity led was an unenviable task. Though it may lead us to the board of Crown resorts or worse, we had to find out. And out salvation or downfall was buried within.  In the end the only choice we had, was not Hobsons, but Sophies! Ben spotted another niche across the other side of the street. ‘Allright youse, when I give the signal I want youse to wait for me there, if anyfink happens i’ll give youse covering fire, 

On the count of three. 

Is this an order’? asked Ces, ‘sort of, and besides what other choice have we got’. 

We gulped and Benny gave the count; 

‘One’, and the sound of the drumming got louder. 

’Two’, and the sound of something else, something more blood curdlingly eerie penetrated the gloom. 

One thing’s for certain, wherever there’s a scam, there’s always a Royal!

‘Three’, as we crouched, slid, sidled, inched our way across the street we began to hear something much worse. From the bowels of the very earth? Was it from inside the building? 

A scream?

No! Not a scream something more sinister. The sound of something much more sinister. Was it another rendition of the ‘Belt and Road song’? 

Does it pass the Sniff- test?

Was it a sequel to ‘Up there Cazaly’? Or even worse ‘Gday Gday’? We had to find out, and we knew whatever we did find was not going to be in the Cliff Richard songbook.. 

Birmingham has form on the ‘smelly things’ that go on in Parliament.

Will this be there last short movement? Will this be the chord in e flat major, or will minor suffice? Minor or Major they’re in deep shit.  Find out what happens in the next episode, ‘Not enough sinecures for mates on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal’, or ‘Towke and Scomo and Hawke, the Good, the Bad, and the Unedifying’