Ming signs off on the AWKWARD Pact to have subs ‘ready by 2050 or thereabouts”.
Dear reader once again we return to our tour of oblivion, our heroes being given the full bottle by Terry, a functionary left behind during Australia’s tentative and ultimately quashed ‘Golden Age”.
The AWKWARD pact will install barbecue areas in designated strategic sites to make them untenable as forward naval bases to would- be aggressors from an undisclosed power that most likely will be CHINA
Terry tells them of the massive nation building project that was kept top secret by Ming, lest the rest of the world unlock Australia’s nuclear secrets. Secrets more weighty than the alleged plan via the AWKWARD Pact to have submarines ready by 2050. And all awhile, our heroes prisoner to Sophie wait whilst she negotiates a deal with Australia’s most powerful man ‘Dutto’.
With no breakthrough in sight, must we wait for a break-through or break? At the end point? Point break? We find ourselves in a state of suspense. Suspended solids more like it, with nothing solid beneath them but the uncertain nuclear past stretching below them like the unmarked tombs of the valley of the kings. Our heroes await their destiny.
Terry continued with his monologue, lighting up another craven A, and warming to the conversation for which our heroes, put him firmly and centred at ‘Ground Zero”
‘A nation building project devised by Robert Menzies. The worlds first triple A rated nuclear protected subterranean city.
But it never took off’…. Terry sighed with a deeper resignation.
Possibly, and arguably Australia’s most powerful man does not posess accredited ukelele skills
‘The place was closed. The project abandoned in utmost secrecy. Myself, and a few others were kept on to maintain the infrastructure, keep it oiled and greased as it were. Since then, the entire area has been cordoned off, and the terrain smoothed just as the Egyptians did in the Valley of the Kings. From the air, it’s as if nothing ever really happened, and with the Maralinga testing site a huge reactive blot on the landscape, no one is looking for the little declines, and portals, where all the underground activity took place. If any, and only if ever it was mentioned in top secret documents that has been removed. And the documents themselves? All removed in secrecy from Canberra and left to the corps of supervisors. These supervisors, of which I am one’, and as he flicked the ash off his Craven A and Donkey rooted another one; ‘was secured in that place, just over, here’.
We followed the line of his index finger as he pointed into the gloom. ‘Oh yes’! we affirmed; ‘right there’? Terry lookd at us irritatedly ‘No not there, but here’? He wiggled his finger and agitatedly indicated another grey slab of dust begrimed building, ‘No I meant there’!
‘Where’? we pleaded. “Is it there”? Ces pointed to another row of drab oblong,
Ukelele’s can be more potent than dog-whistles
‘No I mean there’! Terry pointed again, and fulminating with frustration he sighed, ‘hang on a minute’. From a locker in the console, he fished around for a vital piece of apparatus, until delighted with the discovery, produced an Aldis lamp. Unfurling a dusty, begrimed fabric covered connector he applied the five point plug to a trap-door beneath the console, and ghasped, ‘it still fits’, and flicking a toggle switch exclaimed … ‘and the fucking thing still works’!. We agreed, whatever you could say it was a victory of the VALVE AGE!
The Aldis lamp flickered with renewed life, and adjusting the shutter mechanism he allowed the incandescence to be focused, and with a concentrated light, piercing the sepulchral gloom, he guided us to another drab oblong shape indistinguishable from the rest, ‘That’! He said with satisfaction is where all the secrets are stored, ‘’Everything’? Ces queried for emphasis,
‘Yeah mate everything, including, and you’ll Iove this , the correspondence between ourselves and our operatives in both Russia and China’.
Or cash in hand, the voters will be swayed.
Our jaws gaped in wonder, from Ces came the epithetic‘Jeez’.
As he pointed to a facility in the far distance, another block- like edifice, with no windows, no doors, just a veneer of deep dust, and the barely discernible coating of grey- green camouflage paint.
‘And so, like this, it’s been unchanged ever since.
An enigma’, Ces whispered
‘Yep inside a paradox?
Doe anyone else know about this? … don’t think anybody else does, Only your mates Dutto and Sophie, and they’re not gonna tell anyone, it’s the ace up their sleeves?
Their get outta jail free card, there are secrets buried down here that would make you die of shame, and other secrets that would make you rejoice in anticipation of the human spirit. Both heaven and hell are entombed within these buildings and now you know I’m afraid to say, our collective fate’.
What is their fate? Will it be a school or a church fete? Or a different il fait accompli altogether, Find out in the next fateful episode, “a fistful of fate’ or, ‘fatefully yours in faith”