In the Beginning

14 August 1967, Melbourne, Australia: Seventeen-year-old Nev Darcy sat in the back of the lecture theatre and surveyed the silly old fools below. They had invited him to join their company because he’d won an international chess competition. It was a bit of a laugh. The idiots thought they were honouring him. They were so up themselves they couldn’t see what pathetic arseholes they really were.

There were Nobel laureates amongst them and a whole lot of creeps like that. They crapped on about the evils of the world and how they were going to put them right. Nev listened in bored silence as speaker after speaker denounced Hitler and Stalin. It was a sort of ritual: something they did to show what nice people they were. None of the silly buggers could understand that Hitler and Stalin were two of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century.

The meeting ground to its dreary end and a character calling himself Ah Mong Chou, rose to present copies of a big book. The title was embossed in gold on its leather cover. Codex Nimbinensis, translated as Nimbin Gospels for those who couldn’t read Latin. Nev stifled an urge to laugh. Total Crap would be nearer the mark. He was tempted to take the piss but that would be stupid. The idiots had adopted him as a sort of mascot and he’d been invited to spend the school holidays at their retreat in northern New South Wales.