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?
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
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
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
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.
There’s a new chorus echoing through Canberra: “Critical minerals will secure our future.” With fanfare and funding, the Albanese government recently sealed a multi-billion-dollar deal with the United States to ramp up Australia’s role as a key supplier of rare earth minerals - the elements that power electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones, and missiles.
On October 20, 2025, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese shook hands at the White House, creating a glittering new partnership - the U.S.–Australia Critical Minerals Framework.
It all sounds like the perfect marriage of mutual interest - until you look beneath the polished policy language.
We stopped teaching goodness. Now we’re living with the consequences.
There was a time when Sunday School was part of almost every child’s life. In the early 1960s, one in seven children under fourteen went every Sunday to hear Bible stories, talk about God, and learn Christian values. We put on our best clothes and headed off to join our friends in fellowship and safety - in a place of love.
The idea of Sunday School began in 18th-century England. Robert Raikes, a Gloucester printer and philanthropist, saw the suffering of child labourers in factories and mines. Their only day off was Sunday, so he created schools where they could learn to read - first the alphabet, then the Bible.
As Raikes said, “Vice could be better prevented than cured.”
In an Australia grappling with division and a search for identity, it’s time to rediscover Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson - not merely as the poet of Waltzing Matilda and The Man from Snowy River, but as a patriot, horseman, and wartime contributor whose life speaks to the strength and unity we need today.
Known for turning the bush into verse, Paterson’s lesser-known story - his wartime service, shaped by a childhood injury that left one arm shorter than the other - reveals a man who overcame limitation to serve his country.
His legacy, from training horses for the Light Horse Brigades to penning poems like We’re All Australians Now, offers a blueprint for rediscovering national pride in 2025.
Read more: Rediscovering Banjo: The Poet Who Taught Us to Be Australians
Filed by: Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Senior Correspondent, Dusty Gulch Bureau
It’s been a curious sort of week here in Dusty Gulch - the kind of quiet that makes you think something’s up. The ghosts of Banjo Paterson, Ned Kelly, and Henry Lawson left town some time ago, promising to return, and not a whisper since. The Dusty Dingo gossip circle’s been silent, McFookit Burgers has been ticking along without incident, and even the bin chickens have been strangely absent.
Jeffrey Epstein remains in the freezer behind McFookit’s - for “historical preservation,” according to the CWA - and Trevor’s knees, having been temporarily confiscated during the first equal rights uprising, are awaiting reinstatement pending CWA approval. All in all, Dusty Gulch was as settled as a cat waiting for a zoomie episode at 3 am.
Then we heard the sound.
Eighty-one years ago this week, in October 1944, a tall, thoughtful barrister from Victoria gathered representatives of non-Labor organisations in Canberra. Australia was weary from war, yet filled with resolve. Robert Gordon Menzies stood before them and spoke not of polling or political marketing, but of character. From that meeting, the Liberal Party of Australia was born.
Menzies’ vision was not merely to defeat Labor - it was to build Australia. He sought a political movement anchored in principle: in the dignity of work, the sanctity of family, and the belief that a free people could govern themselves best when guided by decency and duty.
He called them “the forgotten people” - the middle Australians who raised families, paid taxes, volunteered on committees, and asked little more than a fair go and honest leadership. They were not ideological warriors or professional activists; they were the quiet architects of the nation’s character.
Read more: Menzies and the Liberal Party’s Lost Soul: Where did our Moral Compass go?
Australia's Spirit at the Crossroads – Time to Shake Off the Mud At dawn, when…
204 hits
Muddy, Battered, and Waiting for the Next Kick-Off After a rugby match, the ball always…
275 hits
Dusty Gulch Gazette – Special Edition (Front Page) RUCTION AT THE GULCH OVAL: SETTLED THE…
420 hits
Some men belong to history. Others belong to the national conscience. Bruce Ruxton was the latter.…
350 hits
The Prime Minister Who Disappeared There are many ways for a Prime Minister to leave…
408 hits
From Whitlam to Bondi Beach, how moral evasion became cultural habit Australia has woken up…
420 hits
At 9:41am on Monday, 15 December 2014, Man Haron Monis forced Tori Johnson, the manager…
483 hits
Recent news in Australia has sparked debate: a ban on social media for under-16s. The…
385 hits
Dusty Gulch Gazette – Special Scandal Edition By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble – Foreign Correspondent, Rodent…
378 hits
Back in 1904, H. G. Wells published a short story called “The Country of the…
397 hits
Education, often celebrated as a beacon of enlightenment and progress, can also become a potent…
397 hits
On December 9, 2019, New Zealand's White Island erupted .claiming 22 lives and leaving survivors…
411 hits
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and nowhere is that truer than…
394 hits
Before the sun had fully risen over Hawaii, a chain reaction had begun — one…
489 hits
“Minor Problem: I Identify as a 73-Year-Old Tabby, Therefore I’m Legally Entitled to X (and…
520 hits
Dusty Gulch Gazette – Special Duck Census Edition By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble – Foreign Correspondent,…
398 hits
Flysa spent some of the early years of his life managing construction projects in the…
436 hits
In the heart of Ballarat in 1854, a ragtag coalition of gold miners took a…
546 hits
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Forty-One Years On — A Legacy That Still Breathes, Bleeds, and…
404 hits
Henry J. Kaiser: The Self-Made Miracle Worker and the Legacy of Vision This article builds…
464 hits
The birth of Australia’s iron ore industry wasn’t just an economic milestone - it was…
451 hits
The Quiet Hanson: Why Lee Sherrard Might Just Save One Nation (and Why She Might…
649 hits
Dusty Gulch Gazette – Emergency Midnight Edition November 27, 2025 – Vol. 147, No. 320…
469 hits
From a disease-ravaged ship anchored off a windswept coast… to thirteen scrappy colonies telling the…
436 hits
In Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a charismatic Edinburgh teacher enchants her…
603 hits
Elon Musk is more than a billionaire tech mogul...he’s a disruptor, a visionary, and a…
442 hits
Yes, let’s be honest. The days when the Irish, Scots, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Poms,…
461 hits
Picture this: You’re sitting down for a family dinner, and instead of chatting about school,…
453 hits
Dusty Gulch Gazette November 21, 2025 – Vol. 147, No. 312 By Jedediah "Dust" Harlan…
481 hits
by Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble - Chief Correspondent for Ratty News - Aeronautical and Ornithological Division…
465 hits
A green hill in the Irish Sea has stood for 1,045 years. It has seen…
476 hits
There are many ships of the Royal Australian Navy that are dear to the hearts…
446 hits