The PR Blog

The Penguin Lessons: A Film, a Feeling, and the Layers We Don’t Expect

I watched The Penguin Lessons the other night and, to be honest, I was just expecting a pleasant couple of hours.

Steve Coogan, a bit of dry humour, a slightly odd story about a man and a penguin drifting around 1970s Argentina. The sort of film you watch, enjoy, and move on from.

But it didn’t quite let me do that.

It sat there afterwards, like a tune you can’t shake.

The name he gives the Penguin itself was a quiet wink. “Juan Salvador” is the Spanish title for Richard Bach’s 1970s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull -  the story of a bird who refuses the flock’s mundane life and instead chases something higher: freedom, perfection, and the courage to be different.

By naming his oil-covered penguin after that idealistic seagull, Michell was gently saying this small, stubborn creature had the same spirit.

In May 1942, as Japanese forces surged southward across the Pacific, Australia stood on the brink.

With the threat of invasion looming and the port of Moresby in enemy sights, the nation held its breath.

What followed in the waters of the Coral Sea was a battle unlike any before -  fought not by dueling battleships, but by aircraft launched from distant carriers. In a high-stakes clash that changed the course of the Pacific War, Australian and American forces turned back the tide.

The Battle of the Coral Sea wasn’t just a military engagement; it was a moment when Australia’s fate hung in the balance, and the Allies stood firm.The Battle of the Coral Sea is regarded by some as the action that saved Australia in WW2.

The African Queen and the Bright Idea

There’s a particular tone a man uses when something has gone quietly, undeniably wrong.

Not anger. Not panic. Just a sort of weary disbelief, usually followed by the question:

“Whose bright idea was this, then?”

It’s not really a question. It’s a reckoning.

And it’s a question we don’t seem to hear much anymore.

Because somewhere along the way, we stopped admitting when things don’t work.

We dress it up. We explain it away. We double down and hope the problem fixes itself if we just give it a bit more time.

But there was a time when the answer was simpler.

If something didn’t work, you fixed it.

No taskforces. No slogans. No pretending that if we just believed a little harder, the engine would somehow come good.

You just fixed it.

Orange Sky Warriors: Ratty Joins the Dogfight

Dusty Gulch Gazette Exclusive - Roderick (Whiskers ) McNibble - Aeronautical Division

The bush is buzzing...and not just from the flies.

Yes, Ratty Airways has entered the airspace.  Again....  Pauline is most excited to take delivery and her pilot and Chief of Staff James Ashby is currently in Dusty Gulch, receiving tuition in the mastering of Whiskers Dynamic Propulsion and flying a budgie under the tutelage of Ratty " Biggles " Rat Esq. .

Beneath the swaying trees and the green grass of Norfolk Island lies a brutal chapter of colonial history few tourists suspect.

Once dubbed "the most hellish place in the British Empire," this remote outpost in the South Pacific served as a penal settlement so feared that its name alone chilled convicts sent from the Australian mainland.

From its inception as a dumping ground for the "worst of the worst," to its eventual closure amid growing public horror, Norfolk Island was a place where punishment eclipsed rehabilitation, and where paradise masked a legacy of cruelty, resistance, and endurance.