The PR Blog

By 7.30 am the morning sun had pushed far above a shimmering cloud line. Ignoring that it was final days of a bloody-hot Australian summer it still bit into the weathered necks of some thirty habitual punters who were already milling outside a locked security gate on the Eastern periphery of Sydney’s vast domestic airport.

Meanwhile, some 650 Kms. to the North West, in the NSW city of Armidale, officials were preparing for the 148th running of the Armidale Cup; a horse race that draws punters and good-time blokes from around the nation.

Through the chain-link fence and beyond the ragged grass awaited our chartered DC3.   

A long time ago the universe was made of ice. Then one day the ice began to melt, and a mist rose into the sky.. Out of the mist came a giant made of frost and the earth and heavens were made from his body. That is how the world began, and that is how the world will end. Not by fire but by Ice. An Ancient Scandinavian Legend, quoted by Robert W Felix in his great book:“NOT BY FIRE BUT BY ICE”.

Earth is living in the latter days of the Holocene Warm Era. This is the latest short, fertile, warm interlude within the long, barren, Pleistocene Ice Age.

At 9.41am on Monday 15 December 2014, Man Monis directed Tori Johnson (the manager of the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, Sydney) to call 000 and say that all those in the cafe had been taken hostage by an Islamic State operative armed with a gun and explosives.

Eighteen hostages were held in the cafe for 16.5 hours. Over that period, 12 of the 18 hostages were able to escape in four separate episodes.

At around 2.13am on Tuesday 16th December, the cafe manager Tori Johnson was executed by Man Moris. Following the execution, police stormed the cafe and another hostage, Katrina Dawson, was struck by fragments of one or more deflected police bullets and died at the scene. The hostage-taker, Man Monis, was also killed in the firefight that followed the police storming the cafe.

When good women get involved with good men, all manner of amazing things can happen. In a partnership of equals, the possibility of one plus one equalling three or even four is not only possible, but it is also extremely likely. While standing alone, one person can only ever achieve the potential output of one. But, when coupled with someone of equal potential, the numbers can change dramatically. 

It is time to gather our resources and focus on the job at hand: to get back to OUR world where we worked together in unity and harnessed our strengths and pulled together as a team.

History has shown us that many powerful men partnered with powerful women. Their power may have come from different directions, but they were. as it is said so sagely " Sympatico." They worked in harmony to each other's benefit.

Bruce Ruxton is one of my heroes. I never met the man and these notes are drawn from personal recollection of some of his better known controversial escapades with a bit of research added in. 

He passed on 23rd of December 2011. 

He was born too late to be able to become a hero in the traditional sense. He joined the Army in 1944 and was assigned to the Survey Corps of the Royal Australian Engineers, a natural progression from his civilian occupation. Towards the end of the war, he was transferred as a rifleman during the Borneo campaign.