Dear reader, with Sophie and Dutto hell-bent on control of all the resources not sold off yet to multinationals or Russian oligarchs in Australia, and Dutto detrmined to get the the very top of the tree, we return to our saga.

Like the  Zachary Rolfe trial there’s more turns and twists in this than a Hollywood sub plot to a B-Grade movie, that was destined to die at the box office,  and in time become legendary as an avante guarde classic. But there’s something worse afoot, With ‘Benny-boy’ and their new side-kick Terry stuck with them in the dark corridors of a hidden and moth-balled sub terranean city, there ony way out.  The suspended tram line is down, and though everything has crashed around with it, they know that as the road to Tarrin Kwot may be lined with IED’s and Victoria Crosses, ther nemesis Sophie will get out of it… because like Rasputin, (another great Russian leader) Sophie is unstoppabble, Indefatigable infelxible, indominatable , implacable and absolutely un-reasonable. 

When the only way up seems further down, its akin to a Federal Treasurer trying to stem inflation, Canute- like with a bottle of beer, a packet of Tim Tams, and a feel good, ‘have a nice day’ t-shirt adorning his personage, 

Stay with us as we plunge ourselves into another protoplasmic episode as our heroes. Now a party of four, seek redemption amongst the radiocative wastes of Maralinga…. 

Read on…..

As the fragments of tram tracks, the gantry, the scaffolding, what was left of the Public Order Response Vehicle, and the unspent magazines of Sophie’s MP 40 crashed all aound them, we noticed, as you’d expect in the Christmas light preparations being enacted at Mauripol, we’d see fragments at the very least of Sophie and Dutto. But no such thing rained down on us. In the darkness and the dust, we waited for the crashing to stop, and coughing with the dust and smoke it was several minutes before we dared venture out of the niche we sought refuge in. All that was left, a sulpherous glow as the debris smouldered amidst what looked like a streetscape of faceless buidings, warehouses and long, steel-shuttered blocks of flats. The city of the deep underground, promised to be under arc lamps and the sun directed through myriad shafts the salvation of Australia post apocalypse.  Now, it just looked like an average part of a capital city destined for urban renewal. In the concrete and fibro porticos, the long abandoned footpaths, and streets summerged under aeons of dust, 

‘There’s only one way outta this, even if we do make it to the surface, we’ll need a camel’. 

Ces made the point by slapping his hand, ( Oscar winning style) across Quent’s forehead.

‘Why didn’t you say so’?, as Terry passed us a packet of camels. 

Terry was thoughtful that way.  .

‘And these camels were the genuine article’. 

Ces unrwrapped the packet, ‘these are the camels they used to sell in the 70’s’!

‘Yeah’, Quent opined, ‘till they banned them for being too strong. Nowadays the only place you can get em is in the US”

Benny piped in, ‘or in one of those funny little tobacconists off the main drag in Kabul. You can get most things in Kabul.’

‘You’re not wrong there’! Ces laughed, “including a paur of prosphetic legs or if you can find it an ol .303, a Lee Metford, a Martini Henry and a V.C, left over from the 1842 campaign’ ,Terry enthused, ‘Yeah cos as ya all know V.C’s dont have a use by date’!

‘Yep’’ Ces interjected, ‘bit like the ring in the ‘Lord of the Rings’, once you’ve got one you can be rendered nigh invisible, and have protective powers. Looks like we may need something like that in this fix’!

‘Yeah, if Sophie and Dutto are in trouble, we might need any ring we can get’. 

‘What’s that’? Ces pointed to a low blockhouse, the front just a grey oblong, the rear like a long low Nissan hut, on the facade, still legible on a rusted sign, hanging at right angles from a couple of brackets, ‘Gaumont Picture theatre’.  ‘Picture theatre, did they have movies there’? 

‘Oh yes’’ Terry enthused, ‘we trialled it before the expected occupancy by those selected to ride out the nuclear winter. What kind of films were selected’? Ces was a bit of a film buff. 

‘Oh easy watchable feel-good movies’ Terry enthused  . ‘Yeah, with famous actors’? 

‘Well not really, as part of the Anglo Australian nuclear agreement we could only get films approved by the British Consul General’. 

‘So you mean Hollywood wasn’t part of the equation’?

 ‘Yeah’. Terry said distractedly. ‘So what kind of films were you able to screen’?

‘Well, don’t get me wrong, this was the humour of the time,  but we had a matinee of Norman Wisdom numbers and then travelogues, you know with canals on barges, a trip to France, and a excusionists guide to Blackpool’. We were consumed with silence, “was that all’? Ces asked.  ‘Well, we had a comedy section of Tommy Handley shorts, favourites by Arthur Askey, and the best of all the complete ‘Carry- On’  Filmography. 

‘Excuse me Terry these films,  I hope you dont mind me saying, but they’re pure shit’!

Why choose such shit films’? 

“Oh that’s easy, we had them on rrotation, becuse if anyone missed the world outside, they could always see a matinee of these and not really miss it at all. It was dreamt up by the psychologists, to stop people pining for the surface, they caled it ‘surface syndrome”  and by trial application, it seemed to work. 

After a Handley screening, the complaint about liveing underground ceased, and after the Arthur Askey number suicides went through the roof.’

Is that all that was shown in the cinema?  Is there till a stock of old reels left to see?  Has the cinematic quality of this narrative lost its lustre?  Find out inthe next kinemtographic episode, “ My friend Flicka, was best seen at the flicks’, or ; “If this aint the last remake of Beau Geste, in jeste, laughing mater or not, it could be the end of destiny and history and who’s to Fukiyama?