User:Marlon Eastgate/sandbox

The Riparian Times was a quarterly journal first published by Sir Frederick Eastgate during the Boer War of 1901. Not much is known about Sir Frederick, apart from the fact that he released one of the greatest underground journals of the 20th century. The last positive sighting of Sir Frederick was on the upper east side of New York City before he was bundled into a Chrysler by three burly men during Christmastime of 1939. The only lead the cops had was a copy of The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov, which was found in Central Park four days after the incident. Sir Frederick had scribbled on the snow flaked book, “for every butterfly in the world there is a shark waiting around the bend.”

This senseless dribble was a far cry from the progressive and enlightening dialogue with which Sir Frederick had based his readership on. There have been various sightings of Sir Frederick over the years but none of this can be positively verified. At one point a wealthy French industrialist offered a handsome reward for any information leading to the discovery of Sir Frederick. It was only by happenstance that one night at the end of World War Two Hettie Clutterbuck stumbled across a lonesome dandy claiming to be Sir Frederick. He was drinking a hurricane in a speakeasy off the coast of Hong Kong. Hettie said the only words Sir Frederick uttered were, “I helped capture that failed artist.”

This lead to the grand assumption by various news outlets that Sir Frederick was actually a spy and the failed artist he was referring to was none other than Adolf Hitler.

Why are we telling you all of this? Today we launch The Riparian Times in digital format. If only Sir Frederick were here to see his master creation. There is a bronze statue of Sir Frederick at the north – west entrance of the Great Wall of China if you ever make it that far east. Why is it there no one knows? The statue was originally erected outside of his old stomping ground of Scotch College in Melbourne; a college, which Sir Frederick “despised in all its phony starboard charm,” he later wrote. The legend of Sir Frederick will be reignited this month with a feature film called Rosebud the Sleigh.

For all enquiries please contact Marlon Eastgate the 3rd on theripariantimes@gmail.com