The PR Blog

I grew up in a small rural community in the hills of New Zealand. My early life was shrouded in mist and the ever-present wind that pummeled our hilltop community and we loved every wet windy second. So much so that even today, all these decades later, my definition of a perfect day is a misty drizzly soggy one where I can snuggle down and take life off the hook and feel perfectly justified in being a sloth.

As kids, we roamed the paddocks, built campfires and fought incredible wars. 

It was about 30 years ago when I was living in a tiny town in the Channel Country. It was a Sunday morning and I got a phone call from a hospital about 14 hours away. My daughter was in their care and suffering from a particularly nasty viral infection in her lungs. Could I perhaps come as soon as possible?

I spoke with my husband and he said that there was a shortcut through some backcountry that could shave about 3 hours off my trip. But there was no diesel on that road so he filled a drum up with fuel and told me to stop at a place about halfway through. There was a Police Station and a pub and the local cop would help syphon the juice from the drum and that would see me safely through.

Banjo Paterson is the giant of Australian literature and folk law. His exploits in this field are so extensively well documented that I would not presume to add to them.

What is less well known is his contribution to the war effort in WW1 and to a much lesser extent The Boer War. His contribution to the successes of the Light Horse brigades was outstanding.

Over the years, I have witnessed the decline of community standards when it comes to tolerance of the intolerable. The acceptance of the unacceptable and the selective honesty when it comes to judging our community outrage. … depending on the colour of our skin or the organs that lie between our legs or the age of the person whose body they are attached to.

Natural flood plains form where floods spread silt and mud in river valleys. Being flat, fertile, picturesque and usually supplied with surface and underground water, they attract farms, orchards and gardens. These are inevitably followed by roads, houses and businesses.

In deference to our New Zealand brothers I thought it would be fair to do an item about them rather than make this series of contributions an exclusively Australian affair and recognise the NZ part of the ANZAC legend.

The River Plate (Rio de la Plata) separates Argentina and Uruguay.

In 1939 it was the scene of one of the most dramatic naval battles of the war and has been the subject of a movie of the same name.