by Jack Sunn
I would like to start off with trying to piece together development timelines for those things we consider important for our lives, and see if we can, without throwing anything away, research, secure, or develop or resurrect systems and processes that can provide us with society insurance by being able to withstand nature’s program of recurrent testing of our endeavours. Take for example some of the scores of products we take for granted and use multiple times every day of our lives. Tubed toothpaste, zips, and plastic bags. Or look at engineering. We have engineering inputs to supply building materials for our shelters, engineering for transport, and engineering for communications and domestic appliances.”
I did not continue for much longer, and throughout the day we all collaborated to set in place planning for a refugium at Bundaberg, the Boomerang Refugium.
Within two weeks we started development of our refugium program at what was a sweet potato farm at Bundaberg. Horticulturally a great place to start such a program. The soils are nutrient rich, water and rainfall are plentiful, and the climate is sub-tropical.
Tom had been instrumental in much of the building refurbishment for the Wyatt Earp in the Redlands, and keenly sought involvement in our new programs. To that end, he had little choice but to relocate from Brisbane to Bundaberg, if only for a month or two. The farm came with a three-bedroom house and limited shedded floor space, as well as electrically operated irrigation pumps.
The early buzz of receiving the bequest was now replaced by challenges to be overcome on a self-imposed tight timetable. Things had to move quickly if we were to achieve program completion within the seven-year timeframe. This also included meeting local council building and environmental restrictions. But Tom, it appeared, was well equipped for the challenges. Creativity overcame any restraints expected from Council. Tom drew up plans for a farm-tourism bed-and-breakfast facility that had ready appeal with the local planners and was quickly passed.
Plans, however, can be deceptive, and what Tom had drawn on paper, when constructed, met the infrastructure requirements needed for a small village. Cabins were installed for single workers, small houses for families, sheds for storage and future industry. To hasten building development, Tom sourced and brought in used cabins and offices left over from mining and pipeline developments that were now spent. About four weeks after receiving Council approval, Thomasville as we sometimes called it, was growing steadily.
While Tom was busy establishing the basic building infrastructure, Stuart Lombardo and FJ planned the revolution of the farm’s agriculture. With the help of specialist crop consultants, the former sweet potato farm began a lasting transformation.
Farms and gardens often change their production and output depending on the seasons experienced, the willingness of markets to accept product, and off course ownership. This Boomerang farm was no different in this regard, except the focus was changed from off-farm market supply, to supplying its occupants with sustenance and industrial materials for its planned factories.
Stuart and FJ oversaw the design and construction of house gardens, the establishment of permanent crops and set aside large areas for trialling crops not currently growing in the nearby area, namely grapes, who would have guessed that one, olives, different grains, and an increasing number of vegetables and medicinals.
FJ got a bargain by buying in bulk thousands of plants. Given the opportunity, he was on the move and doing it quickly. One of his primary foci was to establish quick-growing wind breaks, which when fully grown not only arrested the wind, but also provided vegetable and timber. For this he chose Bambusa oldhamii, a Chinese bamboo species with wide climatic tolerance, excellent vegetable shoots and useful timber. He also installed a plantation of weaver’s bamboo, B. textilis. Water was plentiful, but was pumped by electric pumps. To that reality, I reminded myself that what we would need was our own internal energy supply with externally sourced electricity anathema to this ideal. A passionate mechanical engineer on site just might do wonders.
Davo had become a frequent visitor at Sunnybank, and indeed was a founding member of the Boomerang project.
Alf had returned to resume work at Clunes with the TaSMAN Group operations. A euphemism to say work here. Alf did everything and anything and often before it was realised by others that it needed doing. Alf had become part of the institution but without a real job description. It suited him, and it suited everybody else. And he made extremely few demands on the organisation. How he had changed over the years. Though he and Davo still saw each other frequently, Davo had become a mostly independent operator with the establishment of the Boomerang project, but an essential part thereof.
Davo seemed to like his ‘new’ life; chauffeuring the Lombardo’s when necessary, while tinkering with engineering projects of his own interest, and also projects of importance for Boomerang. His long association with motor bikes in all their incantations was not about to be ended any time soon. And it had left him well matched with machinery and problem solving in general. Moreover, he proved to be a quick study and adaptable.
While agricultural processing equipment was an early study of Davo when Alf was in Brisbane, he had lately been investigating mechanically driven refrigeration and fossil-free fuel for powering small engines. In both endeavours, he had made significant progress. Tinkering with petrol-electric hybrids did not interest him in the slightest, nor was it of interest to Boomerang. Big batteries are made from expensive mined metals. Expensive both monetarily and environmentally. What he did like, though, was near-free commuting. He had started with hydrogen assisted petrol fuel engines, liked his success there, and then honed in on the source. Two-wheel transport is cheaper than four wheel, and even cheaper when you do not have to fill up at the bowser. His personal-use bike looked normal enough, but the fuel tank on top was now a water tank, with a novel hydrogen-evolution system that gave him extreme satisfaction, but was selectively secretive about it.
Davo regularly came over to Sunnybank for among other things updates on Boomerang activities. He, like me, liked to do it in person rather than electronically. It also assisted in maintaining the personal touch.
On one occasion when he was over, I said, “Davo. Are you up for a visit in the country? I would value your opinion on some operations at Thomasville.” As I rarely made requests of his services, he agreed at once. I figured I needed him more than he needed to stay in Brisbane. Being less than a five-hour drive from Brisbane, Bundaberg is not that inconvenient to visit. Saturday is a busy day for sales for him so I suggested going on Sunday.
“No,” said Susan, who was close by. “Seven-day weeks may exist, but seven work-day weeks are not part of the Boomerang ethic. Sundays are refresh days, family days, rest days. Call them what you want, but a work day they are not.”
Susan had spoken. And true enough she was right. She was also my 2-I-C and keeper.
“Then we will have lunch here on Sunday. Will you join us Dave?”
“That would be nice boss,” said Davo. He continued, “I have a few errands for the Lombardo’s on Monday, and your car needs servicing. How bout I come over on Monday afternoon, take your car in for servicing, and call by on Tuesday with a loan car I have available?”
“Dave, it’s Jack. No need for Boss, okay. But that sounds ideal, thank-you. I like the way you are level pegging with me or a step ahead.”
“Right boss.”
Truth is I needed more people like Dave and Alf on or near the Boomerang.
Tuesday morning Dave was on time at 8.30. His punctuality was now consistently to be within a minute of a scheduled appointment. No more than a minute early and certainly not a minute late. He was certainly growing on me. He knocked on the door just as I was about to open it. I took a step outside, and almost froze in a moment of deja vue.
“Is that what I think it is Dave?” I said.
“Do not know what you are thinking it is boss, I mean Jack, but let me show you. Exterior is classic 70’s GT Falcon. Reconditioned entirely and looks l
ike an authentic original, with a few exceptions. New tyres of course, and updated suspension and brakes. Windows are tinted.” He opened the door. “The dash incorporates a newly styled timber panel with front and rear video screens. Additional arm rests are fitted here for the driver and front passenger. The rear bench seat has been replaced with comfortable buckets and foot rests. And here, let me show you two additional features of our refurbished grand tourer.” He withdrew the two bonnet pins and lifted the hood. “Not your usual 351 cubic inch Ford V8. This engine has been completely rebuilt with modern alloys, weighs a lot less than the original beast. And the piece de resistance – this unit here.” Dave was pointing to what looked like a small metallic shoe box, bearing an imprinted label DAVOS. “This unit is the key to cheap power. But there is more yet. With an inbuilt decompression system, we can circulate the engine oil at low revolutions before starting the engine. Even as little as five to ten seconds reduces engine wear, and eases starting in cool weather. But this box, pointing to the unit with DAVOS on it, supplies hydrogen and water only. Great power output and a smoke free exhaust.”
Naturally I was impressed. Who would not be?
“DAVOS. What does that stand for?”
“It might be the plural of Davo, but it isn’t. It is a combination of Davo, Alf and Sledge. On the rear bumper is a sticker, Sledge’s ReMo Autos. ReMo for Reconditioning and Modernisation.”
“So,” says I. “It’s a ReMo HO Falcon?”
“Yes, but there is still more yet. Let me show you the back.”
Dave opened the boot. “Take a gecko at this. Pure art. Tailgating at its best.” With simple use of a stainless-steel levering system, an immaculate kitchen stove top unfolded.
“You have the option of gas, or, opening another box, this custom-built wood burning stove guaranteed to burn in anything less than a hurricane. Complete with a twelve-litre wired in refrigerator. This car is Maccas-proof. We’ve tested the stove which contains a ventilated fire chamber with an exterior barrel. It has a combination excess-wind controller and heat control mechanism resembling an adjustable venturi. Designed not only to impress, but to produce results. And you still have boot space for carrying luggage.”
All I could say was, “Nice. Shall we pack and go?” At this Dave packed in my travel bags and we took our seats in the front of the car.
Dave explained. “The engine is naturally still warm, but when cold you start the car like you’d start an old diesel. This button activates the decompression. Hold it in and press the adjacent button to turn the engine over. Then release and start the car by the usual method with the key.”
The engine started immediately and settled to a quiet hum. The car had a manual gearbox. And with the power output available driving was a rev-head’s dream. Four forward gears, the first three almost never used except for getting to fourth. Changing down was only a long-established habit for when stopping.
The trip to Bundaberg was both trouble-free and bowser-free. We had more than enough distilled water for the return trip. It was not long after clearing Brisbane’s traffic that I settled into one of the most comfortable road trips I had had more many years.
I settled in so well that I dozed for about a half hour. Dave was the transformed bikie for sure. Here he was settled on the speed limit with a car capable of reaching more than twice that. He appeared relaxed, akin to what an automaton on cruise control might look like. How life changes for us all. He was so peaceful looking that I hesitated before speaking.
“Dave. You and Alf have obviously collaborated on more than I was aware of. And Sledge. It’s been some time since we had that school reunion, which I’m sure Alf has mentioned, changed our view of world history to be, or trajectory. I have a fair idea of what changed Alf’s direction in life, but you and Sledge?”
“Boss, it’s like this. There are some people who are an influence on your life at seemingly just the right time. Alf said something to me one day after I met the Lombardo’s that made me stop and rethink. I then reset.
What he said was something like this. Dave, I used to be afraid, afraid to be normal. Normal did not seem right to me, so I did not do normal. I became a biker, and an outlaw as it happened. It was later shown to me that I did not have to be normal, but rather I could be extra-normal without being afraid. I knew then that I did not have to bother with what other people thought of me. I could be above that. And then of course, Jack and Jill whom I had gone to school with came back into my life. They too had changed from what they were like as young adults, and they too had become in their own ways extra-normal. Without attaching an ego to it, I felt free with a new-found sense of individuality, and invincibility, just no longer on two wheels to prop me up. The same opportunity is available to you, indeed everybody. Well, it was not long after that that I went to see the Lombardo’s and apologised to them for my wrong-doing against them, and started being in their way, that is, being useful and doing things that they needed doing. I think Alf spoke to them about me, and Alf being Alf, well let me say that Mrs. L did not need much convincing. I like them, and do as much for them as their dignity allows. As for Sledge, well we can all improve our lot. In his own way, Sledge became extra-normal all by himself. Which brings us to this car. Naturally it is not his, but this trip we are taking is the final longer distance test drive required of a ReMo contract to ensure everything is working perfectly before hand-over back to the client. So, we get free passage while doing Sledge a favour. And we get your car serviced at the same time. All rather neat. Might be nice to own one of these, but at close to a million, not this week.
Insert by Jacqui Sunn, Year 2043/Year 26
For an unknown reason, the manuscript I took possession of was lacking an unknown number of pages between the journey to Bundaberg being underway, and the following partial page explaining a lunch date at Redland Bay about three years into the Boomerang project.
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Susan and I, together with Ray and Alisha, and Tom and Bev, had just payed the bill for lunch at the Sunflower Restaurant, when with no warning the lights went out and the restaurant fell silent for a moment. All that could be heard was the grumbling of some of the patrons.
“What just happened Jack? asked Bev.
I smiled. “You recently read the book manuscript have you not? The power has gone out.”
The End.
Recommended Books to Read:
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2008) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Penguin.
Don Watson (2003) Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language. Random House.
EPILOGUE Year 2043
My name is Jacqui Sunn, daughter of Ray and Alisha Sunn. Because I am mostly called Jack, nearly everybody conveniently refers to Uncle Jack as Jack-the-Elder. I have added this epilogue to Jack-the-Elder’s manuscript in the hope that someday the ‘Wyatt Earp’ will see life in print again as Uncle Jack had hoped, and that our descendants will have some understanding of why they are alive in the presence of a former society’s relictual and decaying structures. This epilogue is but a brief summary taken from my diaries. One of my roles is that of family archivist.
Jack-the-Elder wrote the preceding story, the ‘Wyatt Earp,’ and referred to it as his memoir. He celebrated its acceptance for publication by hosting a lunch with friends and family at a Redland Bay restaurant, close to where his narrative began. The power outage at the end of this celebratory lunch was short lived, simply one of those things that apparently used to occur from time to time in storm season.
Since the time of that lunch, life has been different for those who attended. The lunch coincided with the start of year three of the Boomerang project, and I was born in Bundaberg two years later. As it happens, I know of life up to that time from stories told to me, and from the large library of literature held in Bundaberg and Sunnybank. But my life was to become vastly different from that of my forebears up to that time. From what I have read and been told, when the Boomerang project was in about ye
ar five, the electric clocks stopped, and time took a new trajectory. What Jack and Susan had organised through the Boomerang refugium project was to save our lives.
I naturally have no recollection of the event that stopped the clocks. I was way too young. I have no experience of watching television or listening to music on a radio receiver. The Internet, I understand what it did, but like people who lived before the 1990’s, I cannot use what does not exist.
To me life has been wonderful, but compared to what I am told and have read about, and seen the remains of what was, it is built on a society that experienced great loss. We still have no clear idea what happened the world-over, but we do know that society at large collapsed. I am told that Internet, phone, and radio communication ceased, and for them to have not returned, a major electrical- electromagnetic disruption is the likely cause. We again use radio, but not to the same extent as before.
Uncle Jack and most of the Boomerang crew were here in Bundaberg at the time, and within a few short hours they had effectively isolated their village from outsiders. Electronic communication did not return, so they stayed ‘quiet’ and isolated. We humans mostly do not feel content with prolonged isolation and like to reconnect, or at least re-establish our position in society. But unlike released prisoners, we had little to reconnect with. Eventually, forays ‘out’ showed that without all the services society relies on to feed itself, collapse occurs, as indeed it did.
Isolated we may have been, but we had all the basic needs of sustenance, shelter and industry, and indeed Boomerang had established the refugium it was designed to be. Additionally, Boomerang had two siblings, one in the Redlands on the outskirts of Brisbane, the Wyatt Earp, and one at Clunes in northern New South Wales. Though Uncle Jack had established an amazing retreat in the suburban Sunnybank tilt-slab building, he chose to abandon it temporarily. He knew his friend Edwin would take care of himself. In Bundaberg, my home, large stashes of equipment had been sourced and stored, and Uncle Jack’s Sunnybank home library had been duplicated and expanded upon. One of the saviours for reconnecting the three refugia was Uncle Jack’s dreamed about pmail. He told me that his father had kept pigeons for nearly 50 years and so stories of pigeons carrying messages and earning medals during the Second World War were simply part of growing up. And so, for three months we had contact with both Redlands and Clunes. Bundaberg and Clunes had two aviaries, while Redlands, centred between the latter two, had three. Regular exchanges of birds before the blackout left us at Bundaberg able to pmail Redlands, and they with us and Clunes. It was a good system and for nearly three months we were all in contact. I believe it was the one thing that made the terrible hiatus in history and subsequent societal collapse possible to overcome. Isolation became gradual. Everybody knew they were not alone, well not totally. At the end of three months, released birds were returning to their release point and not their intended destination. But three months was ample time to finely hone interconnected communication, at least until radio communication could be safely re-established, which it was within the following months.
