Dear reader,

 

Incredibly, we return to our saga.

And the jaw dropping revelation that Australia’s greatest soldier ever has eschewed the God head of ‘Anzackery’ for ballet.

Is this a turning point in Australia’s strategic outlook? With broader ramifications for the AUK- WARD treaty and the readiness of attack class nuclear submarines for 2525?   Is it too early to assume that Australia’s military posture has stopped only just to pirouette, and find point with point?

 And what is the point of it all, when our finest embraces ballet and the fourth movement of ‘Giselle’, rather than the reassuring knock of an MG 42 or a brace of Claymores?  Find out in the next whirling episode.  And perish the thought for those who are unaware that a cultural renaissance of the arts may be Australia’s best ever long term defence policy. Defensively speaking. 

Read on…..

It was as if an incredible weight had been lifted from the giants’ shoulders.  Now that ‘Benny-Boy’ had opened up to us about his passion for ballet, we could feel a calm restored. And with it an immeasurable sense of well-being. It was almost as if the downward trudge in a stygian tunnel had led to a resurrection of sorts. it was a transformation akin to the star gate that featured so prominently for takers of hallucinogenic drugs in Kubrick’s ‘2001’.

Something in ‘Benny- boy’ Roberts Smith, (arguably Australia’s most decorated and famous hero and cultural icon) had changed and the effect was transformative. Whereas before we always felt a tincture of anxiety that he might bump us off as collateral or because he felt like it, now we knew that he really was our protector.

And a protecter of Good-liness, rather than raw thuggish brutality.

The SAS operative, the calculating killer had been tempered by the force of ballet. Beauty had tamed the Beast.

The hands that so readily pulled the trigger were now the acme of celerity and grace. To realise this, that a man so devoted to killing could be reformed thus, left us stunned, and appreciative. We were now glad to have ‘Benny-boy’ on our side, and glad that his qualities of leadership were now tempered with compassion and a love for the third movement of the Nutcracker Suite.

 

‘Jeez Benny I’ll be you’ll be looking forward to getting on with your career in ballet when we get back’? Ces realised now that Benny once rough-hewn and abrupt as a two-inch mortar was now calm and appreciative that we all endorsed his unexpected career decision.

 

‘You betchya! Gotta tutu sorted in Sydney and with a bit o luck, though I’m not a poofta I can wear it in the next Mardi gras’. Benny beamed with anticipation. j

‘Onya Benny-boy’! Terry chipped in, ‘and for being such a sport have another Camel’.

Benny reached over his giant hand clutching the Camel and Ces quipped in;  ‘I’ll donkey root ya’, and in minutes, Benny slapped him on the back; ‘youse blokes are loveable bastards’!

Benny puffed away merrily. His face, once angular and brutish now transfused with an inner solace rather like a Tintoretto altarpiece or a Cimabue fresco executed in his formalistic period prior to the elevation of Alberti and Mantegna as custodians of Algebraic compositional format and the birth of perspective. Our perspective had profoundly changed.  And for that we were beyond grateful.

In spite of the booming from deep down below the trio and their sidekick skipped along merrily.  The bayonet shimmering more brightly than ever, lit the way and the scrawls on the walls, demonic images of corpses, and deities inscribed by savages may have been decorations on a Moomba float for all they cared. All was good with the world. For once, all was wonderful and ballet and brutishness had met head- on. And art had won.

It signalled a new era.

A new dawn,

And…. A new page in the glorious annals of Anzackery.

An Anzackery now tempered by pink.

And Tuille.

And Gauze.

 

Gaily they trudged. And gayer the laughter and the gloom dispelled by the new spirit of Benny Boy Roberts Smith, former SAS hero, now ardent, passionate member of the Australian Ballet. A credentialled and certified war hero turned cultural icon, turned cultural hero in the great tradition of Sutherland, Helpmann, Nijinsky and Rolf Harris.

 

It would be nice if it stayed like that.

 

Is the die cast?

Is the change permanent?

Find out in our next balletically enthused episode; “Point to point or use plier?

Or; ‘All that glissers is not gold”