Patriot Realm

My father was employed in the Gold Mining industry as a metallurgist, and consequently, I spent my school days as a student in the mining towns of the outback, or at boarding school. In those days there were nuns and priests, many of them Irish, in most outback Australian towns.

I started school with the Sisters of Mercy, and after 75 years I still recall those wonderful selfless women. They lived in a corrugated tin-roofed convent, and taught in an adjacent corrugated tin-roofed school, dressed in their long black habits and veils and white wimples and bibs. In the sweltering heat of summer with no air-conditioning, the heat must have been unbearable.

Why is the Liberal Party punishing a woman for defending women’s rights?

I’ve met Moira Deeming. She’s a housewife, a mother, a former teacher and a Christian. The idea that she somehow has dark ties to neo-Nazis is so hilarious that I can’t even take it seriously.

But that is the story Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto has decided to run with in his bid to expel Moira from the state’s Parliamentary Liberal Party.

For those not yet familiar with the sad, tawdry affair, here’s a quick run-down.

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” — Samuel Johnson

Of course, the newspaper USA Today chose transgender activist Leigh Finke for its Women of the Year award because in the USA of the here-and-now (today, for instance), boundaries are a thing of the past, and if a woman of the year happens to come with the “package” that signifies male-of-the-species, you’d better ignore that and go along with the gag — or prepare for the punishments that will come down until your morale improves.

The murder allegation could be the start of a lengthy string of trials, which is unlikely to ever reach the top brass.

Earlier this week, an Australian soldier, Oliver Schulz, 41, was charged with murder by the Australian Federal Police in relation to the killing of a civilian in Afghanistan in 2012.

Schulz was remanded in custody and is due to appear in court again on May 16. His trial will probably commence later this year, and, if found guilty of murder, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Gold is known as a noble metal in that it will never rust, and is not affected by most acids and chemicals. It can however be dissolved by a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acid known as aqua regia(Latin royal water), or by sodium cyanide, or by acetic acid mixed with certain oxidants.

From time immemorial gold has been the desire of those aspiring to riches, or to make sacred or venerable objects. Examples are the Israelites in the Bible worshipping a golden calf when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, and Jason and his Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece.

A friend of mine went horseback riding today. Up a beach on a sunny Queensland day. She trotted, galloped and felt the wind in her hair as she and her friends celebrated a birthday of a man now in his 76th year. '

It must have been glorious. A group of friends celebrating the joy of life on an open beach in the sunshine and leaving the cares of the world behind. 

And it took me back to a day, about 50 years ago, when Redhead rode a horse and her bra strap broke.