This is the road to Mount Yibby between the trees. Now let the fighting
begin, the blood letting. And just then the Hallett wind kicked in and
you could see the seeds flying to General Number four's Lonely Pine on the trail
behind Mount Bryan. Freak accident was how the story went. Two walkers killed
asleep in their tent by a falling tree. How it fell, no one
could see. Travelers were assured by the Department of Tours that it had never
happened before and it would never happen again. But then, as unlikely,
another three on the Mowson Trail dirt bike riding another tree, unusual timing,
catching them mid peloton. Ghost gum branch fell on the trail just when they
failed in their concentration and they were all impaled. Tame Im parlor played at
their funeral and the essay Premier gave the oration. At the service, he
announced a memorial. A brand new Mowson Trail bike wash station would have could
have stopped there. But one more a car accident on the turn off to
Claire a ghost gum branch again. It fell at twilight. There was a
pile up that continued despite the orange cones and flashing lights. The cops put
up drivers. Sure drivers driven this road a thousand times Before the final death
count was twenty four. There were calls to ban the Dares Hill Race in
the face of such a tragedy goider economic needs, especially after COVID nineteen were
taken into council's accounting department, who decreed the event should proceed. I laughed
with glee. Do you have to be? Philby asked me. It's unseemly.
You're like Dick dastardly. No, I am not. I'd tell him
you failed again. I'm like Mutley. See. Philby didn't have a TV
until he was seventeen, had to watch TV up the streets, so his
TV knowledge is not complete. Neither is his ability to follow a narrative of
a story. It makes him nervy. He always thinks he's missing something.
So what happened next? He asked me, Just wait and see. The
generals are the same as me, quietly celebrating a well earned victory. The
failure of the enemy to take heed is actually part of my strategy. The
number of people killed collaterally increases our message exponentially. See, it says they
only think materially. But a little birdie told me, said General Number three,
that counsel, we're threatening to chop down every ghost gum from here to
Kingdom. Come just like the Nazis, says General Number five. That won't
be happening. I tell them the environmentalists will come. They've already arrived.
They're already gathering with flowers in their hair at the turn off to Claire to
stop it happening there. Steady now, steady now is the time, like
Johnny Cash, to walk the line, not for a woman or love or
drugs, but this place itself draw a line between Australians and those colonizing thugs
who were still detaining people until this day in droves, the dirty drovers dogs.
They must be stopped, stopped or dropped or rolled from a high point
on Dar's Hill Drive. They certainly were inside cages. The drivers, for
the most part, survived, but the spectators, well, the spectators died.
The news crews died. Two from Channel seven nine and two Fried when
the fat fryer blew after a stray tire flew through a Fried Food truck window.
There was plenty of footage to show ad nausea on TV. The growing
tally counted daily journalists are plenty, with televisual history to fill the airways days.
Philby asked me, are you actually happy? I was happy. I
thought maybe Julia Naissance would be freed with all this gushing on primetime TV about
how vitally we need journalism. As for the rest of them, the so
called civilians, those who weren't TV personalities, flatten Burn, the crush,
and the explodees, well there was less of them to see. You're cackling,
Philby said to me, you are like a witch like witchy pooh.
Take it easy, dear. I'm not the producer here. It's you who
are hr puff and stuff. Can't get a little because you can't get enough.
Philby turned the TV off. But it was the talk of Goider as
Robin Neckers loitered along the das He'll drive courses, macabre holiday choices. They
could be exploited nighttime tourists taking photos for their social media post hashtag goider ghosts.
Phibia and I stay inside, not hiding exactly, but the farm's not
ready for tourists. And besides, we disagree on whether the killings could stop
yet. How I asked him, Could that be? You've been here from
the start with me, remember me saying that my revenge is happening on Mount
Brian. Still, he asked me. You know that doesn't have to be.
Could be reconciliation. That's you Philby, not me, Sir. You
are the nazier Pisa. But the generals are weary of killing as well.
And in the north are dust storm swells, and the olives are flowering,
and they don't fight dry north winds. Well before them, I stand the
day like war is hell.