1^st SHORT DIGITAL MOVIE SCRIPT – Ned Kelly revisited

Phil (#1 cyclist)
Pete, how come you’ve pulled everyone up here?  Our next café is only a few clicks away.

Pete (#2 cyclist)
I didn’t stop the Peloton.  The guy standing in our way up front clad in the rusty metal armour and the bedraggled Jackaroo garb carrying the big blunderbuss stopped our lead riders.  I don't know what he is on.  But man he looks different.

Phil (#1 cyclist)
Who are you?  You look like Australia’s most famous bushranger, but he got hung over 100 years ago.

Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly was my name when I preceded you lot on terra firma when times were harsh and we valued what he had.

Phil (#1 cyclist)
Well what are you doing back here?  I can’t recall too many dead people who have reincarnated, in fact only one.  But hang on, he was executed as a criminal too.

Ned Kelly
I was chosen to come back to warn a few of Australia’s current inhabitants that the God isn’t a happy camper.  You might call him Allah, or Jehovah, or The Lord, or All-Powerful or even the Supreme Energy Force.  He’s got lots of labels across various religions.  Upstairs in Heaven, most of us call him God, but we are careful not to offend other Deadens who came from a variety of religions who have different labels.

Jenny (#3 cyclist)
What’s God unhappy about?

Ned Kelly
Humans have co-existed with plant and animal life on Earth for millions of years sharing the food and energy that God provided.  Now he’s Mad as Hell.  No pun intended.

My message is that your time on Earth is short.  Passing tenants in the 20^th century, at least many of those in the wealthier countries have been avarice and covetous.  Many have taken much more than their share.  Alas, now it is catching on across the Earth.  Current generations are wrecking the joint and filching the till with scant regard for future generations.  God is aggrieved because none of the teachings across the major religions condone excessive materialism, greed and self-ingratiation from acquiring materialistic toys which in Australia is at plague proportions.

Joe (#1 cyclist)
You look vaguely like Governor Arthur Phillip the first Governor of New South Wales.

Governor Arthur Phillip
You be correct.  I was the first Governor of New South Wales who was responsible for the safe passage of a fleet of 11 ships carrying 160 marines and 729 convicts.  We landed in Botany Bay on 18^th January 1788 thereby effectively establishing Australia.  Charged with the wellbeing of almost 900 of the first Australians, I had ensured sufficient rations to ensure a safe passage.  To guard against scurvy during our long voyage, I provided citrus fruit. 

I encouraged and sought to reform the convicts and to treat Aborigines kindly.  I encouraged free settlement and granted farming land to convicts upon completing their sentence.  In short, I cared for the people under my care.

Jill (#2 cyclist)
OK it is comforting to hear that you cared for our ancestors.  But what are you doing back here over 200 hundred years later?

Governor Arthur Phillip
As the first Government in Australia I was seized by a great vision of a new outpost in the southern seas.  Hence, I took my governance obligations seriously and made some hard decisions, but always in the best interests of the majority.  I cared about their long term bests interests.

Over 200 years later, I am still interested in how future generations of the colony I was responsible for.  Regrettably, the performance of recent Governments in condoning excessive consumption and self-ingratiation disappoint me, because those Governments haven't considered future Australians. 

Many of the convicts that I brought to Australia were guilty of crimes that pale into obscurity compared with today's Australians stealing from future generations.  Some under my stewardship had stolen a mere loaf of bread or a bag of wheat to feed their family.  Yet they were evicted to a land half a world away.

Governments have failed in their primary charter to act in the best interests of their people, because they have turned a blind-eye to some amongst you taking more than their fair share and being preoccupied with self-ingratiation.   Almost 100 years ago a Norwegian American sociologist labelled lavish spending on goods and services as Conspicuous Consumption.  So greed and excess is not new.

Jack (#3 cyclist)
Who sent you?

Governor Arthur Phillip
You might be aware that Ned Kelly visited another group of cyclists who were wearing the same shirts as you.  Ned sought to alert them that God is upset that after millions of years of inhabitants respecting the hand that feeds them, current inhabitants display scant regard for future generations due to the carnage from Climate Change.

Ned reported to God that he had received a sympathetic hearing.  Hence, I was similarly granted a limited leave pass to also warn of the folly of Conspicuous Consumption.

Governments are bestowed by the people to act in the bests interests of the people.  People who want Smaller Government are generally well-off and want to continue their avarice lifestyles.

Australian Governments are going to have to make harsh decisions which will upset a lot of Australians to reign in irresponsible and selfish lifestyles, preoccupied with Me, Me, Me and Now, Now, Now to ensure that future generations of Australians don’t look back upon us with disappointment and acrimony.  

Harry (#1 cyclist)
Well I know what you look like but I am wondering where you dug up that heavy World War One uniform and that massive rifle.  Gosh!!! look at that fearsome bayonet.

Alfred, 1^st World War Infantryman
I was Private Alfred Thomason.  The uniform that I wear and rifle that I carry was issued to me in 1915 before I embarked on HMS Queen Elizabeth bound for Turkey.  Like so many young Jackaroos, I was encouraged to come down from the farm and enlist to defend the British Empire.  I was killed in my first battle after being bayoneted in the stomach by a Turkish soldier.  It took me almost three days to die, at least it felt that long as I faded in and out of consciousness with a horribly dry throat and a bleeding belly.  From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 Australian men enlisted.  Over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.  I have sense met other dead soldiers from both sides of the conflict and we are appalled at the futility of war.  But that is not why I am visiting you over 80 years later.

Helen (#2 cyclist)
Hang about.  I heard about a recent visit to another cycling group by Australia’s most famous bushranger warning us of the perils of greed.  Then I heard that our first head of government in Australia came back to criticise subsequent governments' ineptitude in shying away from the tough decisions and warning us that unless governments now show real gumption, future generations will pay a severe price for our materialistic excesses which he asserted swamp crimes that convicts under his charge had committed.  If you really did fight in World War One, what is your message?  And how did you get here?

Alfred, 1^st World War Infantryman
I died a painful death as a teenager for what?  Former fellow soldiers and I look at the lifestyles that we died to seemingly protect, and we see too many self-centred Australians obsessed with sumptuous spending on extravagant toys which many don't even get around to unpacking.  Big, powerful motor cars and flying to far flung places create a lot more CO2 than the Earth's remaining forests can convert back to oxygen, whereupon you are cutting off the hand that feeds you. 

Looking in from the outside, and having chewed the fat with other Deadens, I appreciate that life is about giving to others less fortunate, and not taking from them.  It is a hackneyed saying  "Give and you shall receive".  My message is to think of future generations when you pollute Earth's only atmosphere, because until very recently in the Earth's history, man, the other animals and plants lived in relative harmony respecting that Hand!!!

It gnarls us to think that our premature deaths on the other side of the world were largely in vain because our descendants are preoccupied with Me Me Me and Now Now Now, and seemingly couldn't care a tinker's cuss for future generations.

How did I get here?  The same way that Ned and Phillip did.  God thinks that desperate times call for desperate measures.

4th SHORT DIGITAL MOVIE SCRIPT –  Percy Cerutty, whose eccentric, irreverent, charisma, and passion for toughening the mind and body, pioneered hardening athletes like Herb Elliot to excel on and off the track

Percy Cerutty
My name is Percy Cerutty.  I have been dead for over 30 years.  I was an Australian athletics coach 50 years ago.  My most famous protégé was Herb Elliott who won the 1,500m at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.  Herb is now on the Australian Olympic Committee but back in 1960 Herb won the 1,500m by the largest margin that had been recorded in Olympic history.  A lot of people thought I was excentric because I drew my energy from Grecian army, the Spartans, for being trained to withstand enormous pain and their stoic manner of not displaying emotion. 

I ran my chargers up sand hills, down dunes and over ravines, sometimes facing the elements at their worst, but mostly soaking in the ambience and allure of pristine nature around Portsea, with the magnificent cliffs, the reefs, the pounding surf, the beach, the tracks through the tea-tree, which was a wonderful environment to push your body into unchartered pain thresholds.  Failure and pain weren't in our vocabulary.

Patrick (#1 cyclist)
Percy, I'm an old dude myself.  I remember your eccentric, irascible, irreverent, charisma.  Your fanaticism broke the mould.  Didn't Herb Elliot reckon you were something special. 

Percy Cerutty
I wouldn't have countenanced a bar of it when I was alive.  But I read where Herb now considers that I was Australia's greatest athletics coach.  Now that I am dead, I'll take Herb's compliment.

Paula (#2 cyclist)
How did you get back here?

Percy Cerutty
God, in his frustration about recent generations wanton greed, granted me a leave pass to visit you guys today because of the lifestyle I encouraged; obsessed with regular rigorous exercise and a Healthy Diet. 

It certainly wasn't because of my religious convictions, because the only God I worshipped was success.  Church and The Lord didn't enter my mindset back then.  Failure wasn't in my vocabulary either. Athletics, I always said, was your training ground for life. I regularly told Herb and others, "Beat them on the track and you'll develop the winning feeling to beat them in business".

Natalie (#2 cyclist)
I've heard about a few other dead Australian's coming back to warn cyclists wearing these jerseys of the folly of adoring false gods like greed and self-indulgence.  What is your message?

Percy Cerutty
For all but the latest scintilla of human existence on Earth, man had to hunt or farm to feed his family.  Man was on the go all day every day.  Man often had to run down different animals like dogs, cats, steer and deer which may have been faster but tired earlier than humans. Only the fittest survived.  I lived 80 years because I was as fit as a Mallee Bull.   

These days we Deadens of all religious persuasions look down and see humans perched at a desk for 10 hours a day, frenetically gawking into pieces of plastic, talking into other pieces of plastic, and taping on more plastic.  They then drive home in a bit of steel, and raid the fridge to binge a veritable potpourri of food and drinks from all over the world.  Current tenants think that is normal human behaviour.  But it isn’t and it comes with a lot of health problems, with Climate Change probably the biggest because it is clogging the only atmosphere you have.  History shows that only the fittest survive and you don't get fit or stay fit driving big motor cars or watching electricity soaking Plasma TVs which turn oxygen into carbon dioxide.  It took millions of years to produce fossil fuels from decaying dinosaurs and plant life.  God, who granted me this leave pass, is powerful pissed-off that current inhabitants are hell bent of taking the Earth's fuel supply with no regard for future inhabitants.

Portsea, with its magnificent cliffs, the reefs, the pounding surf, the beach, the tracks through the tea-tree, was my playground to exercise.  It was spiritually uplifting.  I sniffed in the salt air and felt my chest expand and the muscles in my legs tingle. It just made me want to run.

Australia has marvellous oceans, rivers and mountains to exercise and holiday.  You don't have to fly to the other side of the world in carbon producing aeroplanes to holiday.  Look in your own backyard to enjoy life and stay fit.