This episode of pcbycp is sponsored by Heinz, manufacturers of Baked Beans. by Royal Appointment HRH Prince Andrew.
Dear reader, we return once again to the existential drama of out heroes Ces, Quent and Terry as ‘forgotten people’. Left as it were to rot at the old Airport terminal at Maralinga. Sustained by Terry’s endless supplies of Camel cigarettes they know that they cannot survive on Camels alone and must find a way out or be ‘desiccated’. Which aint as bad as being “ Witness K’d” or even ‘ Assanged’, but pretty bad just the same. Which is a bit like culture policy, university funding and the general concept of imagination in public policy under the Coalition. We return to the old terminal, our heroes contemplatively blowing smoke-rings and deciding whether it may be death by starvation or lung- cancer.
‘Even just a rusty .303’. Illustration depicts forthcoming Sound and light extravaganza at the AWM, ‘How we held the line at beer- sheila’, to be opened by former Foreign Minister “Bugsy” Downer.
“Well if there’s no way out we might as well go on a bit of a scrounge and find some food, there’s gotta be something left behind by the poms, a tin of spam, some HP Sauce, a jar of Bovril’? Ces was a natural leader in a situation like this and it gave us some hope that perhaps in amongst the cupboards, outhouses, sheds and abandoned equipment there may be a tin of something to sustain us. We agreed to separate and go scrounge. Hoping that in our quest food will be found. For several hours we looked, down long disused corridors into dusty rooms, opening filing cabinets and lockers, upending waste bins and opening storerooms dark, disused and desolate. Through sheds reeking of diesel, dust and the images of posters long faded in the dry desert. But for all our efforts the search revealed what we already feared, the Poms had taken everything of value with them. In the end all we found was a bottle of phenyl, some matches and a tin of baked beans. Ces held the items up and examined them, “that makes about a serve of one teaspoon of bean for the next two weeks, or if it gets too crook, we just swig the phenyl and die of phenyl poisoning’. Either way we’re gonna die a slow death’.
‘Have another Camel’? Terry cheerily offered one and Ces, capitulating to reality lit it up and blew smoke rings lustily in the air. ‘If only they’d left us an old rifle a .303 or even a .22 we might have a chance with bush tucker, but at this rate we’re buggered’. They looked out beyond the tarmac, smoke still rising from the wreckage of the Centurion, and wreckage smouldering in a neat circle around it. ‘If only we had the tank, or even the twin Vickers we might have made a signal, or tapped out a code in morse, but we’re really stuffed this time…. And’ …….
In happier times
Clifford
No sooner than Ces had uttered those capitulatory phrases than we heard a rumble. A rumble that gathered in volume until the ground shook, and the papers and detritus, even the portrait of Her Majesty the Queen shuddered and rattled against the Burnie-board and Asbestos sheet wall. And then to our utter amazement an enormous helicopter, bigger than a Chinook landed scarcely fifteen feet in front of us. And as the whirring blades turned everything into a maelstrom of swirling debris and the building shuddered to the cacophony of turbines, kerosine fumes and flickering lights. We watched as the cargo door opened and out walked a thin grey man in a business suit. His tie neatly held by a tie-pin, and his hair carefully brilliantined, he emerged spotless and insouciant, and made directly for the old fly wire doors of the terminal. We stood with jaws agape, incredulity scoring our dust-begrimed faces, and then as if it were an average day in a suburban street he marched straight up to us, proffered his hand and said in a clipped, Oxbridge matter of fact manner; ‘Delighted to meet you Clifford form MI6, my superiors have instructed me to take you from this place for a debriefing’. And then, with a slightly conspiratorial wink he proffered us a neat white card and sure enough the Coat of Arms of Great Britain and the neat script Liet Col Thomas Clifford MBE Foreign Enterprises. ‘I suggest it is very much in your intertest to accompany me’.
Clifford at the MI6 fancy dress ball goes incognito as ‘just another chin-less wonder’.
What could we do? We followed him, climbed up the ramp, sat on a bench in the cargo bay and collapsed as the Roto-dyne made a perfect vertical ascent and powered its way across the irradiated sands.
The Rotodyne
Being delivered thus from evil made us feel quietly uneasy, but it was an escape, and a far better prospect than enduring more of Terry’s Camels, or the prospect of death by phenyl poisoning. We were alive and that was all that counted. And out of Maralinga at last. But where to? And why? We’d given up. The fact that we were in an Roto-dyne was stretching thge bounds of credulity. Such a craft hadn’t been used since the 1960’s. And we were too tired to recognise that the man who sat on the bench in front of us, in his Saville row suit, his brilliantined hair and neatly trimmed moustache was the very personification of a dapper fashion-conscious man of the 1960’s. Were we in a time warp? Was this the very embodiment of where the post Maralinga experiment with nuclear fission headed after the heady days of the 1950’s. We didn’t care, the Roto-dyne was taking us away, wiping the slate clean. No more the prawns of Sophie and Dutto, nor the play-things of Julian and ‘Benny-Boy’, we really were free, and flying. As angels do on wings lightly bathed in the ethereal glow of benediction. For once, we were the anointed ones and we didn’t care whether the bloke in front of us was who he said he was or just another of Angus Taylors flunkies..
‘Ya know’, Terry passed us another round of Camels, ‘I was once an engineer who worked on the Roto-dyne, and I gotta say the idea was sound, to provide a hybrid between a helicopter and a plane, and it surprised me the idea never really took off, excuse the pun’.
‘Why’s that’? Quent asked,
‘Well you see the niche market was not really there. It was an interim for intercity flight, and assumed that everyone would like the convenience of not having to go through the airport. You could just literally hop on, and hop off, but I think it never really grafted because it was expensive and people actually liked going to the airport’.
‘What’? Ces expired; ‘and going through all that rigamarole of passport inspection, baggage line- up and shit food’?
‘Yes, people associated airports with the Peter Stuyvesant advert lifestyle, whereas just going down the street and jumping on an Roto-dyne wasn’t considered jet-setting enough, and besides even in the Australian perspective, there’s nothing really all that EXCITING about hopping on in Melbourne and ending up in Geelong, Ballarat or Traralgon. It’s just not that sexy as an idea’. We all looked at Clifford, clearly no one had told him. ‘But that means this Roto-dyne aint gonna take us to Pommy-land or wherever Cliffy is supposed to come from. It’s a much shorter destination and from here? Where the fuck could he be taking us if it’s only a short hop. Alice Springs? Coober Pedy? I mean,. this is a pretty big rig, and it’d stick out like dogs balls, and if its top secret and MI 5 it’s a bit bloody obvious’!
Ces took the bull by the horns,, and tapping Clifford politely on the shoulder said, ‘Excuse I mate, but where might we be heading’? Clifford turned towards us, and replied mechanically; ‘I’m afraid that’s classified information, suffice to say you are now officially on Her Majesty’s Secret Service’.
Rotodyne passes the Allen’s sweet factory
We looked at each other. OHMSS, what could be more old school. ‘Well bugger me’! Ces replied, ‘and I spose you’re gonna do the full James Bond and take off in a jet pack”? Clifford smiled thinly, and pretended not to hear, cept to say; “all in good time, all in good time’.
What was Clifford on about? Was this for real? What’s a Roto-dyne in the outback got to do with the price of fish in India? What is the price of fish in India? Find out in the next aerodynamically nuanced episode, “An Roto-dyne is fine for a short hop across the Rhine” or ‘A rotor short of the turbine’.