Chapter 36

Mick made a huge profit selling his city block. He knew that the plans the realtor had made would fall through. Not completely ... the area would be renovated ... but he'd overheard a party of planning engineers discussing his location. There was going to be a road right through his Pub ... not just any street but a four-lane ... like the Autobahn in Germany.

Lorries were getting larger, faster and easier to operate. Power steering, automatic transmissions, power brakes ... his barmaid could drive one ... hell ... he could drive one and he had one asscheek.

If he held out, the City would take the property for the Crown, so he sold to the man who would lose his ass on the deal. Poetic.

As soon as the deal was finalized, he bought huge tracts of land in Australia in and around Darwin. He sold property ... he bought property ... no capital gains ... no huge bite for the Inland Revenue. What was left went by wire transfer..."Sorry, guys, it's not income ... it's existing commonwealth funds." ... to Australia.

The Gaffer was ecstatic to see him. Mick was the last of the Singapore crowd; nearly all of them had survived the war, married their 'port girls' and settled in an enclave of like-minded survivors on the north of Darwin.

As the years passed and so did some of the survivors, the group became more compact ... but more interested in what was happening in places like Canberra and Vietnam. The Gaffer had skills that the REMF's (Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers; those who never and disapproved of those who did.) had tried to suppress. It's always the same ... those in control want war to be kings on horseback watching the peasants kill each other on a battlefield where the battle never puts one of the "Bosses" in danger.