That's
me posing as a Mormon
missionary in Church Street,
Parramatta ...
a good way of doing surveillance
in a public place!
Once
were powerbrokers: Nostalgia & loathing in WA
27 January 99 In
which Nick flies to Perth, expelled Liberal Senator Noel Crichton-Browne
turns Green, and a 17th century warship travels the streets of Fremantle
...
Making
hagiography -- Apres Bob le deluge
4
February 99 In which Craig McGregor reveals
that, gosh, Bob Carr is all that stands between us and dictatorship!
The
wreck of the pleasure barge
11
February 99 Don Dunstan and Neville Bonner go
to the great nesthole in the sky and Nick comes down with Possum Creek
Fever and discovers that Boris Yeltsin will never die.
Heroin
and circuses
17
February 99 In which Nick helps the Michael
Knights rehearse for the Gay Mardi Gras and questions the "Olympic
Spirit".
With
Gough on our side
24
February 99 Former Olympics Minister Bruce Baird
develops a death wish, the Whitlams have a bad week and the NSW cops get
white line fever.
It's
no show without Paddy
3
March 99 In which Paddy McGuinness embraces
Germain Greer and Nick remembers a few of the ghastly words the old groupie
and publicity hound actually wrote in The Female Eunuch ...
A
loaf of dread beneath the bough
10
March 99 Joadja speaks her mind about David
Williamson's latest play and the wimpish state of Australian drama ...
God
is my getaway driver, I shall not want
17
March 1999 Nick is woken with the news that
the NSW Liberals are running a notorious, twice-convicted, armed holdup
man for the Upper House and Paul Sheehan gets time off for good behaviour.
Sticking
it to the greedheads at Bexley North
24
March 1999 In which Nick helps Reclaim The Streets
at Bexley North as 2000 plus kids descend to protest against the notorious
M5 East motorway.
With
justice for all and malice towards none
31
March 1999 Nick writes to John Howard about
the proposed preamble to the Constitution and urges him to find a better
class of friend.
A
bad century in the Balkans
7
April 1999 The horror and the madness ... As
NATO bombs fall and ethnic cleansing continues, Nick fondly remembers
Josip Broz Tito and John Reed, who saw it all before and did their best.
Knee-deep
in shit, but free to be proud
14
April 1999 From the Balkans to Australia, high-flown
hokum abounds while Nick and Joadja dig up the drains.
The
Bob Carr question: is stupidity genetic?
21
April 1999 In which Nick finds himself on a
blood-soaked battlefield and Joadja gets angry about the Great Leader's
stance on the drugs crisis.
For
everything there is a season
28
April 1999 ANZAC Day finds Nick musing on the
Denver school massacre and the Dili killings ... until a phone call comes
unexpectedly from Jakarta.
The
fig of the forbidden tree
5
May 1999 The Bob Ellis imbroglio brings a lot
of pleasure to a lot of simple people and Old Possum explains why the
monetary system is ultimately doomed.
An
assignation in the Marlborough
11
May 1999 In which Nick signs up for a hazardous
mission to help the East Timor independence fighters.
Night
flight to Timor
18
May 1999 Nick finds himself kicking Kalashnikovs
and Paddy McGuinness dolls out of a Cessna Cargomaster over East Timor.
Mainstream
politics is a chronic relapse condition
25
May 1999 The drug barons emerge from the drugs
summit as the big winners and Bob Carr still looks good, thanks to the
Sydney Morning Herald.
This
country would be alright if Cheryl Kernot were alive
2
June 1999 In which Meg Lees and Cheryl Kernot
go missing and Nick stakes out the Parramatta Mall, posing as a Mormon.
Nightmare
on Macquarie Street
9
June 1999 In which Nick hears rumours that life
will henceforth be nasty, brutish and short for Liberal leader Kerry "Chika"
Chikarovski.
On
the pirate ship Parliament
16
June 1999 In which Nick gets angry about Warren
Entsch and remembers that scandals involving concrete and defence works
go back a long way in Australia.
The
vanishing of Jill Gamblin (a true story)
23
June 99 Nick goes back over his file on a young
woman who went missing in Sydney 20 years ago. If you knew Jill or you
have any information, please read this.
The
Terror
1
July 1999 In which Nick confronts a lynch mob
led by Daily Telegraph journalists and finds Bob Carr and Kerry Chikarovski
trailing in its wake.
Praise
The Market and pass the snake oil
7
July 1999 Our hero takes issue with the current
political fashion for "civilizing" capitalism and other weepy
bullshit.
The
way things are
14
July 1999 In which Nick's fax spits out a leaked
White House briefing on the visit of "Australian Premier" John
Howarth (Howerd? Heward?) ... whatever.
The
Vichy Republic of Balmain Peninsula
21
July 1999 Joadja discovers the hidden agenda
for the Great Balmain Rebellion on Chardonnay-stained coasters from the
Riverview Hotel.
The
best broadcasters money can buy
28
July 1999 In which the talk-back nazis get caught
out, Mike Carlton blows his cover, and Nick suffers a relapse of Possum
Creek fever.
A
massacre in the marketplace
4
August 1999 A day trader goes berserk and kills
13 in the US of A, and Nick and Old Possum discuss where the internet
might lead us.
Fats
in the ranks
11 August 1999
Nick gets totally confused trying to establish just who Paddy McGuinness's
financial advisor is in the Great Balmain Burghers Rebellion ... and no
wonder ... for a while the trail seems to lead to the Macquarie Bank and
naked bimbos at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
They
call it merchant banking
18
August 1999 Nick picks up a cheque for surveillance
work on the Simon Hannes insider trading case and wonders why Simon bothered.
Of
hedge funds and the whale
26
August 1999 Nick, Joadja and Old Possum go whale-watching
in Manly and Old Pos explains the nature of the world economy.
A
stakeout in the night
2
September 1999 Nick gets a bit of contract work
with the cops and finds himself staking out a locked public toilet.
An
honourable course of action
9
September 1999 The East Timorese vote for independence
and Joadja discovers that Gough Whitlam is actually very short.
Making
a wilderness and calling it Order
16
September 1999 The TNI continue their rampage
and Nick is hired a security consultant for the big Save East Timor Rally.
The
fart of darkness
23 September 1999
In which Nick, Joadja, and Old Possum discuss the hurt feelings of the
Indonesian military and the Javanese elite and a huge inflated effigy
of Paddy McGuinness appears in the sky above Balmain.
The
New Order changeth
30
September 1999 A chilly wind blows through the
corridors of power in Canberra and Jakarta as the friends of Indonesia's
dictatorship find themselves redundant.
A
storm over the ocean
7
October 1999 On the spur of the moment, Nick
takes the ferry to Joadja's secret cave at North Head and broods on the
horror of the Timor events.
The
cosmic slush-ball cometh sometime
14
October 1999 Kangaroos are found to be energy
efficient and Nick considers the damage done to Darwinism by the Social
Darwinians.
The
70th anniversary of the Great Crash
21
October 1999 The new Millennium doesn't arrive
'till 2001 but the real anniversary to remember is the 1929 stock market
crash on Wall Street.
The
truth is out there somewhere
28
October 1999 In which Nick finally gets stuck
into the renovations and discovers that the people delivering the rubbish
skip are liars and fantasists.
Far
better Ita Buttrose appointed than Dick Smith elected
4
November 1999 Nick wakes in pain and decides
that if possums had the vote he'd vote Yes to the republic and No to the
preamble.
Velikovsky
vindicated (more or less)
11
November 99 In which Joadja explains there's
new evidence that cometary impacts had a big influence on human history.
A
bushman shoots his own dog
18
November 99 Lawsie and Jonesie in trouble! When
Nick thinks about talk-back jocks he always gets a mental picture of a
mean sheepdog.
A
desperate choice for desperate times
25
November 1999 It's a tough call but Joadja and
Nick agree that 2UE ought to sack Jonesie before Lawsie.
Over
an oil barrel
2
December 1999 Nick is hired by a consumer group
to look into the rapidly rising price of petrol.
Back
to Asics
9
December 1999 Nick and Joadja visit the Michaelangelo
to Matisse exhibition at the Art Gallery, but they find the fleeting moment
of high civilisation passes quickly.
The
Baird Witch Project
16
December 1999 The RTA admits that the taxpayer will never get rent
on the M2 motorway and Nick dusts off his old files on former roads minister
Bruce George Baird.
Itinerary
of an overactivist -- the Rodney Johnstone files
23
December 1999 PR man and Liberal fixer Ken Hooper
is accused of organising bogus community groups on behalf of the Westfield
shopping empire and Nick is reminded of bogus groups run by a certain
Rodney Johnstone.
Distributor
troubles
30
December 1999 Toll-paying traffic on the Eastern
Distributor is so low it's hard to see how it can ever pay its way.
© Nick Possum/
Brushtail Graphics.
