May 2019

The management of The Public Record have taken the unprecedented step of going public hoping to find out information on their missing journalist, Derrick DiMaggio.

Ten days ago, the following was scrawled on a fax received at TPR headquarters:

“Have accepted assignment as war correspondent for current civil conflict in Westeros. Unprecedented experience dealing with soulless people invading our lands from the north. Happens every summer on the peninsula. If Winterfell falls, next they’ll be jumping off The Pillars and taking our car parking spots. Must go north to provide strategic advice and FULL coverage. DM.”

Nothing has been heard of Derrick DiMaggio since.

“We are really concerned for Derrick’s welfare,” said a spokesman for The Public Record. “He has not been in contact with friends, family or his parole officer.”

“We did receive a post-pack with a shard of glass and a note that simply said ‘Dragonglass – Used’.”

“On closer inspection, it appeared to be glass from a broken Franks Red Hot Sauce bottle. Indeed, Gavin from accounts tasted the red substance and claimed that, while never having tasted White Walker blood, it seemed to taste very much like hot sauce.”

“Another clue to Derrick’s whereabouts is that the package was postmarked Karingal, so it appears he hasn’t made it any further north than there”.

“Indeed, we had a call about someone that matched Derrick’s description yelling loudly at a staff member at the Karingal TAB. Apparently the staff member had refused to accept the agitated man’s cashier’s cheque for $10,000 from the Bank of Lichtenstein. Bystanders said the man kept screaming he wanted to plunge all $10,000 on Julia Banks to take out Flinders at 6.5:1”.

Anyone who has sighted Derrick can contact The Public Record.

Nauru is these days known as the dumping ground of Australia’s refugees, but it was dumping of another kind that made Nauru one of the richest nations on earth during the last century.

The tiny country is renowned for their phosphate mines. With phosphate originally covering four fifths of the island, it seemed like a never ending resource, until that resource dried up in the early 2000’s.

But a delegation from Nauru are not going to go down without a fight, and have identified another phosphate-rich resource in Mornington, and now want to mine it.

“We’d heard about it, but when we saw it for the first time, we really couldn’t believe it,” said Jospeh Tiffenson, head of the Nauruan delegation. “The amount of bird poo on Main Street just made our jaws hit the floor and had us seeing dollar signs”.

It was the bird poo on Nauru that kept the mines going for a century, but they have now lodged plans with Mornington Peninsula Shire to strip-mine the phosphate-rich bird poo from the footpaths in Main Street, Mornington.

“It won’t cause much inconvenience,” said Mr Tiffenson. “There will be road closures, some noise, and the use of quite a bit of explosives to get the bird poo off the footpath, but then we’ll truck it away, and it will be like nothing happened. Indeed, the residents of Mornington will be left with clean footpaths at last!”

Ironically, explosives is one of the products that phosphate is used for. Other uses include fertilizer, as an additive to animal feeds, and for the manufacturing of fidget-spinners.

“Obviously, the fidget-spinner market is immense. We literally can’t get enough phosphate to keep up with the demand,” said Mr Tiffenson.

The Public Record’s Derrick DiMaggio has contacted Mornington Peninsula Shire by raven to ask about the Nauruan’s plans, but had yet to receive a reply by time of publication.