Reprinted from Margo Kingston's Webdiary, this  piece serves well as an overview of the last few months of blogging

While Australians have sat in their trees like manna-gum-'stoned' koalas, the economic landscape has changed around them dramatically.  The new King and Queen of the Southern Defence Colony, affectionately known as Condy and Rummy, will be crowned by Alexander Downer in Adelaide this November, with most of us none the wiser.

As I watched South Australia's Premier Mr Rann tell us that now that a U.S. company had won the design contract for Adelaide's contribution  to the US Missile Shield it should set up an office here, I thought "...so that when they've finished ours we can start the work for Taiwan."

I now consider Halliburton to be more middle-men, than boogie-men. True, they've organised protection for Woomera and Pine Gap, transport of fuel and water resources and reservoirs for southern expansion, northern supply and extraplanetary migration, but you won't see their logo on everything not so much as part of what appears at times to be an almost-sinister concealment of their activities, but because they're contractors and subcontractors for other people and projects, like the water meter reading, the  council park, mowing, the Warship and Joint Strike Fighter programs.

They've kept their names out of the local media much more successfully than they did in the U.S. and U.K  (a pity about the Rolling Stones), but when, in that country and ours, you begin to see the likes of the favourite company of the Bushes and Bin Ladens, Carlyle, begin to show its head at the top   of the pecking order, you see two paths leading to  the same destination. That's when you begin to wonder how many years of preparation have taken place.

It's difficult when you live here to consider how much of a nexus to southern hemispheric activities our insignificant little city has become, and was possibly planned to be since the end of the Second World War. In 1947, in his novel following his theories of geosynchronous orbit and satellite-based communications, Arthur C. Clark presumed that Britain would be the supreme extraplanetary power because of her control of Woomera. According to U.S. Homeland Security Consultant Scott Bates, Adelaide was mooted as the centre of humanity's nuclear-winter survival outpost at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then it wasn't known that the State contained forty per cent of the world's uranium. In front bars around town anyone you have a beer with about what's happening will ask "What's so special about Adelaide?"  Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice, White House Secretaries of Defence and State, seem to have a fair idea. In spite of the "humble" reasoning of the aspirant figurehead of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Rumsfeld and "Condy" (Downer's term of endearment, not mine) haven't come to a pow-wow in Adelaide just because the man lives here. They've come to 'inspect the troops'.

From here, troops will rest, train  and refurbish while their weapons and supplies run across the continent. From here, liquid natural gas supplies will run north to Asia and south to New Zealand creating a possible reverse supply line when mining begins in Antarctica. Another use of the same pipes would mean that water can be coordinated and distributed to what is left of the globe, with a continually drained and refilled Great Artesian Basin acting as the supply depot... Also useful for 'water downloading' if an extraterrestrial water source is found.  While we're waiting, don't forget that the icecaps contain 90 % of the world's fresh water.

From here, Jindaee's radar detection of possible enemies is already carried out. No doubt in the future satellites will feed in global strategic information, if they're not already. The arrival of a National Tsunami Centre suggests that sub-sea activities are also fairly well 'scoped'.

From here, given modern real-time communications, the world could be run quite effectively, at a pinch, with the commanders never being in danger of running out of anything. At the end of the day, with an inexhaustible supply of energy and fresh water, the US Dynasty would be able to outlast any enemy.

To the north of Adelaide, plastic and paper are being imported to landfills and recycled into composites to make lightweight armour for land and air and space vehicles.

In the meantime  we can be happy little koalas munching on Manna from America to keep us obliviously content.