Poor Mrs Culthorpe, since she took on the internship she’s never been the same!
Dear reader, we head off where we left up, as our heroes are escorted by arguably Australia’s “greatest ever” soldier to Maralinga and find themselves creeping into an underground bunker to meet the ‘BIG G’.
Will they ever get to the bottom of who defiled Mrs Culthorpe our Parliamentary intern? Is there hope that the Minster setting up the high-level enquiry into sexual harassment and misconduct of a puerile and prurient nature of anything on two legs not physically bolted down to the floor of Parliament is none other than the Rt. Hon. Barnaby Trump? Upholder of Christian virtue and family values the length and breadth of his former Brisbane accountancy office?
Will this meeting with Australia’s richest woman be their last? How can they possibly escape this time? Find out in this compelling episode. Read on…..
Heading the new parliamentary enquiry into ‘Secret Sheilas business’ the Rt. Hon. Barnaby Trump
Down the steps they shuffled, the steps covered in decades of desert sand and dust. Pieces of broken glass underfoot and brushing past dry leathery electrical cable which hung out from the sides of walls. All of it begrimed and pitted with sand and the residue of generations of radio-active bush- flies. Rusted tendrils of reinforcing fingered the dry dusty air with a maniacal intensity. It was all dust and sand, and for our heroes came the inescapable feeling that if this were a tomb, they were bound to be the poor bastards destined for the after-life. And not a pyramid to be seen. Nor a Sphinx either. As any egyptologist will tell you; ‘Theyse was Sphinx-tered’!
A rusty door lazily creaked as we shuffled past. An enamel sign, a patina of pock marks and flaking pronounced, ‘Storage Lab’ and , frosted and decorated with stalactites of salt it drooped listlessly. We shuffled past panels corrupted and desiccated like a Coalition’s Climate Policy. On the wall, a calendar proclaimed the year 1952, ‘A Great Year for Australia’ the year we entered the “NUCLEAR AGE”. Just as 2021 will be forever known for the sacred return of Barnaby Trump.
Faded notepaper, broken spandex files and the contents of manilla folders inches deep crunched and crackled underfoot. A frill necked lizard scurried acrosss the debris and found refuge in an inspection pit. We arrived at a other sub level, another sign, “Infection Room”. It instilled a sense of foreboding. Down, down down we went, a pale globe, covered in fly spots the only illumination, and in the distance, down down further still we could hear the static of short wave radio and the buzz of an electric fan. Clearly whatever was going on down here was hot work, and deep within the desert, probably top secret.
At last we came to a steel door, Benny-Boy knocked, and from within, “Bring em in Benny Boy’, a woman’s voice, authoritarian and efficient. Bennie clicked the latch and we were pushed in.
Ben proves no matter what you do as a BIG MAN it’s not the size that counts!
At first we couldn’t see, but as we breathed the sweaty fug of this deeper antechamber our eyes, bleary and encrusted with the early onset of sandy blight blinked incredulously at what lay before us. On one wall, a huge screen detailing global water resources, mineral resources, and areas labelled ‘untapped wealth’. Over each sub-section a table indicated Angus’s stake either as a private citizen, a member of Parliament or in his latest incarnation, as Supreme Commander the Peoples Liberation Army Oceanic Region. Or for those attuned to bureau-speak, “ SCPLAOC”
Wall sized screens of satellite feeds filled the room. Overhead ceiling fans whirred, and row upon row of neon lights flickered whilst insects buzzed between screens and the partitions erected between booths in which specialists studied maps satellite imagery and charts. It was both ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ and something in between. On the far wall a poster of Angus, Australia’s most powerful Minister and ‘Dutto’. Over in the corner, a dusty portrait of the Queen and arguably Australia’s greatest PM “Ever” John Howard. It made one tremble just to see the history, and the reach of little people involved in BIG THINGS. This was the heartbeat of Australia. More-so even than the AWM as the sepulchral centre of Anzackery and EVERYTHING!
And towering above it all the omnipresent spectre of ‘BIG BEN’!
Upholder of family values, the Rt. Hon. Barnaby Trump
Ben our nemesis, and yet fitting the paradox neatly within the grenade sized enigma, our protector. ‘Over here where I can see the bastards’! The voice boomed in command, a voice redolent with the tinge of Pimm’s no 5, Chanel, and a copy of the Winning Post. We shivered in anticipation, the Big G was clearly in charge of everything, including, we turned and saw the shadow looming over us, ‘the Terminator’ himself ‘Big-Ben’.
Upholder of two-tier family values, the Rt. Hon. Barnaby Trump
What will happen to our heroes in the bowels of the earth beneath Maralinga? What frightful fate awaits them? Find out in our next catacombic episode, ‘The bowels of the earth need evacuating’, or…..’Dig ten feet to oblivion and beyond’!