Tale of a man and his dog and a grassy Canberra knoll

THIS is Ross Eastgate, I cover the defence beat for The Bulletin.

Stories start in many different ways.

This one began in downtown Manhattan, US and ended on a grassy knoll behind Australia’s mysterious Fort Zinderneuf.

Twenty years ago for serendipitous reasons I found myself back in uniform working at Russell Offices, ADF headquarters in Canberra. For those of you with no experience of La Légion étrangère, Fort Zinderneuf was the desert outpost in PC Wren’s novel Beau Geste where, from a distance viewed through binoculars, all the legionnaires seemed to be manning their posts.

Closer inspection revealed they were all dead.

Russell Offices were a bit like that, but I was happy to be soldiering again.

Apart from a few peacekeeping and monitoring missions, Australia was blissfully at peace so the generals and their lackeys could get on with the business of writing nice staff papers, being seen and planning their next promotion.

In the early morning of September 12 that all changed when news broke of terrorist attacks on the World Trade

Centre in Manhattan, the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.

I grabbed a coffee and a cigarette when, realising I didn’t smoke, threw the fag away and prepared to leave my accommodation at RAAF Fairbairn for Zinderneuf, just a few kilometres away.

The tight RAAF security refused to let us leave the air base, then having negotiated an exit and arrived at Zinderneuf, we were refused entry. I could have done with a cigarette, but I still didn’t smoke. When we were finally let in and arrived at our posts, I noticed the venetian blinds between us and the grassy knoll behind were wide open.

I’d previously been shot at on numerous occasions and expressed my concerns at this apparent lack of security.

I was derisively dismissed. Due for some home leave in Queensland, I warned my coworkers to avoid the windows in my absence.

The blinds were conspicuously closed when I returned and I noticed there was a nervous tension that hadn’t been there when I left. I asked why.

“While you were away there was a guy with a gun and his dog on the grassy knoll,” they said. “He wasn’t a sniper like you predicted, just hunting rabbits.”

I walked slowly to my desk to write the story, relieved I hadn’t discovered them all dead at their posts.

Copy boy!