The ‘eastern front’ also used to look a bit like this…
The Eastern front used to look a bit like this….
currently the Eastern Front looks a lot like this….
Incredibly, our heroes are still alive, and by any yardstick of human measurement, they’re doing pretty well. Better than a front line Ukranian conscript on the Eastern Front. (Actually depending on an individuals eastern front perspective, for a Russian, the eastern front is actually the western front, but for the Ukrainian, they must share the sangfroid of being mixed up with past exploits by the armies, of Germany, France and Sweden, which is not much help on a batting average perspective). But, they are doing better than both Julian and ‘Benny-boy’, who seem to have fatefully served their nation by blowing themselves up in a Centurion Tank equipped with Lucas electrics. As to whether the Lucas electrics actually were responsible for the tanks immolation remains unresolved until the findings of the coroner’s report. And as the ‘accident’ took place in the wastelands of Maralinga, like Afghanistan and the general absence of coroners, there will be no report, which will save on red- tape and the burden of administrative costs.
On a Roto-dyne bound for who knows where, our heroes find themselves in the lap of the gods. But which Gods? Benign ones or angry ones, in Clifford the well-presented man from Mi6 it’s still too early to tell.
Retreat from Moscow! Another eastern front kinda experience
Ces flags down a de Havilland dragon rapide, in olden days it was like hitch-hiking, with no hitches.
‘Look out the window Ces’, Terry pointed out the window and to Ces’s surprise flying level with us in the Roto-dyne a De Havilland Dragon rapide. ‘I don’t believe it, one moment were flying with an antique from the 1960’s and you look out the window and it’s an antique from the 1940’s. Ces looked stunned, this is something out of a Chip’s Rafferty movie, next we’ll be seeing a flight of Sopwith camel’s or worse still a Focker’! What like that’? And Terry, lighting up another Camel as he did so, (because dear reader all aircraft before the 1980’s even hydrogen filled dirigibles all encouraged smoking) and sure enough spinning and carousing on our starboard quarter a Focker triplane weaved its way into view. For a moment Ces flinched, thinking that the Rotodyne would be a perfect target for the twin Spandau’s but realising this was some theatrical trick relaxed and said resignedly, ‘ well that takes the cake, and I suppose all we have top do is ask Clifford here what the game is, and we’ can all have a good laugh. Excuse I Cliff, what’s this with the flying circus, anything to do with your Majesty’s secret service’? To whit, to Ces’s frustration, he replied; ‘all will be revealed in good time’, and just settled back to being wooden and impenetrable. ‘I’ll be buggered’! Ces expired. ‘It’s like dealing with our mates in Asio. It’s all invisible ink, secret handshake’s and bugging devices, you just cant get through to them, and in the end you wonder if they’re HUMAN’! Just as Ces made this last utterance in passion the note of the Roto-dyne turbine changed to a lower pitch, and we could sense that it was descending. Which could either mean one thing, we were about to land, or perhaps the ancient relic had given up the ghost. We checked to see what was happening outside and the rapide, and the Focker still trailed us… we were in company of sorts and just resigned ourselves to the inevitable.
A Focker DV V11 with a Sopwith. On loan from the AWM historic ‘aeroplanes that done good for ANZACKERY’ exhibition.
We’ve received quite a bit of interest in the Roto-dyne, particularly members of the Defense Establishment who are interested in purchasing any ‘spare’ Rotodynes we might have hanging about for use in forward defense of our northern shores. We forwarded their enquiry to the same task-force who were busy adapting the French Submarines and Australia’s Space Agency. Image depicted Rotodyne leaving Essendon Airport, prior to arrival of Beat- group “les Beatles’ c. 1964.
Below us a lone homestead, on its roof stencilled in sun drenched “Barnaby Downs”, and an airstrip. A few sheds, a water tank and a couple of trees. “Barnaby Downs’ Quent, ever heard of it? Nup, reckon we must’ve flown into Western Australia, there’s quite a few big cattle stations out this way, but I reckon, taking a view of the desert it’d be about one ewe per hundred acres. This is not prime country, it’s just rooted’. The Roto-dyne circled, and we watched the Dragon rapide and the Focker triplane land, and then taxi to a lone hangar. From several thousand feet we espied a few older land rovers and a truck, and a few people who seemed to be wearing standard issue safari suits from the 1970’s. ‘A reception party of sorts’, murmured Ces. ‘Do you know anything about this Cliffy’? Ces cleverly decided to use the pejorative and over- familiar term ‘Cliffy’ to ruffle the MI 6 man’s feathers. But he was as unruffled as a stuffed DODO. ‘ All in good time, all in good time’. Ces wouldn’t have a bar of it; ‘ Jeez Cliff for a pommy bastard your surely an engaging conversationalist. Have you got anything to say other than all in good time. I mean are you, or are you not a robot’?
‘Barnaby Downs’, a bit like Don Dale without the high security to keep “clients’ safe.
Cliffy just smiled in an oblique way and replied almost facetiously, ‘affirmative, I am not a robot’, just a servant of Her Majesty’s government’.
‘I’ll be buggered’, Ces fumed; ‘he’s about as talkative as Prince Andrew post interview, we’ll get nothing out of him’. The Rotodyne plunged earthward. The rotors began to slow. And before the four pneumatically and hydraulically augmented stabilisers deployed fully we hit the ground with a steadying ‘Ker-plop’. The engines cut, the rotors slowed to a lazy orbit and we sat stock still watching Clifford, the uncommunicative pom and the group of individuals across the tarmac who seemed to be a welcoming committee of sorts. ‘I don’t like the look of this Quent’, Ces muttered. ‘Nor I, fancy another Camel’? Terry enthused, and realising that once again, all was not right, we eagerly clutched a Camel and lit up. ‘One last smoke before the final curtain’, Terry quipped, and looking across the tarmac, Quent opined; ‘but not till the fat lady sings’!, For sure enough, in the haze, diffused by distance we espied a fat lady dressed in jodhpurs, a broad Akubra, a tweed jacket and riding boots, in her hand a riding crop the other a whip. Who was this? An apparition? A figure from the dark side? Quent gasped, ‘GINA’! And for a moment, our world collapsed.
Gina, more front than the Eastern Front.
Will this be the ‘Gina’ we think it could be? Or are there more than one Gina in W.A? Could it be Gina Lollobrigida? Or Gina of another kind? Which Gina, but we know there is only one Gina in WA, the Colossus of Great Boulder, the one and only Gina Rinehart, (nee Hancock). Clifford unbuckled himself and opened the door, and without batting an eyelid, ‘this way’, we shuffled off into the blinding sun.
What sort of a greeting awaits our heroes? Will it be the kind reserved for members of the Uighur community, or just the one reserved for ordinary refugees? Find out in this next Pilbara inspired adventure, “ Woodside, Our- side and cover a Backside” or, “ Gina’s last stand will not be a head stand’…… Or ‘Entertaining Gina’?