From there we tracked northward on Millars Road, through the backblocks of Footscray and West St and around onto Milleara Road to drop Paula Latham in Avondale Heights; then east on Keilor Road, linking to Bell Street and north on High Street to deliver Big Eva in Reservoir; back to Bell Street and further east to Templestowe Road out which lay Cherie Dutton’s family abode; southward then to pick up Springvale Road in Doncaster and deposit Janie Prentiss in Forest Hill; and further south, far south on Springvale Road to land Sammy Quick in Mordialloc.
    On arrival, I was so hot and exhausted that I barely noticed Sammy’s peck on the cheek before she disappeared inside. As I limped the car back up Nepean Highway to Moorabbin, I determined that this was going to have to be a little better organised in future.

He now walked along, taking lengthy brisk strides which resounded triumphantly on the platform. He had won the day. The bridge was ready. There was nothing fancy about it, but it was a sufficiently “finished” job to advertise the qualities of the Western World in large letters across the Siamese sky. This was where he deserved to be, in the position of a commander reviewing his troops before a victorious parade. It was unthinkable that he should be elsewhere… He had to see to things himself As he strode along, his glance confirmed the soundness of each joint.
   When he was a little over halfway across he leaned over the parapet, as he had done every five or six yards on the way. He caught sight of a pile and stood rooted to the spot with surprise.
His trained eye had at once noticed the extra ripples on the surface caused by one of the charges. Examining them more closely, Colonel Nicholson thought he saw a brown patch against the wood. He hesitated for a moment, then moved on and stopped a few yards further off, above another pile. Once again he leaned over the parapet.
“That’s funny,” he muttered.
    A truly immortal film arising from the work of a mediocre author was Bridge on the River Kwai, and again it was the skill of David Lean who enhanced a missed opportunity by Pierre Boule to write a great book. The book, by the way, is entitled The Bridge Over the River Kwai. He had the story, the theme, the characters, the situation—all of it was there to be done but Boule couldn’t quite bring it off. The filmmaker showed what he might have achieved. The principle weakness of the book is that it is unable to energise the characters, and you always see Nicholson as silly and want the bridge destroyed. Alec Guinness was able to make the stiff foolish man far more ambivalent and so confuse your values as his were confused. The great thing about the film was that when the heroes attack the bridge at the end, you are not at all sure whether you want them to succeed or fail, and you certainly feel Nicholson’s horror when the bridge is destroyed. In the book, the commandoes fail to destroy the bridge and succeed only in killing Nicholson.
    The film culminates in a remarkable effect. There is Colonel Nicholson, the wonderful character created by Alec Guinness who has outwitted the Japanese prison camp commander, saved his men from torture and cruelty, raised their morale to survival level by giving them something to live for, pride in themselves and their achievement in building the bridge, now trying to save his bridge. A wonderful man, yet as Joyce tries foolishly to reason with him, Warden is shrieking “Kill him!”, Shears is shrieking “Kill him!”, and everyone in the audience is internally shrieking: “Kill him!”  All of us, braying for the death of a truly beautiful human being. Thus warfare deranges us all.
    Immediately after, when Warden (Jack Hawkins) has used the mortar to kill them all, British and Japanese alike, he turns to the women coolies to frantically try and justify himself: “I had to do it!”, and they collectively rear back in absolute terror of him, our own sense of civilisation creeps shamefully back into place. The best films are the ones that touch to the true animal in our souls. None of this is to be found in the book.
    The movie was one of the few that could have been successfully used by the army as a training film, and would have given us conscripts some idea of what we were getting ourselves into, but nothing like that happened. Perhaps they feared its unstated anti-war message, but as it turned out, that would have provided useful information as well.