This episode of pcbycp is bought to you by Bex powders, for a whiter than white pain relief in any track and field event at the Commonwealth Games

With a crushing irony our heroes find themselves stuck in Maralinga again.

And it’s just not funny. Not as funny as the Submarine contract, nor the funding rorts to National party electorates by the former Coalition government. Nor as side- splittingly funny as pre- selection and funding scandals in the Victorian branch of the Liberal party. Nor even as funny as the trials and tribulations of Julian Assange. This is a true story of intrigue and espionage at the highest level. Even for writing about this we run the risk of being arrested and held without charge in a facility designed to keep people quiet for the public good.  Whichever way they, (our heroes) turn they find themselves countered by evil forces determined to thwart their every move and frustrate them in their efforts to track down just who it was who so heinously defiled their tea- lady Ms Culthorpe as an intern in our nation’s parliament.

Chesty Bond. Australia’s official mascot for the 2022 Birmingham Games.

And with Brendan Nelson, the acclaimed CEO of Australia most sacred temple, the Australian War Memorial stuck headfirst in the turret of an abandoned Centurion tank, they know they only have moments.  The deadly peril that has haunted them ever since they made an innocent enquiry to the Nation’s parliament will return, and each time more villainous and more determined to knock the trio off.

Are they truly free? What chance have they got? Will they inspire us as the Zimbabwe synchronised swimming team goes down heroically in the Manchester Commonwealth Games?  Can they be as relevant as the Commonwealth Games in maintaining a sense of freedom and identity the world over? Will they be able to make a fist of it in the men’s doubles as Trinidad must, or the pentathlon as St Kitts must to prove they are of imperial metal and the right stuff? Can they ever be as profound an influence for good, fair play and integrity as the Commonwealth Games in which rich former colonial powers become SUPERPOWERS against the arrayed teams who come from less fortunate places and haven’t been anointed by Bex powder and CSR?

Australian team towels and toiletries sponsored by CSR! For a WHITER than WHITE CLEAN!

Only time can tell, and its ticking.  And though it ticks for our heroes, it may never tick down on the true importance and standing of the Commonwealth Nations as truly relevant in the modern era. Just as slaves in the Ptolomeiac era, celebrated by not being beaten so often by their patrician masters*. 

• (Herodotus. Essays c.435 B.C. ‘How I rejected the pentathalon and discovered Amway’)

‘I dunno’. Quent mused, ‘it’s a pity to just leave Brendan in the tank, stuck like that. I think he deserves a chance.

Though he can’t be trusted like Alexander Downer with the East Timorese to be fair- minded, he’s really just a victim of the system. I mean he’d been coerced by Gina and Kerry to have us knocked off. But you could see like the game keeper who was entrusted by the wicked witch to knock off Snow White his heart wasn’t in it’.

Australia’s wins GOLD AGAIN in the legendary Commonwealth Games Incarceration Event!

The three of them mulled over the fate of Snow White, and wondered amongst themselves who’d be a suitable stand in for Dopey, Sneezey or Doc? It was Quent who seized the initiative.

‘Yeah but that doesn’t make him any better, I mean, he was still gonna go along with it as their stooge, and in the end he was only interested in us as tools’. They thought about this, and in this moment of deep reflection, with the faint murmur of Brendan’s discomfort echoing across the parched tarmac, it was Terry who proposed a plan of action. ‘Want another camel’? And they all seized a camel and puffed away in deep thought. ‘Ya know’, Terry said; ‘he may be a little lick-spittle turd, but knocking him off makes us no better, and it’d be a pity after all we’ve been through to find ourselves to be no better than the so called oppressors. He’s silly, pretentious a bum-whipe and harmless, and without little sycophants like him who’s gonna keep the turn-styles ticking? There’s always gonna be one amongst us who wants to be the gas- fitter, the hang- man, the electricians apprentice, cos the money’s guaranteed, and they don’t have to lie awake at night worrying about the rent and the electricity bill’.

Interior of a sugar refinery, 2022, Sugar being refined and converted into ” Sweet shells” that will be fired into Russian lines along Crimean frontier to induce dental decay for front line Russian troops. AWM official photo.

You’re right, shall we let him go’?

‘Yeah, but nah but, haven’t you forgotten the other little problem? Such as’? Quent replied wearily, ‘We’ve still got Julian and Benny Boy, we have no idea when they might just pop up and we’re back to square one, with everyone trying to knock us off’!

So ensued another stunned silence, and then it occurred to them, the only person who could save them was stuck in the turret of the Centurion. “It looks like we may have a chance, and with a bit of coercion Brendan may just be the one who’ll save us’?

They all took time to think, they could hear the yelling getting softer as Brendan resigned himself to being entombed. ‘You know if we can get away in the rapide, before Gina and Nev find out, we might just be able to let Brendan go, and do it in such a way that he won’t be coming with us…or we drop Brendan off with Gina and Nev and take the rapide, or’?

We all agreed, we would show compassion, and in doing so elevate ourselves into a state of nobility, and perhaps we might get just a little information out of Brendan before we left. It was a chance, but just like the much-anticipated efforts of Botswana in the Alpine skiing comp at the Manchester Commonwealth Games we knew there was a chance.

And one way or another Brendan was going to be our saviour.

The Commonwealth games? An event in search of a logo.

Can Brendan save our heroes? Can God save our Queen? Find out in our next transformative episode ‘Brendan’s benighted bed- fellows’, or ‘Flight of the Phoney Phoenix”.