Hi friends,

Often when asked how long I’ve lived in Yuendumu and I answer 43 years, I get a surprised reaction. I detect thought bubbles “he must be fucking mad”, or occasionally “how interesting”.

The fact that all several hundred people over 44 years old that have lived here all their lives can beat that, isn’t part of the thought process. The ‘them and us’ paradigm kicks in and indeed there are no white-fellows (other than Wendy) that have been here that long.

The comment “you must like it here” crops up fairly frequently, to which I invariably answer “Yes I do” and depending on who asks it and how it is asked and what mood I’m in, I may expand on that.

One of Yuendumu’s main attractions to Wendy and I is that you get to meet and interact with many interesting and worthwhile people, not least the Warlpiri locals.

One such interesting and worthwhile person was Japanangka Langdon whose funeral is being held in Yuendumu next Saturday.  Perry died in Darwin hours after being locked up under the NT’s “paperless” arrest laws. In 1975 Japanangka worked at Yuendumu School, in the heady optimistic days when so called ‘bilingual education’ had been first introduced to Yuendumu.  An example of his work :

Ngangkayikirli
Story by Robin Japanangka Granites.
Illustrated by Perry Japanangka Langdon.

On request I’ll send you a copy of the 18 page booklet from CDU’s ‘Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages’ which includes 9 remarkable drawings by the then 18 year old Perry (2MB)

Other such interesting and worthwhile persons were Richard and Carolyn Green. Richard, Carolyn and their filmmaker friend John Davis died in a helicopter crash in the Watagans National Park (NSW) last Saturday.

Richard and Carolyn first refuelled their helicopter in Yuendumu in 2002. There were to be twelve subsequent visits (one by road). On all occasions Richard and Carolyn showed that admirable quality which is expressed in colloquial Australian as “they had no tickets on themselves”. Curious children and others that came to look at their helicopter were greeted with warmth and friendship. Richard and Carolyn were both interesting and interested.

On one occasion Carolyn fell in love with a small dog at Yuendumu airstrip. Subsequently through Warlukurlangu Artists adoption of Millie was arranged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6AZNywvF-s

Richard and Carolyn were Dispatchees and provided feedback on several occasions. Their commitment to the environment prompted Richard to extract and comment on a paragraph from a Dispatch that he found to his liking:

“When those in authority can convincingly assert that we definitely should do nothing to try and save the planet lest it “hurt the economy”, and large section of the public fail to see that the Emperor has no clothes and lives in a house of cards, the inmates are in charge of the asylum. Like MH370, the plot is lost, but unlike MH370 there is no serious effort to find it.

The cart is firmly placed in front of the horse, and the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions”

Richard and Carolyn never lost the plot.

Richard and Carolyn quickly grasped the extent of the grave injustice that is the forced assimilation and denial of rights affecting Aboriginal Australia.

They were good people, and will be missed by the many people they ‘touched’ on their epic journeys through remote and wild Australia.

Their legacy is an incredibly beautiful collection of photographs. http://www.richardgreen.net.au/pages/text_spread/ and the book “Remote and Wild”

(Below is) an example of his work. A photo taken in the Yarunganyi Hills just out of Yuendumu in 2010.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPnhaGWBnys

See ya’s
Frank

Privatisation. profits and profligacy.

Power Couple; Rudd and Rein. Inspecting new unemployed training facility at Fukushima.

Privatisation is still seen as good by government. It’s when a state sells publicly owned assets like electricity, water and transport. It’s a windfall for shareholders, and like electricity the costs just go up and up. Bit like council rates. How else can we pay for that army of highly paid middle managers and senior executives. In the old days it was just a mayor, a town clerk and an engineer. No wonder people were happy then.  But it’s not about happiness. It’s about distribution of wealth. To take a public asset owned by all of us, and give it to a few. And as the experience goes make those few exceedingly wealthy. My favourite example being Mrs Rudd, (Therese Rein) who made a fortune out of turning the dole office into a multi million training scheme to train and train and train for jobs that weren’t there. Both Mr and Mrs Rudd, have made a huge contribution to this country that way. We should thank them for their enterprise.

And the requirement to pay taxes nonexistent!!!

It was announced this week that Chevron’s Australian subsidiary made the handy profit of 1.7 billlion dollars. And paid just $248.00 to the Australian Government. Now that’s just plain silly. Even straight living individuals like our readership would suggest that such action might be considered a little provocative. But provocative or not, Chevron can do it, because they have all sorts of offsets and profit sharing devices that put the money all over the place. Like the increasingly super wealthy, they can really pay whatever tax they like, which is invariably none, and know that on both sides of parliament they will be described not as robbers, cheats usurers or extortionists, but “lifters’ and fine examples of venture, and entrepreneurial wit. We need more like them, because it’s the ‘trickle down effect’ that keeps the rest of us going. It’s a sort of feudalism tempered by greed and a disinterest in what the rest, (the poor) do,  amongst themselves.

Frederico de Montelfeltro. Condottieri (mercenary) Prince. Not the first but one of the more celebrated to convert public assets to private gain. Unofficially known as thug, zealot, and as painting suggests now learned and pious.

The rest are the PAYE workers, those salaried individuals who must survive on what’s left after taxes are removed from their package, They are the people who pay ultimately for the hospitals, infrastructure and education that keeps society functioning. They are the folk who pay Royal Commissioners handsomely to investigate on our behalf, and like the condottieri, ensure that the investigation goes on and on and on. But the simple fact remains, there is an increasing burden falling upon the middle income earners, and the poor. To his credit Malcolm Turnbull is enjoying an “open discussion”. There are two strategies, change the laws that allow kickbacks, sinecures and incentives for the wealthier to pay less tax by socking away their finds into super schemes, wind back the inequities and corruption found in negative gearing, re- calibrate the tax system so the burden is more evenly spread. Or up the GST and ensure that the lowest rung get hung out to dry. My guess is that’s precisely what will happen. We’re a bit like Russia in the 90’s, the “upper echelon” of our society is fast resembling a kleptocracy, and this is early days. Great for fancy car sales, and a boom time for the real drivers of the economy, Real Estate Agents.

Mathew Guy. ‘For the best planning outcomes that BIG money can buy’.

It’s a bit like planning, you now get the planning outcome you can best afford, and with the lowest rungs unable to afford the hefty 1500 dollars a day to defend in VCAT, the big end of town invariably wins. Both sides of politics like this arrangement, because it means they get windfalls from the development industry, and it maintains the status quo. And besides, in case you hadn’t noticed Real Estate is the name of the game in this country. So why worry about stinking profits going offshore, Why worry about the bent money used to fund egregiously ugly and overpriced apartments, and why worry about such preposterous terms as “safety net” and ‘social services’. It’s the flip side of globalism and the lesson should be well learnt by now. It’s the twenty first century mate, and capital has triumphed over labour. And what can you do about it? Go to your local member?. Better still,  talk to your Real Estate Agent, they’re always happy to listen, and at least they don’t pretend to have your interests at heart.

Happy Days in Toytown. Tram conductors unbridled by contemporary public health and safety guidelines demonstrating acceptable forms of ticketing in both winter and summer uniforms.

You see folks the criminalisation of society is like global warming… It’s incipient. You don’t notice much until your feet get wet. The latest modelling indicates that those who live along our expensive shoreline will get quite wet, if they live for another fifty years. The same applies to public transport. The point is, you don’t notice the potential for criminalisation until it’s all over you.

I’ll start at the beginning. B.P (Before privatisation), we had conductors. Excuse me, (for those under forty) a conductor was, (and excuse my bias), a generally cheerful person who would help old ladies get off and on the tram, pull the cord, and possessed a large bag, bit like the ones bookies used to have at picnic races, (another explanation pending) and within the bag they dispensed coins and tickets. The tickets were of paper, and you paid the conductor and when asked, showed him/her the ticket to prove that the transaction had been done. Some conductors were a bit snarly whereas other revelled in the public engagement. Our favourite being ‘’ziggy’, the germanic conductor who would amuse us with tricks, yo yo’s plastic spiders and laughter. He was not a paedophile, and mothers and their children thought it was all good fun.

In the 90’s, the trams and train were privatised. The conductors were killed off. Jeff Kennett, ex premier and until recently chairman of “Beyond Blue” decided that conductors were expensive, and incidentally “unionised”. Unfortunately I cannot talk about the crime of flogging off public assets to corporations, that’ll have to wait till the next instalment. But with the sale, the culture on our public transport system changed. It was no more “Public”, but client placed. And I add, somewhere between serfdom and indentured slave. No more helping the old ladies, no conversation with the conductors on finer points of weather, and footy, and literature. You see some of them were quite well read. But I suppose being, functionaries, and bereft of management qualification they had to go.

Similarly trains had Station Masters. A Station Master was up there in our suburb as a lower caste bank manager. He’d have flags, and toot the whistle, and his office, adjoining the ticket booth always smelt of tobacco, and the form guide. Though you can’t smell the form guide it was pungent, like the front page of the ‘Truth’ in it’s presence of just “being there’. They also, like the conductors wore uniforms, Over-worn uniforms which made me think that perhaps that’s why you didn’t see Station Masters uniforms in the op shop. They just “passed them on” until they were all used up,

The Gestapo, precursor to the PSO. In pursuit of an ‘alleged’ invalid ticket holder. An excellent record on law and order, and public safety.

For a couple of decades we had various forms of ticketing, and the standard was the Metcard, a simple paper ticket that gave you all day or a couple of hours. You could buy one on the tram. Then, came MIKEY. Mikey was our very own system, and it was high tech. So incidentally must have been the salaries of it’s designers. It cost billions, and still aint a patch on the Oyster, But we can proudly claim it as our very own. The trams are now, not so cheerful, Apart from the fact that everyone is looking at their phones, the trams are reminiscent of a forties war movie. The new era “ inspectors”, (that’s ‘Commisar’ in Deutsch) board en masse, and very much in the tradition of the ‘ol Gestapo’, say “ ticket inspection”. Armed with scanners, intercom and very shiny badge, (not quite so nice as the border force, but similar) they scan your ticket. All of this is performed in a uniform of sorts with “authorised officer” emblazoned on the back. It must be boring work, but there are rewards, hence the excitement when they find a ticketless, or expired passenger. Then they are commandeered and led off at the next stop, assumedly for interrogation.

Yuendumu down south. Keeping us all SAFE! Three armed PSO’s interrogating ‘alleged’ passenger for being male and poor.

The much more theatrical officers on the train look just like Gestapo, and walk en masse, like a posse or a gang. They are a bit scarier, but not half as scary as the armed paramilitary PSO’s who man the station at twilight, and look like extras from an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It’s a happy public transport dystopia. It’s all full of fear, and if you step outta line, rather than being asked to get off the tram, or the next station, it’s punishment, and more hefty fines.

If you are well enough off to have a card – credit or debit – that allows you to pay a fine ‘On the Spot’ you only pay around $70, if you are unable to pay on the spot then the cost goes to around $225. And if you can’t pay that… you’ll end up in Chokey. There’s also an absence of laughter. And many new rules that you get fined for. So watch out. Ticketing enforcement is good for the shareholder, and I’d tell you more, but that’s funny business and we know that’s not allowed. And we also know that it must be employing almost, if not more people that used to be occupied by conductors and their ilk. It’s a union of sorts, but happily, union free. And isn’t that the point of it all.

The old Yuendumu Police Station. Almost quaint in hindsight.

Dear reader , welcome to part two of “Crime”.

Department of Infrastructure heads, (Justice Division) examining a model of the new seven million dollar police facility at Yuendumu.

As you may well know, the catalyst for this blog, was a journey made to Yuendumu way back in 2013. It really was a journey into the heart of darkness. It revealed that being a male aboriginal, post “the intervention” implied frequent, and unremitting bouts of incarceration. Indeed to our thinking, (and our northern correspondent will corroborate) with the new seven million dollar police facility at Yuendumu, we now have a bold and brave new stronger future, in which the entire male population can rest assured with some certainty that at some stage in their brief lives they will be incarcerated, once, twice, or as many times as you like. And the process is breathtakingly efficient. It’s just an index of how efficient things get when you’ve got a wonderful merger between the public institutions of justice, and investment in private prisons. It’s a growth industry that’s unstoppable, and the reason why? The general (crime-fearing) public seem to like it, and It’s good for business.

Artists impression of the new Police and Community Justice law Enforcement Facility almost completed at Yuendumu. Apparently, (Architects design response) this structure is also ‘visible from the moon’. And features unique, ” Australia is open for business” rooftop signage.

And that’s why you can be criminalised nowadays, quite readily for all sorts of things that legislators never thought about only a few decades ago. There are so many new ways to end up in chokey. You can do it generally speaking for non payment of fines. There are so many new categories for fining the citizenry. Up north it’s just banal. Parking, unroadwothy, passenger behaviour, dirty windscreen, etc, etc.. indeed all the things that the white folks, “on the other side of the fence” (pastoralists) wont get pinged for, because their unroadworthy vehicles are legitimately assisting in ‘opening up the north’ to agriculture. The favourite being DWB, “Driving whilst Black”. It’s a banality of non-evil. Almost a banality of banality itself.

Governments like being tough on crime. I wont bore you with the offences that’ll end you up in chokey, but like our North American allies, we seem to be catching up and surpassing them in our criminalisation of “natives”. And who said justice was “colour-blind’?

Troublemakers and malcontents who don’t want to make Australia ‘SAFE’!!

So flummoxed, gob-smacked, and incredulous at the stupidity of using such a blunt instrument of “control” we felt that if we didn’t do something about this proliferation of the criminalisation of society, these measures unchecked, (because they’re great for business) would be meted out to us folks down south. Indeed, they, (the police) are fining people for the heinous crime of “jaywalking” in Melbourne right now. That is already happening, and it was with some chagrin that we missed the random “herding”, and incarceration of “offenders” during the much anticipated and cancelled attempt by “Border Force” to make us ‘SAFE’.

Though we missed “the great roundup” in Melbourne, we can thankfully say that no such hindrance is encountered in our northern outpost, (not Darwin silly) Nauru. There we have a braver new world. We have all these “illegals”, branded such by the fact that there’s quite a few people (we’re not keen on) with no MONEY who would like to come here. No such restrictions apply if you’ve got tons of the stuff. Crime and poverty are axiomatic.   And the government, (of both persuasions) would like to demonstrate that our policy of meting out punishment to those whose crime is poverty and hope is a message that rings loud and clear. Australia is incidentally “OPEN FOR BUSINESS”!!

Impecunious ‘Illegals’ who just don’t understand the “Open for Business” model. And incidentally should be punished for poor grammar. (Ed.)

Coupled with this is the recent decision to incarcerate these “illegals” with real criminals. Now this is a new highpoint for efficiencies. We, (the ordinary citizenry) have been hearing about the consequences of “hardened criminals” going on the rampage. We are not told about what is going on, because the government and the private operators, remind us that it’s not really in our interests to know what is happening on “Devils Island” because they’re all “illegals”, and ‘non-citizens’. That’s code for ‘non-people’.

Apparently this may damage our prospects in gaining a foothold with the U.N on a nebulous committee of some sort. It’s very confusing. Because we’re keen to let the world know that we hold a strong position on “Human Rights”. And that’s the problem with the rest of the world. They just don’t understand “crime” in Australia. And quite frankly it’s none of their BUSINESS!!

My friend tells me that good art explores ambiguity.

Twenty-seven

A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no sips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefor the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called “following the light”

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man’s charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.

From Lao Tsu “Tao Te Ching” translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.  Vintage books 1972

This Dispatch was originally distributed 25 January 2013.  The post has been edited.

In David Hill’s book ‘The Great Race’ (The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia), the French explorer Baudin is quoted in a letter to his friend Governor Phillip (who apparently was fluent in French) as follows:

“…I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part of Europeans in seizing, in the name of their governments, a land seen for the first time, when it is inhabited by men who have not always deserved the title of savages or cannibals that has freely been given them; whereas they were still only children of nature and just as your Scotch Highlanders or our Breton peasants, etc. who, if they do not eat their fellow men, are just as objectionable.

From this it appears to me that it would be infinitely more glorious for your nation, as for mine, to mould for society the inhabitants of its own country over whom it has rights, rather than wishing to occupy itself with the improvement of those who are far removed from it (my emphasis) by beginning with seizing the soil which belongs to them and which saw their birth…” (Nov. 1802)

Two hundred and ten years later Dr. Gary Johns, former president of the now defunct Bennelong Society (a right wing assimilationist think tank) wrote an article in which he seeks to occupy himself with the improvement of those who are far removed from him.

Things can only get better….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIj-6fr2SlI

Dr. Johns’ article reviews Stephanie Jarrett’s soon to be released book ‘Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence’. Some shocking statistics are presented which lead Ms. Jarrett to the conclusion that the best option for Australian Aborigines to avoid or reduce violence is to move to the metropolitan areas and join the mainstream.

Living in the mainstream…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jwxy4Z27-U

Using the same logic … non sequitur cause and effect… I conclude from the statistics presented in the article that non Indigenous Australians would also improve their safety by returning to the cities. Remote Australia would once again become ‘Terra Nullius’.

I furthermore conclude that an even better option for Indigenous Australians is to all move to Afghanistan where to the best of my knowledge not a single Australian Aborigine has been hospitalised as a result of violence.

All of this of course is nonsense. I don’t know what Gary Johns’ doctorate is in (basket weaving?) but statistics and logic certainly seem to have been lacking in his education. Both Gary & Stephanie appear to have a poor grasp of the principles of… cause and effect… and of justice and fairness.

Blind eyes of justice,
Deaf ears of power
Dumb moves of money
Left us in a desperate hour
Is this the final solution?

Revolution by Dr. John….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TW-nECJYqQ

Oops wrong Doctor!

European ‘culture’ in fairly recent times gave us the Holocaust, two world wars and many other calamities. It will be a sad day when the multi-faceted European Culture that gave us so many wonders, is judged solely by its abominations.

Equally sad is the day when remote Aboriginal Australia is judged solely on stereotypes and stigmatisation derived from politically opportunistic spin and the dishonest or incompetent use of statistics and from general ignorance.

That day is already here.

As observed by us in Yuendumu, most of the lateral violence, hospitalisations, homicides etc. occur in places like Alice Springs. Attention is focused on the violence per se; not enough serious effort goes into researching the causes of violence. I suspect that disempowerment and dispossession has a fair bit to do with it. Pushing people away from the bush is definitely not the answer, the reverse is probably true. Blaming all anti-social behaviour to alleged inherent violence in an unchanging 40,000 year old culture is simplistic and false. As  Baudin said all that time ago  “…I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part Europeans…” about the then land grab. His words are applicable to the treatment of Aborigines today. We are seeing the final stages of the land grab.

As Rosalie Kunoth-Monks said: “There is no Aboriginal Problem in Australia, only a ‘white-fellow’ problem”

A good friend of mine sends me books by Eduardo Galeano, who has become my favourite Latin-American writer. He specializes in vignettes.

One such has a small list of graffiti:

The words of the prophets are written on the subway wall…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VflKiZzb4h4 

“ ¡ Basta de hechos! … ¡ Queremos promesas ! “
(No more deeds!, we want promises!)

A bientot!

François

Sir Cloudseley Logue-Splitterre responds to Sir Atney’s spiffing argument

My dear Sir Atney,

Sir Cloudsley. Upon realising that he may be stuck in the antipodes as the last of his breed.

Well put Sir, very well put. Couldn’t have expressed it better myself. However out of all this arises a paradoxical paradox.

Shopkeepers hereabouts, Liberal voters to a man, took considerable umbrage recently when the newly installed Victorian Labor Premier declared Tony Abbott Day a public holiday. Flaring, flouncing and fit to be tied our local shopkeepers railed explosively against this new official day off, held public meetings and declared that they simply couldn’t support the notion  of being required to pay their staff double time for yet another public holiday. In protest half of the local stores shut their doors on the day.
The holiday making public however, unaware of these financial considerations, from all points of the compass, carpayed the old diem, crammed into charabancs,  and flocked to Mansfield in droves. The shut shops suffered. Dismayed and bewildered tourists could be seen gazing blankly at locked doors. Too late the owners wrung their hands, decided to open after all and rang for staffing reinforcements. The reinforcements were nowhere to be seen. Unforgivably, (and utterly disloyally) they had taken the day off and simply weren’t available. The owners, panicking, watching the profits slide away, threw their doors open any way and the tourists flocked in. They flocked out again when there was no one to serve them.

I honestly feel that our shop owners do, however, have a point. Making a living is difficult at the best of times, so the more of these public holidays we can eliminate, the better.

Her Majesty. After digital examination of prized, overweight, constipated corgi, (“Fergie”) holds royal finger as evidence that her pedigree, (the Corgi’s) is unblemished. Order restored.

I therefore suggest, in this safe Liberal seat, that we take our courage in both hands, take a deep breath and eliminate the Queen’s Birthday holiday. If Her Majesty was only made aware of how her birthday was being used to cruelly contribute to the wholesale financial exploitation of Mansfield shop owners then she would not hesitate to act.

She would do this because the Queen is nothing if not an honourable woman, She would do this because she has only the interests of the community, (and her fellow Australians) at heart.

Finally, she would do this because she is in the end Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth 11, God Bless Her.

Sir Cloudseley Logue-Splitterre

After which I.M.A. Purled commented thus

My dear Seurat-Knee,

Sadly, we all noticed your little foe-paw concerning par-ven-noose instead of par-ven-knew, May I. to save your blushes and avoid further embarrassment, suggest the much more easily accommodated ‘Arriviste’ which the more easily trips off the Biro whilst one is in the grip of the creative vision thing.
Aware of your local hostelry habit and your penchant for mixing with coarse artisans and the like, I expect you confused ‘Parvenues’ (sic) with your local saloon bar menu ‘Parma News’ and this is how the confusion arose.

Naturally, I prefer to think of you in less humble surroundings. I see you teeing off with the best of them on top quality golf courses where ‘par venues’ are de rigueur. and only the very best may gain membership. This might constitute a more acceptable explanation.

‘men of questionable standing’. (Not the author).

Finally, there are those places where, God help us, gentlemen of questionable standing assemble in order to pay to press their eye to a ladies changing room knothole.

Need I say more? These are commonly referred to as ‘perve venues’ but I hardly think that a man of your reputation and breeding would lower himself to a knothole. Surely not, as this leaves one’s rear flanks dangerously exposed.

Bated breath here, my dear chap, bated breath,

I.M.A. Purled.

Dear reader, we are deeply disturbed by the current drift towards mild mannered republicanism under the auspices of Turnbullism. As a counter, we are deeply and profoundly impressed with this piece from our ‘Royal Correspondent’, Sir Atney Eames, (K.G. Q.C.OBE. M.C.OBE. V.D (and bar). Sadly for the majority of our readership, anticipating the telegram from Buckingham Palace, or Kiribilli they’ll just have to emigrate to New Zealand.

Sir Atney writes’

Shocked…. Absolutely outraged, is what I am!

Phil the Greek. In response to the question; ‘Is there intelligent life in the Antipodes’?

Unbelievably, that jacobite parvenue Malcolm Turnbull has just swept Australia’s knighthoods and damehoods right off the table.

Straightaway, our putschist PM utterly trashed the value of the knighthood granted as a spontaneous gesture of fealty to Philip, Prince of Greece, Denmark, Great Britain and British Occupied Ireland – and, only recently, also Knight of Australia. Talk about Lazy Majesty!

[EDITOR: shouldn’t that be ‘Lèse-Majesté’?]

It will be the coiffed and pomaded heads of we monarchists next, so prepare yourself for the ominous rumble of Turnbull’s tumbrils, ferrying the well-born condemned to the Guilotine.

‘How can ordinary Australians know who to look up to’?. A lachrymose Prince Charles learning that Tony Abbott will not be contributing any more new material for Goon Show Scripts.

Now, how can ordinary Australians know who to look up to? Where might they identify their betters with the least certainty?

And how are we to recognise and reward the inestimable contributions made by senior bureaucrats, the steady hands in our corporate boardrooms, those uncomplainingly dedicated to the promethean toils entailed in sitting on QANGO committees?

Where, indeed, are we to find worthy patrons to head our charities and public bodies: the Federation of Lawn Bowls Associations, the Royal Australasian Association of Proctologists, and the like?

Profound beauty. A leaf from the David Flint Scrapbook, (pages stuck together). Incontinental Drift. What Australia has almost lost. The cost INSURMOUNTABLE!!! Royalty, Breeding, Horseflesh, Corgis and Pimm’s No 5.

Clearly, this is only the beginnng. In short order, we will wake up to find we have become yet another tawdry republic. Stripped of the dignity and protection of the British Crown (not to mention the security of the Royal Navy’s ironclads), ours will be the indignity of being represented in the world’s halls of power by some home-grown, colonial oick unversed in how to negotiate their way through a state banquet’s silverware.

But there is yet time! Rally loyalists everywhere and stand behind Professor David Flnt and his Monarchists. Once the great unwashed realise they could lose the Queen’s Birthday public holiday and that never again will visits by young royals adorn the covers of magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms, surely they will reject all this egalitarian utopiansm!

Sir Atney Eames

5 The Fairey Freckle-puncher

In the heady early days of the Second World War, the outnumbered RAF was forced to play a deadly cat and mouse game with the mighty Luftwaffe. On several disastrous raids on Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg, No’s 107, 110 and 139 squadrons incurred terrible losses as the Blenheim’s and Hampdens were unable to match the sheer firepower of the deadly Messerschmitt 109’s and Junkers 88’s. Embarrassingly after the fall of Dunkirk, the well equipped Boulton Paul Defiant, though formidable in its quadruple Vickers mounted power operated turret soon proved easy game for the german fighters who followed. They possessed the simple expedient of flying beneath the vulnerable underside and plugging the airframe with cannon shell.

Boulton Paul Defiant in action

 ‘Clearly the issue was a peculiarly defensive one’ as described by Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris ‘We had to counter their delight in getting up our rear’.

 It soon became quite clear, the Hampden’s also lacked defensive punch and were near naked. Similarly the Blenheim, was outgunned and no defence could be offered to the speed and agility of the persistent german probing.

Lord Alfred Douglas at the launch of the first Frecklepuncher prototype.

 The Fairey Aircraft Company took up the challenge and began the process of augmenting the rear defense and upgrade the existing bomber squadrons until such time as the heavies, the Short Stirling, the Lancaster and Halifax were ready for action. Faced with the daunting task the Chief Designer, Flt Lieutenant, Harvey Freckle RAAF, came up with an ingenious solution. He devised a system in which a Blenheim could be adapted. Hidden within the fuselage a specially adapted quadruple 20 mm Hotchkiss gun would fire along the length of the fuselage, and deliver real punch to any unsuspecting hun who was determined to gain advantage. Camoflague was added to make the English tail more attractive for a would be aggressor. Extensive alterations were made to the Blenheim’s with Fairey Fulmar engines, Firefly ailerons and Albacore dive breaks. Reconfigured as both ground attack and dive bomber they were capable of deep penetration. The Blenheim’s were renamed in honour of the inventor and ceremonially named at their unveiling by none other than the aged Lord Alfred Douglas, and thus aptly named, Fairey Frecklepuncher. ‘A Fairey with More Punch, and in reference to the armament, more penetration’.

 Prototypes were tested and proved deadly accurate when a squadron of Bloch’s en route to England after Dunkirk were dispatched to follow a Blenheim squadron home. Without radio communication and charts the French directed their formation right into the English rear. Gaining on their allies the Bloch’s took up loose formation behind the English and prepared to move in closer to ensure better protection with their combined defensive armament. However the french discovered the back passage blocked. After the six week campaign the english had the wind up them and were trigger happy. The British aircrews mistook them for Ju 88’s. Activating the 20 mm Gatling the Blenheim crews systematically blasted them from the sky. The subsequent enquiry, revealed, “ we had no idea they were Froggies, or we’d’ve let em in, but fearing the hun were making an agressive push on our unprotected behind, we let em have it”.

 Only one pilot, Monsieur Hulot of the 15th Couchon squadron survived. His testament was abrupt, ‘I had no desire to join you feelthy english in the first place, as you made such easy meat by grinding my companions’. There was bad blood between the french and english thereafter.

Thus, equipped a squadron of Hampden’s was fitted with the device and made plans for a attack on the U-boat pens at Kiel. As predicted they were intercepted en route, and closed formation tempting any of the hun to have a go. Unbeknown to the English, the germans did not intercept the squadron with Messerschmitts or Junkers but decided to blood their new squadron of Focke’s’ with the deadly Focke Wulf 190. The melee was intense as aircraft circled and parried, the English formation losing valuable height and advantage in the process. Unable to match the Focke’s for speed and agility they packed into a tighter formation still, and one by one succumbed to the firepower of the agile fighter. There was only one survivor. (Flt Sergeant Les Dickles, RAAF) The squadron history described the encounter thus; ‘Unable to outrun or outgun, the hum rammed home his advantage until he had us face to the ground, and lunged breaking our rear defense and making easy play of our tail gunners. If we’d attacked at height and in loose formation we might have gained advantage of the Focke. But without initiative and the element of surprise, we were doomed’. A subsequent enquiry revealed that the Luftwaffe already knew of the up gunned Fairey Freckle-puncher and devised a method of attack whereby the Focke just moved up behind the airstream and let play with the tail. Once stability was lost, the Frecklepuncher could neither fight nor flail. ‘The Focke got into our rear and we were buggerred’. (Les Dickles) ‘It was a lazy Focke who couldn’t lick the tail end’.

Science and Industry Minister Pyne demonstrates close encounter with a Frecklepuncher in Parliament.

 No Frecklepuncher’s survive, but it is alleged that one experimental airframe is being considered as a replacement for the joint strike fighter. And incredibly the crew have been equipped with a new non freckle-punching bullet proof uniform, designed impressively in Latex and self sealing rubber by the former Minister for Education Christopher Morris Pyne. The aircraft is to be upgraded with modern avionics and be re-christened with additional stealth capacity as the Furtive Freckle-Fixer. In honour of the Minister and the unheralded inventor, Lieut Cmdr, Harvey Freckle.

 Happily, the Freckle legend lives on.