This episode is sponsored by Camel Cigarettes!
We return to our saga
Dear reader as you may recall……. we left our heroes exalting in the fresh taste of freedom. Freedom, that for all intents and purposes, though irradiated at Maralinga, is nonetheless freedom of sorts and better, way better than being mere prawns to the evil machinations of Dutto and Sophie.
Terry poses as a ‘Camel-man’ in the olden days!
But, as Benny-Boy, arguably Australia’s bravest soldier ever, debates the meaning of a life without blowing up things and rolling wops off cliffs, he’s gladdened by the prospect of another chance to have a crack. And be of use. Not to his countrymen and the glory of ANZAC, but to help his mates Terry, Ces and Quent who he’s grown fond of.
Camel has a proud reputation of KILLING since 1915
And so we find them at the threshold, Benny-Boy once their jailer, is now their protector. Just as Sophie the most powerful woman in politics is on the board of the Fair Work Commission to help lowly paid workers not loose their wages through the insidious creep of inflation. Because Sophie, may have EMPATHY! Indeed although it is mere conjecture it must be said that even psychopathic killers can be fond of their pets, their favourite hunting knife, their AK47 and evince deep compassion for those things that have special relevance to them. So, it is not improbable that Sophie, the woman of case-hardened steel may possess hidden from public view her entire life, a tincture of ‘Compassion”! And this carefully guarded secret may be unleashed and at any time to astound and confound the public at large and prove now that Dutto reigns supreme a softer voice within conservative ranks. Because, there is still a shed of compassion at large within the ranks of those who choose conservatism and bludgeoning punishment, and ROBODEBT as a first principle above empathy and understanding.
We live in hope, but what of our heroes, ?
Camel sponsored the ‘Camel Corps’, a glorious annal from the pages of ‘ANZAC’!
We return to the irradiated sands of Maralinga and prepare for a stand off with a lone Centurion Tank.
‘Bugger me, it really is a Centurion” Benny stroked the stubble on his chin and fingered the pistol grip of his AK 47, the one that had served him so faithfully at Tarren Kwot. ‘I dunno, the turret may turn and the barrel may move , but it’s arguable as to whether there’s anything down the spout, I mean 105 mm ammo is hard to come by these days.’
Camels liked to wash down there Camel’s with a flagon of beer. Seen here at Beersheba.
‘But can we risk it’? Quent enquired nervously. ‘I mean it’s been sitting out here for over sixty years and whoever is in it surely must have better things to do than just sit around waiting for us’? ’Yeah, but, nah but, with the “Drums of War” beckoning, we have no idea who it may be, since Andrew Robb took that job with Land-bridge and took the 750k a year salary for selling the Darwin port things aint been the same, We’ve been on high alert’.
‘Boney’ pioneered Camels in Egypt as the ‘Ship of the desert’ as he’d lost all his real ships in Aboukir Bay.
‘High alert’? Quipped Terry, ‘I’ve been on high alert since the fifties and I can tell ya, nothing ever happened’. Terry lit up another Camel and passed the packet round. Although there was a stationary tank, muzzle pointing to us, Terry still had time for another fag. It was something quintessentially laconic and Australian about that. Just as our forebears had remembered to have another pipe-full of Havelock and swig of whiskey before clearing the land of native stragglers.
‘Yeah’, Benny replied sternly,’ but things are different nowadays, the feds have put in very severe restrictions on foreign capital acquisitions’.
A little know postscript, some Camels were patriarch white supremacist racists who aided the Confederacy in their lost cause so they could develop ‘Replacement Theory’.
‘Like what’? enquired Ces.
‘Well for example, you have to prove on the documentation before you buy into Australia that you’re not laundering money, have no links to the CCP and don’t have a recent, (at least two weeks) association with the High rollers Lounge at either Crown Casino, Crown Resorts or Barangaroo. And, as a final stipulation that you have never had dealings with Mick Gatto, Sam Dastyari, or Andrew Robb in the past seven days! They’re pretty strict regulations, and it shows that Australia is prepared to stand for PRINCIPLE’!
‘But is principle enough’? Ces sounded exasperated by his own circumstance, ‘we’ve been the past year trying to find out who the evil penis wielding oppressor was who so cruelly defiled our tea- lady Ms Culthorpe as a parliamentary intern and we are still no closer. How much is principle worth, when at the end we’re stymied by powerful forces determined to keep the truth from the public?. It’s all, Ces, sighed with a measure of heart- felt exasperation,’ it’s all a bit Witness K or Julian Assange’. ‘Assange what’? enquired Terry? ‘Oh Assange, the bloke who got done for telling the truth’.
‘ Oh’ Terry replied, ‘that can get you into a whole lotta trouble, and the worst of it is, once the truth is out there’s no telling what damage it might do’.
John Curtin saved Australia through the deft use of Camel’s and whiskey.
Just then the tank, immobile, daunting, and mysterious began to move.
Has the tank got one up the spout, or is it just on manoeuvres? Who is inside the tank and why is it there in the first place? Find out in our next tracked vehicle episode, ‘A phalanx short of a Centurion’, or ‘Quo vadis ici Vladimir?