Twenty-Five Teenagers. One Mother. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

When I was about twelve years old, my mother - known to my readers as Redhead -  was asked to do something that today would probably require a risk assessment the size of a telephone directory, a dozen police checks, several counsellors and enough paperwork to sink a ferry.

It was 1968.

She was asked to escort around twenty-five teenage fencers from Auckland to Christchurch for the New Zealand Fencing Championships. A distance of roughly 600 miles or 1000 km in new money. A long way back then with the transport available. 

No teachers. No security guards. No youth workers. Not even a committee.

One mother. One chaperone for the girls. 

Can you imagine the phone call today?

Swish, Swish... Off With Their Heads

When I was a young lass, I was a fencer.

No, not the farming type that wandered around the farm putting up wire and posts to keep stock in a paddock. I mean a swish swish, off with their heads type of fencer.

It's been over fifty-five years since I last stepped onto a piste, mask in hand and heart pounding. Back then, I learned quickly that no amount of reach or muscle could level the playing field against a male opponent.

But fencing taught me something even more valuable -  grace under pressure, discipline, and the quiet power of standing your ground.

My love affair with fencing began back in 1969 or thereabouts, when I started high school. I came from a tiny country primary school in rural New Zealand where there had been barely a hundred pupils. Overnight I found myself in a high school of almost two thousand students.

It was a culture shock. And that is an understatement.

Mystery Deepens: Who Are the Chookhouse Four?

By Roderick (Whiskers ) McNibble, Chief Investigative Correspondent, Author of " Do Rats Dream? " , currently no 7 on the NY Ratty Times Best Seller List. 

Dusty Gulch residents are once again peering nervously through their curtains following the sudden arrival of four highly organised chickens who have taken up residence in what locals are already calling "The Chookhouse."

The newcomers have become known simply as The Chookhouse Four.

Their arrival comes only weeks after the tragic disappearance of the infamous Dusty Nine, the flock of ducks whose unfortunate encounter with the Werewolves of Dusty Gulch has become the subject of songs, rumours and at least three highly inaccurate documentaries narrated by Lord Squawk Squawk.

What has everyone scratching their heads, however, is not the chickens themselves.

It is their bodyguard.

The sea doesn’t warn you. It doesn’t care who you are, what rank you hold, or how well you swim. In 1945, Edgar Harrell -  a young Marine aboard the USS Indianapolis -  found himself tossed into an ocean of blood, oil, and sharks.

Five days he floated. No food. No water. Just faith. When I saw the image of that ship heading into the mouth of a great white -  part nightmare, part truth -  I thought of him.

I thought of two boys on surfboards who once saved my life. And I thought of how, in a world gripped by fear, someone must still call out: look at the sky, stay on your back, breathe -  help is coming.

I had never heard of Edgar Harrell. His name, like so many from the past, drifted quietly beneath the surface of history -  until one day, a video clip pulled him into my world.

In it, an elderly man calmly recounts a nightmare: five days adrift in shark-infested waters after the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed on the 30th of July, 1945.

His voice is steady, but the story is harrowing.

After delivering components for the atomic bombs, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Hundreds of his shipmates were killed ... not by the explosion, but by sharks.

In a fast-changing Australia, where new cultures and identities weave fresh threads into our ever fading national fabric, the quiet streets of Gulgong offer something rare: a living memory of our country’s colonial foundations.

Once roaring with the fever of gold and the voices of bush poets, this small New South Wales town now stands as a fragile monument to a bygone era. As the echoes of horse hooves fade beneath the hum of modern life, Gulgong reminds us of the stories of our past. Gritty, resilient, and deeply Australian, it is a past that must be cherished, lest it slip entirely into folklore. In towns like this, we see not just where we came from, but what we risk forgetting.

We see it throughout the world: towns caught in time in a world where our colonial heritage is becoming a museum piece, gazed upon as an oddity, no more than a fossil frozen in time ............ 

“Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give what they want. The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.”
— C.S. Lewis

In 2026, we are being told, once again, that it is for our own good.

We are told to obey the experts. To trust the committees. To believe that restrictions are signs of enlightened governance. But history tells another story: one where the language of safety becomes the camouflage of control. Where fear is not conquered but cultivated. And where God is replaced, not with reason, but with rulers.

We have seen governments lock us down, isolate the elderly, muzzle dissent, and silence the young  -  not with reasoned debate, but with edicts. Under the guise of public safety, we are being reshaped. Social cohesion is no longer built around families, churches, or communities -  but around bureaucracies, panels, and platforms.

This is not safety. This is sedation.When Governments Say ‘It’s For Your Own Good. ' rest assured, it is probably not.