We return to where we left off, with our heroes including the dubious duo of Benny Boy Roberts Smith and his sidekick Julian Assange. As Ces, Terry and Quent try one last desperate strategy to get Gina and her cronies, Nev, Clifford and Brenny off their backs whilst extricating themselves by the biggest crime gang in the business, the ‘Windsors’.

Will their desperate subterfuge work? Can they hide the gold as a very ordinary counterweight, fake the replacement bullion and paint them in Gina’s very own gold leaf so that their nemesis may never know?  Could be almost night impossible, as difficult as getting affair wage increase from the Fair Work Commission, or worse still, getting a fair hearing as a whistle-blower for the ATO?

Is their goose cooked or are they just stuffing for Christmas?  Find out in this next compelling episode; ‘Don’t come the raw prawn on Gina, cos she hates seafood’ or; ‘Three tickets to nowhere if it’s a jet star flight outta Kalgoorlie’.

 

Things were grim. WE had scarcely hours in the morning to melt the gold ingots, replace them with painted lead copies and reinstall the counterweight as a grey painted slab of gold. WE needed time, we had precious little time, and were old enough to remember when once the Australian public yearned for change. When the slogan; ‘IT’S TIME’ held a strange and surreal irony.

We cast our minds to happier times and finding release, of an emotional kind we busied ourselves with the task at hand whilst whistling the stirring melody of “Two little Boys’’. Benny-Boy leading on the finer trills and arpeggios with the harmonica he’d kept from Afghan days. We silently acknowledged the genius of Rolf as a true leader of men and an inspiration for those caught by force of circumstance in a tight spot!

 

 

“So c’mon then’!

Ces was like a circus MC directing Benny Boy and Julian to the counterweight. ‘And youse’!

He pointed to Terry and Ces; ‘help me with this burner and these gas bottles we’ll need to have this melted and recast in a jiffy’! And with that, anxiously scanning the horizon he realised that just the faint hum of those twin inline Gypsy’s would sound the death knell. We had to get the gold melted and cast before midday at the latest.  It was gonna be a titanic struggle, but we were used to it, we’d done work experience with Clive Palmer.

 

Whilst we busied ourselves setting up the burners and preparing to melt the gold ingots, we could see Ces at work making the mould for the ingots. With expert dexterity, (he’d done work experience for Angus Taylor) he knew just how much clay was required, the right temperature for a successful melt.  And with tin snips and a few metres of corrugated iron he had fashioned a sluice and converter to convey the ingots once melted into his own little pile of crafted moulds. It was a miracle of time and efficiency that would rival a national growth initiative like the NBN, the Inland Rail, Nuclear Submarines, or funding requirements for the NDIS. He clearly knew about logistics. ‘Hurry up, I’ve got the moulds ready’!

We stood with eyes bulging for in scarcely an hour he had forty little ingot moulds lined up ready for the pour. “Now get that burner real HOT’! And with a flick of the hand, he tossed the first of the ingots to Terry who slapped it on the converted barby, and before it had cooled sluiced it into the big mould that would resemble the counterweight.

 

Meanwhile Benny Boy and Julian were breaking down the counterweight. We noticed that Julian did nothing. Clearly, he’d been an IT manager at some stage in his life, whilst Benny cut and sliced at the lead weight as if it were cheese. ‘Ready for this un’, he wiped his brow. “Great work Benny’! Ces smiled and realised that he was safe with such courage and indefatigable perseverance. ‘Too right’! Benny retorted, and with that started the burn.

 

In scarcely an hour we watched as the ingots cooled in the great vessel crafted from sheet metal and awaited a coat of grey paint. Whilst the ingots, all melted had been replaced by lead ingots, indistinguishable for the gold ingots once Terry had slapped on the gold leaf paint.

 

Before midday we stood admiring the handiwork and reflectively Benny Boy said; ‘Yep they’ll be none the wiser’. As Benny said it, we could see a snigger on his square jawed warrior face that suggested some inner joke. His revenge against the establishment? A reflection upon the snidger times had at the Fat lady’s Arms? We could only guess. We rejoiced in the job done and still no sign of the de Havilland Dragon rapide.  ‘Well done boys’! Benny rejoiced and, in that instant, we noticed a change in his countenance. ‘Thanks for the ride boys’! And with that, he strolled to the land cruiser, flicked the ignition and was off.

WE stood alone, we looked at each other, and realised we’d been had. Both Benny and Julian had done a bunk! And left us in the lurch, to carry the can. We looked at the other land cruiser its missing wheels a reminder that we’d rendered it unserviceable, and the ingots, the lead ingots neatly stacked in the tray.

‘Well’, Terry chipped in, ‘fancy another Camel’? We all took several each, smoked reflectively and only then did we become aware that a shrill high-pitched noise was becoming progressively louder. Quent pointed to the horizon, ‘look over there’! And sure enough it was not the Rapide, but something much larger, and noisier heading our way, it was the Rotodyne.  This was serious, would we have to hide? Was there anywhere left to run?  Or had we just run out?  Find out in the next compelling episode;

“A Rotodyne and a stitch in time”, or

‘The wasteland beckons, or, is it just the wastepaper basket for wasted wastrels’?