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The Charge at Beersheba... a photograph full of mystery. Real or Re Enactment?

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Written by: Op - Ed Anthony Hammill

I’ve started and restarted this article, pondered how to avoid hurting anyone’s sensitivities, and in the end have decided to accept Admiral Farragut’s advice at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864: Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!

I have an intellectual and emotional stake in this matter of the Charge of Beersheba (Be’er-Sheva). My maternal grandfather, 2788 Trooper John Joseph McGrath, was a horse breaker who served in the 2nd Remount Unit for more than three years under Major A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson in Egypt and Palestine.

My father, QX 17611  S/Sgt James Hammill served in the 2/ 14th LHR between the wars, then in Tobruk and the Middle East, including Palestine, with the 2/9 Bn. The subject of the Charge of Beersheba was not an infrequent topic at home and in places that I visited.

Read more: The Charge at Beersheba... a photograph full of mystery. Real or Re Enactment?

Calendar Cancelled as BOM Bungles, Wallaby Knees Take the Forecast

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Written by: Op-Ed Ratty News

Forecast: Confused With a Chance of Bureaucracy - Microbursts, bureaucratic panic, and a wallaby with titanium knees - Dusty Gulch shows the city how it’s done.

From our Dusty Gulch Bureau of Unofficial Meteorology
By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble - Senior Correspondent & Climate Analyst

When Technology Goes Walkabout

When the Bureau of Meteorology rolled out its brand-new, $4.1 million website on October 22 - promising “modern, user-friendly” weather forecasting - Dusty Gulch residents did what they always do in moments of national confusion: they looked out the window.

The Bureau’s overhaul, part of a whopping $866 million “Robust Modernisation Initiative,” was meant to drag Australians into a sleek digital future. Instead, it left half the country lost in a maze of buttons, colours, and drop-down menus that even a kangaroo with a PhD couldn’t decode.

Read more: Calendar Cancelled as BOM Bungles, Wallaby Knees Take the Forecast

Beersheba - Victory From the Jaws of Defeat

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Written by: Op-Ed Happy Expat

Beersheba is a name that should resonate with every Australian with the same ease and reverence as Gallipoli.

Sadly it does not.

Because the charge on the desert city of Beersheba on 31st October, 1917 is the most outstanding piece of military daring and execution ever undertaken in the military history of the World.

On that day 800 members of the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade of the Imperial Mounted Division brought a stunning victory from the jaws of defeat and started the dismembering of the Ottoman Empire.

The attack began in the late afternoon by this unique breed of men riding a unique breed of horse. It is widely described as the last great cavalry assault yet the participants were not cavalry; they were mounted infantry.

Read more: Beersheba - Victory From the Jaws of Defeat

Lawrence of Arabia - the Man and the Myth

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Written by: Op-Ed Monty

How have we come to this mess in the Middle East?

The strange thing is that my mind immediately went to that figure of historical notoriety, Lawrence of Arabia.

It is probably accepted that most kids today wouldn't have a clue who he was, but most of us from the era who actually got taught things other than gender fluidity in school , have heard of this imposing figure.

The British gentleman who rode around the desert with his blue eyes and, today, would have had more fans on social media than Taylor Swift.

So who was he?

Read more: Lawrence of Arabia - the Man and the Myth

The Great Calendar Kerfuffle: From Bushfires to Bare-Chested Heroes

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Written by: Op-Ed Shaydee Lane

From Bushfires to Bare-Chested Heroes

Our resident Redhead proves that admiration, humour, and a little mischief don’t fade with age.
 
Six years ago, 200 firefighters saved her street and neighbourhood from a potential inferno.
 
What began as a quiet “thank you” has since become our sacred rebellion against growing old quietly: each year, Mum – affectionately known as Redhead, now a sprightly 93 – and I order our Australian Firefighters Calendars.
 
So let me tell you the tale of how it all began...

Read more: The Great Calendar Kerfuffle: From Bushfires to Bare-Chested Heroes

From Whale Oil to Global Power: How Kerosene Ignited the Oil Revolution

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Written by: Op-Ed Monty
In the mid-19th century, a flickering flame of innovation sparked a revolution that would illuminate the world and reshape modern history.
 
Kerosene, a clean-burning fuel distilled from coal and later crude oil, emerged as a game-changer, replacing costly and unsustainable whale oil to light homes, factories, and streets. Pioneered by visionaries like Abraham Gesner and Ignacy Łukasiewicz, and propelled by Edwin Drake’s groundbreaking oil well, kerosene’s rise not only transformed lighting and heating but also laid the foundation for the global petroleum industry - a force that continues to drive economies, geopolitics, and innovation today.

The history of kerosene and the subsequent development of the oil industry is a fascinating journey......

Read more: From Whale Oil to Global Power: How Kerosene Ignited the Oil Revolution

From Cannons to Bureaucracy: Who Pays When Leaders Blunder?

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Written by: Op-Ed Monty

From the Valley of Death at Balaclava to today’s policy corridors, the brave bear the cost while those issuing orders remain untouched.

It’s a timeless tragedy: those at the top blunder, and those below pay the price.

On October 25, 1854, during the Crimean War, the Charge of the Light Brigade saw British cavalry ride headlong into a Russian artillery maelstrom because of garbled orders from distant commanders. The result was catastrophic — a brutal collision of courage and incompetence.

Today, that same script is being replayed on a grander, more insidious stage. Policies like Net Zero, unchecked immigration, and the DEI machine are the modern equivalents of orders shouted from the hilltops. Elites in boardrooms, parliaments, and bureaucracies dream up sweeping edicts — sold as moral imperatives or economic saviours — while ordinary people bear the cost: soaring bills, fractured communities, and eroded trust.

The Charge of the Light Brigade wasn’t just a battlefield blunder; it was a symptom of deeper systemic failure — the product of tangled ambitions, confused communication, and competing empires. To understand its lesson for today’s policy missteps, we must first look at the war that birthed it.

Read more: From Cannons to Bureaucracy: Who Pays When Leaders Blunder?

Why Albanese’s Joy Division Shirt Is a Moral Failure

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Written by: Op-Ed Monty

Imagine women, beaten, humiliated, raped repeatedly in Nazi-run brothels, stripped of their dignity, and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. This was not fiction. This was horror. This was real. And this is the history behind the name Joy Division.

In a world still scarred by the October 2023 Hamas attacks that slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis, symbols of suffering demand reverence, not recklessness. Leaders must understand the weight of history, the memory of trauma, and the responsibility of visibility.

Yet on October 22, 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stepped off a plane - fresh from a meeting with Donald Trump - wearing a black Joy Division T-shirt. He has worn it before: at a 2022 Gang of Youths concert, skulling a beer to cheers, and again on a 2023 diplomatic trip to China.

Fans cheer “DJ Albo” for his relatable, music-loving persona. But this is no harmless fashion choice. It is a pattern of indifference to history’s deepest wounds.

Read more: Why Albanese’s Joy Division Shirt Is a Moral Failure

The EDuck was the decoy. Prentis is the conductor. The final act’s begun

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Written by: Op-Ed Ratty News

Prentis Penjani’s Grand Debut – The Duck Was Just the Warm-Up Act

By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Ratty News Senior Correspondent, via Carrier Galah from the Orange Floatplane
(Fuelled by Whiskers Dynamic Propulsion and a Whiff of Unfiltered Emu Brew)

Filed live from the creaky stage of Dusty Gulch’s Town Hall, where the bin chickens are fluffing their feathers for a standing ovation – or a strategic retreat – and the galahs are garbling lines like it’s opening night at the Censorship Cabaret.

The news landed in Dusty Gulch like a firecracker in a tin shed: Maurice E-Duck, the town’s longtime avatar of electronic caution, is flapping off into obscurity. Dusty McFookit toasted freedom with extra Emu Brew. 

But the locals know better than to cheer too soon -  the real mind behind the pond has always been Prentis Penjani, waiting in the wings for this exact moment. And that moment is on the horizon.

Read more: The EDuck was the decoy. Prentis is the conductor. The final act’s begun

Trevor the Wallaby’s Titanium Two-Step and the Great Rare Earth Rush

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Written by: Op-Ed Ratty News

By Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble, Senior Correspondent (and dance adjudicator)

Crikey, mates and matesses -  you’d think a town as small and conspiratorially aware as Dusty Gulch would be immune to scams by now. But no. Once again, Maurice EDuck and Prentis Penjani, those two smooth-talking prophets of piffle, have reminded us that Australia is out for a duck because Trump knocked it out of the park. 

Dusty Gulch is still recovering from last Friday night’s spectacle at the Dusty Dingo, where Trevor the Wallaby took to the bar ... literally ... to debut his brand-new titanium knees. He stomped, he twirled, he Riverdanced and Appalachian-clogged until the sawdust lifted. The crowd roared, the jukebox shorted, and old Mavis from the CWA clog dancing committee fainted into a keg of Emu Brew beer. It was a night to remember.

But just as the knees were warming up, so too were the rumours. Word reached the Dusty Dingo Pub that the shiny new metal in Trevor’s legs came from Dusty Gulch itself ..  or rather, from the soon-to-be “Critical Minerals Extraction Zone No. 47,” recently approved after the historic handshake deal between President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Magoo.

Intrigued? You should be. This is a tale that could wag the tail off a rat living in a wombat burrow, reporting news to the world via carrier galah and orange biplanes fuelled by whiskers dynamic propulsion...... 

Read more: Trevor the Wallaby’s Titanium Two-Step and the Great Rare Earth Rush

What a Whale of a Tale

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Written by: Op-Ed Monty

I have often pondered why mankind decided to go after the humble whale. After all, the whale was out there, in the ocean, minding his or her own business and wasn't really causing any problem. Unless you were a seal, krill or plankton. In which case, you probably had a civil rights claim or two. 
Yet this gentle giant ( as far as humans are concerned ) was not bothering anyone. All the whales wanted to do was what they have done since God first had a great idea " I think I'll make a whale. "  and the whales just cruised around, having babies, blowing bubbles and migrating to warmer places and having a jolly old time.  

So what did the poor whale do to us? Well, let me tell you a whale of a tale and how the Industrial Revolution saved it.

Read more: What a Whale of a Tale

  1. Australia: The Quarry Nation
  2. Birth of the United States Marines
  3. When Sunday School Taught Us Goodness
  4. Rediscovering Banjo: The Poet Who Taught Us to Be Australians

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