Zac Rolfe’s heroic deeds may have been influenced by ‘High Noon”. In which the posse shrank till in the end, he STOOD ALONE FOR JUSTICE!

Dear reader,

occasionally we get something unusual in our in-box. And though this is not strictly a dispatch, it comes to us from Frank. Our much-respected scribe from the near far distant (relatively speaking) NORTH!

We think this may be a fragment of Frank’s upcoming second volume of anecdotes and analysis. This one, apart from being an amusing story poses the question of how to best represent a posse.

Zac may have been inspired by ‘The Seven Samurai’?

Being tutored in such classic as ‘High Noon’, and ‘The Seven Samurai’, we knew a posse to consist of a group of committed upholders of the law. Committed to JUSTICE!  In this instance we urge you, we implore and recommend you, read Zachary Rolfe’s departing letter to Australia which lists the injustices he has suffered in ‘ Upholding the Right”!

The fact that a man of such calibre is leaving and has been asked to resign from the NT Police, indicates the struggle endured by tall poppies. And in Zach’s own words; ” I should’ve won medals for my work at ‘Camp Rolfe’, (Formerly Yuendumu). The problem as we see it, for all Zach’s sacrifice, the powers to be, are UNGRATEFUL! Just like the First Australians. Ungrateful for ALL THE GOOD WE’VE DONE FOR THEM!

As kids we learnt that the TEXAS RANGERS were all ‘ Good Ol Boys’ committed to serving JUSTICE!

It seems for his act of courage, and all the good he’s done, he’s a man in exile. Forced to leave our shores in exile for the crime of public opprobrium. We at pcbycp have a deep well of sympathy for people like Zac, who are clearly misunderstood.

Like our national Hero Ben Roberts Smith, they are being shellacked for doing their duty, for finding and seeking out ne’er do-well’s who are not cogniscent of the Don’s batting average and are guilty of thought crimes against Australia. Zach was only doing his duty and now he is a broken man, with barely a prime ministerial type pension for life and a lifetime to commit his travails, (in the tradition of the ‘Count of Monte Christo’) to memoir.

Franks memoir speaks of a different era, when stories were passed on, and we left it to the imagination, not the Murdoch press to create images in the minds-eye.

Other Posses, (as depicted here in the historically accurate “Birth of a Nation”) liked to dress up in white robes and funny hats. GOD and JUSTICE for a ‘nicer and WHITER world’.

We bring you this fragment and hope that Frank gets his message across, and though his cause may be noble, he may not, as Zach so vociferously proclaimed, earn more medals for his self-sacrifice. ‘A white mans burden’? We may ask…

Frank writes….

The posse

A deputation of older men came to see me when Japangardi’s young third wife ran away.  They came to borrow the Mining Company Land Rover to give chase.  Nampijinpa had eloped with a visiting Pitjantjatjarra preacher.  “See dad, you can’t trust a Pitjantjatjarra.” said Japanangka, Japangardi’s younger son.

They looked just like one of those bands of rebels bristling with weapons one sees on television cruising in an open Toyota through some unfortunate North African town.  Only the Yuendumu contingent was armed with spears and boomerangs, instead of Kalashnikovs.

The pcbycp media department chose to depict a series 2 Land Rover Ute.

Finding a runaway couple in amongst the then 15,000 population of Alice Springs was an impossible task.  After a few days Japangardi and his posse decided that further effort was futile and sold their weapons to tourists.  They used the proceeds to get drunk to celebrate the powerful symbolic assertion of Japangardi’s rights they had made.

The main lesson they learned from this episode is that you can’t trust a Pitjantjatjarra.  Nor can you trust a preacher.

FDB

Ideally suited to hot and dry conditions land Rovers performed sterling service, ‘as long as it didn’t rain’, (Lucas Electrics)