Dear readership,
The Glorious’s end wasn’t all that Glorious!
Glad, we use the term ‘readership”! Cos the stuff coming out of ‘Camp Rolfe’, (formerly ‘Yuendumu’) is like a great Ship of State.
It’s lofty, glorious, and like the mighty battleship converted to an aircraft carrier, we hope that this glory does not go the way of HMS Glorious, cruelly sunk ‘by gunfire’ by The ‘Scharnhorst’ and the ‘Gneisenau’ off the coast of Norway. If you’ve forgotten about that fateful day in 1940 you can see it recorded on Youtube.
An aircraft carrier sunk by battleships? You may ask; ‘How could that be’? Well, it’s as silly as waiting thirty years for a submarine. That’s what the AWK-WARD treaty is all about. And we’re told that by going nuclear we’ll be SAFE! As safe as we were when the mighty 15 inch guns installed at Singapore, protected us from invasion from the Japanese.
But don’t let us caution you about subs, here’s another one from Frank and it comes with a sub-text.
But it sank well!
Amici,
I’ve received quite a bit of feedback resulting from the Dispatches surge. The Dispatchee who suggested I should stop whingeing was cause for introspection and it was most timely that the Warlpiri Encyclopaedic Dictionary launch came along to cheer me up. I was able to share and spread some joy. I promise to be on the lookout for more positive stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo&t=5s
The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau weren’t bad ships either. Till they SANK!
After I published My Yuendumu Story many readers told me they’d like to read more about my parents and my pre-Yuendumu existence. I’m working on that.
From the draft of My Yuendumu Story continued (Ngaju-nyangu Yurntumu-kurlu jaru-kari):
My father spent much of his life with a straight face, a glint in his eyes, and his tongue firmly in his cheek. Much of what is in this book was written with my inherited sardonicism and appreciation of irony. For me, Yuendumu is a great place to be, because so much weird and farcical stuff happens here, most of it instigated by intellectual pygmies from the outside world.
The first FOUR AUK-WARD Treaty subs for AWSTRALIA, from r to l; HMAS, ‘Feeble, Fumble, Feckless and Inappropriate touching’
I try to stay at the irony end of the ironic/cynical continuum. I have also been asked the reason for the exponential growth in the frequency of Dispatches. It isn’t that I’m trying to keep up with interest hikes. In the past the Dispatches have been most irregular and opportunistic. Something crazy happens and a Dispatch pops into my head. The reason for the current explosion, is that there has been a crescendo in bizarre and insane happenings in the world and Yuendumu.
Last century I obtained an Osborne computer. It had 64KB of RAM and two floppy disks of 360KB each. I thought it was Christmas. I am glad though that I didn’t order it for delivery in 2023 at a mere $1bn. It is now completely obsolete. Why does this make me think of nuclear powered submarines?
The Mighty Guns at SINGAPORE!
In Yuendumu it will be three years of hand-wringing after a young man had three bullets pumped into his chest before a report is presented which will have recommendations on how to prevent such from happening again. We already have been given an answer. I may have already told you. They have created the Community Resilience and Engagement Command with its own acronym CREC. Can’t wait to see it in action.
A couple of days ago I ran into a friend in Alice Springs who’d worked in Yuendumu as a mechanic. I told him I’d just launched a Dispatch into cyberspace on the topical topic of submarines. I told him I’d used the Yellow Submarine song. Almost like that song had been written for my future use. My friend immediately proclaimed that the song was only waiting for this moment to arise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWy4JSFFuUI
Ciao,
Francesco
And one more (from my childhood):
Mighty Air Protection over Singapore. Which failed.
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