Timeless Treasures: An Epic Adventure in Australia's Bronze Age

I knew the type of guy they were looking for. I knew because I was that guy.

I watched the casting call posters, pinned up all over the city. The men and women in them looked like they could have been my cousins, my brothers and sisters, my friends. They looked like me. No one else would know it, but I would see the resemblance instantly: small eyes, sharp cheekbones, dark hair, pale skin. They weren’t casting for people who looked like they had lived a hard life. The people in the posters looked like they had lived a good life.

It was a good time to be alive. Things were changing fast. We could see it on our phones as we passed from place to place, as we walked through the city streets on our way to work or home or somewhere in between: it was all there for us to see – the rise and fall of governments, the birth of presidents and kings, the death of dictators and traitors; we saw it all unfold before us. It was scary sometimes – what if our phones stopped working? What if we missed out on something important? But for the most part it was exciting – a new world order was being created before our eyes, and we were part of it. We just had to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

And then came the adverts: “Are you ready?” they asked us. “Do you want to be a hero?”

The first time I saw that first advert I laughed when they showed us what they wanted us to do: a man running down an alleyway with an open bag of money; another man trying to catch him; a woman leaning over her balcony watching them run past without bothering to help. It made sense – why should she help? She wasn’t going to get any reward for helping him out; she wouldn’t even get recognition for being heroic if she did step in (it might even damage her property). So she stayed there on her balcony, doing nothing, as two men ran by with money flying out behind them and no one was able to stop them because they weren’t heroes yet.

But then they brought out the next advert: a little boy playing outside his house when a gang of four thugs approached him and threatened him with knives to give them his bike. They beat up his little sister until he gave in and handed over three hundred dollars worth of brand-new toys he had just got for his birthday that morning; he didn’t cry or scream or beg for mercy even though he probably wanted to; he just handed over his money and got beaten up anyway along with his sister until one of those thugs noticed something strange about their shoes and asked them why so many people were staring at them from across the street where there didn’t seem to be anything happening at all; then he turned around and saw everyone pointing at him as if he were some kind of criminal himself instead of just someone who happened to be passing by at exactly the right moment; then he turned around again just in time to watch this kid swing onto his head with a bicycle chain wrapped around his arm while screaming something about justice into his face before all those others joined in too – these ordinary people who suddenly became heroes because they didn’t have any other choice, because they finally saw someone who needed help but couldn’t ask for it themselves – because no one else would do it for them.

When I watched that advert I realised that this was what I had always wanted: not this exact situation certainly – not this particular robbery or assault or whatever else you might say it is – but something like it anyway; something real enough so that people could see me doing something real enough so that people could tell that I was actually doing something important even if no one else could work out what exactly I was doing except maybe those people who already knew what I was doing already; something important enough so that everyone would know about me after I did it so that everyone would show their appreciation afterwards so that everyone would know how much better off we are as a society now than we were before I did it so that everyone would know how much money had been raised thanks to me living my dream instead of just dreaming about living mine - because after all wasn’t this the kind of advenure they had always shown us when we used to watch TV shows when we were kids? Wasn’t this exactly what every great hero used to do?