Peter Garrett Online Forum

Ladies and Gentlemen of this Forum It has been brought to my attention by friends with a keen interest in the dramatic arts that a series of announcements have been fraudulently published under my name on this Internet location. This has caused me the deepest distress, and I must make a formal complaint to your Web Supervisor as to these abuses. The Plop name is one that I carry with pride. It is not a toy for underemployed theatricals and ill-mannered louts (such as Mr Christian, whose writing I am utterly unable to understand) to dally with for their amusement. My Great-Grandfather, Balthazar von Ploppfenberg was a respected taxonomist of Freshwater and Terrestrial Chelonians who came first to this country intending to accomplish the scientific work that would make his name renown among zoologists the world over. During his first lecture, in Sydneytown to a group of interested Anglican Ladies and one or two of the gutter press, he chanced to remark that the freshwater chelonian commonly called a 'tortoise' by the lower class of Australian was in fact a terrapin. Subsequent to this opinion being published, he was driven out of New South Wales by a group of herpetologists that were, unfortunately, all married to Anglican Ladies of a certain type and disposition. Unable to find work in his chosen field of endeavour, he eventually became a petty labourer in the Riverina, digging channels for the irrigation scheme in the district surrounding Tocumwal. His opportunities to come into contact with freshwater chelonians were very few indeed. Driven by the shame of these experiences from his father's household, my grandfather, Octavian von Ploppfenberg ran away to a Lutheran commune in the Penshurst district. There, he changed his name to Plop, and from there he made his way to Mount Gambier where he had a short affair (I am afraid of an indelicate nagure) with Robert Helpman (Sir Robert as he was to become). Unfortinately, my Grandfather had a crooked parting in his hair and was not popular amongst the promiscuous homosexuals of Mount Gambier and Port MacDonald. He married as an embittered man at an advanced age, and died shortly after my father's birth while attempting to emulate Adam Lindsay Gordon's famous jump, using a two-stroke motor car instead of a horse. My father, Heironymus Plop, broken in spirit as a young man, left for the Northern Territory and finally settled in Katherine where he established a modest catering business. It was his ambition to market his own brand of goanna vol-au-vents, and he might very well have succeeded had not the council officials of that town not placed so many barriers in his way. Also, the goannas were very fast and my father could not run. I was named Walter after my mother, who tragically died some years before my birth, but I took after my paternal line in devotion to our noble name and our ambition to achieve great things. For the past seventy three years I have been working in a secret location developing a type of terrapin canape that may be safely consumed whilst performing stunts in a motor vehicle. I am only months away from introducing a prototype to the Australian market, and it is damaging to me and to the success of my business plans to have become a mockery and a scorn in public on a 'sight' (as I believe the contemporary term is) such as this. I must ask Mr Christian to restrain his cruel taunts, and Mr Malcolm Grant, who is, I believe, the Web Supervisor over this 'sight' to enforce strict controls to prevent the fraudulent use of my name. It is especially important that the Right Honourable Mr Peter Garrett should never associate my name with such carryings on as have gone on here as it is only with his political help that I will be able to hunt and kill the terrapins necessary for my canapes to succeed. I beg you not to take this matter lightly. There is much at stake. I beg you also, please, to take care, when talking, as you may, being of the artistic and theatrical persuasion, of freshwater chelonians never to refer to them as tortoises, but always as terrapins, which is the correct term, as affirmed by my distant ancestor all those years ago. I remain yours sincerely Walter Plop