Patriot Realm

If you are suspected of being a bit naughty in Australia, your mates in power can spy on your social media and email accounts and you won't even know it. By " you " I mean "us " and this makes me feel a bit uncomfortable and dare I say violated. 

Seriously, have we truly come to this? Being spied on by our federal police if they suspect that we are up to no good?

From sleepless nights to stubbed toes and nightmares, tangled hair and sniffy noses, Mum always had a remedy. Yet these days, governments are preventing mothers from doing what Mums do best - loving and caring for their children without stifling their ability to grow and thrive.

Rapidly approaching the big NINE O, along with many others at the same stage of life’s interesting and sometimes troubled journey, I should be relaxing contentedly with friends and relations, enjoying the mind boggling range of new sights and sounds and knowledge not previously encountered, reliving with them the many wonderful experiences of past years, rejoicing in the journey to maturity of children and grandchildren who have grown up so rapidly, having left behind the childhood years seemingly in the blink of an eye … and yet …

When I was a lad, life was simpler, harder yet straightforward and honest. As the world is flooded with newfangled gadgetry and newfangled woke spoke, I find myself looking back on the post war years with a strange regret. Life is so newfangled that it is a complex place of ever-increasing innovation, and gratitude for the simple things in life is a far distant memory. We should consider how imprisoned we have become in this newfangled world which has rewarded us with so much and yet taken even more by stealth.

Yesterday, I saw a photo of a little red wren and I smiled. That pretty, delicate little creature was hopping about doing what it does best and it seemed blissfully unaware of what the world seems to think it is confronting. It was so nice to smile again. 

I see images of cats and dogs, romping, sleeping, enjoying the sunshine and the joy of life and that magnificent wonder of being alive.

How the hell have we humans got it so wrong?

1942 was the most terrifying year in our history. It was the one and only time that our country was under serious threat of invasion. We have never been, before or since, poised on such a knife edge as we were when Singapore fell and Darwin was bombed. Not just Darwin. It got the publicity. What about Broome, Wyndham, Townsville, Newcastle and Sydney? Prominent figures like PM Curtin, Gen Macarthur and high profile others got the plaudits but none of them saved us from a Japanese invasion. There are three men who did.