He slowed his walk in order to more fully appreciate the beauty. It was a day in late autumn, but a Northern Queensland late autumn, crisp and clear, and if one could ignore the military traffic grinding its way up and down The Strand … Well, in a tropical kind of way, Townsville’s mighty pretty, he thought, admiring the broad coastal boulevard lined with lush trees and the palms that were dotted along the foreshore. Birds too … Big, black, crested birds, some sort of parrot, he supposed, quite a number of them feeding on the ground and in the trees. As two took flight from the branch they were perched upon, he caught the vivid flash of red tail feathers. How exotic, he thought. Lyndon had never before encountered black cockatoos.

Some distance ahead, he could see coiled barbed wire and sandbags lining the beachfront. He decided not to walk up to the fort at the northern end of The Strand, where the view would be distinctly militarised, but to stay here where the aspect was more attractive.

He found a park bench looking out over the ocean, sat, and opened the folder. Inside was page upon page, fifty, possibly more, of neatly typed, single-spaced notes. Each report of each incident, varying in the number of its pages, was individually titled and dated. A detailed study indeed, he thought as he settled down to flick through the file for any key notes that might be of interest.

From that moment on, the view was forgotten. Lyndon found himself caught up from the very start by both the style and the content of every single report, and not once did he flick through the pages. In fact, he took his time perusing each. This guy sure can write, he thought.

But the material itself … The comment it made … Without labouring the point, the reporter had clearly and concisely allowed each episode to speak for itself before following it up with an intelligent, analytical view of cause and effect. And much of the reportage was shocking. Dead Negroes in coffins secretly shipped from Mount Isa? Was this really true? There was every reason why such incidents should remain highly confidential, Lyndon thought as he read on further of other black deaths also kept secret, but these incidents should never have occurred in the first place.

An hour and a half later, he closed the folder and looked out at the ocean, but he wasn’t seeing the view. His mind was still dwelling upon what he’d just read.

Vickers is right about the plight of our Negro troops, he thought. And he’s sure as hell right when he says we’ve been courting disaster. Right here in this folder is every reason why black labour forces would seek to rebel.