Patriot Realm

When I first wrote this article I kept thinking " what is the image that most encompasses Australia? "

The Sydney Harbour Bridge?: Opera House? The Great Barrier Reef? What is it that makes us Australia?

And I realised that it was not a place. It was not building or a monument or even a flag. It was us. 

It is the people and no matter what our government tries to do, we Aussies still love our country. Though many of our recent migrants do not. So I am leading off with something unexpected. 

It is a photo that I love. It is of Dame Edna. 

Back in 1920, in the small town of Winton, the airline company QANTAS was born.  The Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd was created and would be known as QANTAS from that day forward.

Its co-founders, Sir Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness, said "[Qantas] was conceived in Cloncurry, born in Winton and grew up in Longreach."

The Adelaide River Stakes is the name given to the mass exodus of people prior to and following the Japanese air-raid in Darwin on 19^th February, 1942. Thanks mainly to an ill-informed statement by a former Governor General, Paul Hasluck, that it is a story full of shame for our national persona, but it is a myth.

The truth is that with much closer examination it was anything but a shameful episode in our most serious year of peril. The propaganda disseminated by the government of the day was based on inadequate information, over-the-top censorship and a failure to take the population into its confidence. The faults lie with a succession of failed civilian and military administrations which, like the behaviour of most politicians, was a deliberate trail of cover-ups and refusal to admit fault.

American elections have had a wacky, wild, and wooly history with all kinds of corruption from stuffed ballot boxes to buying votes to voting multiple times, to dead people voting (almost always for Democrats) and miscounting of ballots. Joe Stalin is credited with saying, “The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.” Stalin was a Communist in Russia not a Democrat in Georgia.

Some cynics would say, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” Or a skunk called a wobbet still stinks to high Heaven.

I went down to see Redhead (my Mum) yesterday morning. I had a headache which had been stubbornly hanging on for a few days and I was not feeling that chipper. It was about 8 am when I arrived and Redhead was sitting on her throne also known as the Magic Chair as I staggered down her walkway with a thudding head and eyes that did not seem to enjoy the bright summer sunshine of Queensland.

I HATE not being well.

Redhead got off her regal chair and deigned to rise to come to the door to greet me.Two nervous manx cats scarpered out the door because a " stranger"  had arrived. Hell, I have only been coming for over 6 months since they arrived.  But, no, I am still a " stranger. "

Which brings me to Sailors and Shoeboxes full of memories.