The raid on Pearl Harbour failed to catch the US carrier force which was still at sea. It also failed to destroy the oil storage facilities that would have crippled any ability to send a pursuing force. The Japanese strategists knew that the obvious place for an American fight back to be based was Australia. It rapidly consumed the Dutch East Indies and the island of New Britain which was part of the PNG mandated territory awarded to Australia by the League of Nations.
On 10th December, 1941 the tactics conceived by Yamamato and Nagano were again proved correct when Japanese aircraft sank the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya. At the same time Guam was captured from the Americans.
Read more: The Bombing of Darwin Part 2 - the Australian Connection
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.
Read more: Indigenous or Aboriginal? First Nation? Is Australia about Race or about Australians?
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 19th 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.
Read more: The Bombing of Darwin Part 1 - it all started 40 years before
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.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought us a panoply of lies and evidence-light declarations that were less intended to inform Americans than to consolidate power and buy time. Among these were Anthony Fauci’s famous shift from arguing against wearing masks, to recommending wearing one, and, finally, to wearing two.
Fauci also tried to convince us that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not manipulated in a lab even though his inner circle had emailed him about “unusual features” of the virus that looked “potentially engineered.” And, of course, we had “fifteen days to stop the spread,” an evergreen concept that dragged on for two years. Lest readers fault us for forgetting, there was also the “gain of function” controversy, the focused protection battle, school closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and vaccine misrepresentations.
Let’s look at the swap of WNBA player Brittany Griner for Viktor Bout.
Bout, aka The Merchant of Death (a moniker gifted by his prosecutors), was convicted for “trying to kill Americans”. Actually he was convicted of trying to sell arms to FARC, a group of Columbians that were fighting the Columbian regime supported by the United States. This attempted “killing of Americans” amounted to trying to arm people who were fighting U.S. military and bureaucratic forces who were in Columbia ostensibly enforcing U.S. drug laws. Bout was arrested in Thailand. There have been no allegations he committed his “crimes” on U.S. soil yet, he was tried and convicted in a New York courtroom.
I’ve started and restarted this article, pondered how to avoid hurting anyone’s sensitivities, and in the end have decided to accept Admiral Farragut’s advice at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864: Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!
I have an intellectual and emotional stake in this matter of the Charge of Beersheba (Be’er-Sheva). My maternal grandfather, 2788 Trooper John Joseph McGrath, was a horse breaker who served in the 2nd Remount Unit for more than three years under Major A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson in Egypt and Palestine. My father, QX 17611 S/Sgt James Hammill served in the 2/ 14th LHR between the wars, then in Tobruk and the Middle East, including Palestine, with the 2/9 Bn. The subject of the Charge of Beersheba was not an infrequent topic at home and in places that I visited.
Read more: 'Real or a Re-enactment? The Charge of Beersheba'
The slave mentality is still very much among us. A class of people have emerged who believe that they only have to put in minimal work effort while expecting the ‘master’ (government) to take care of them. As more and more people become addicted to entitlements, they become more apathetic and less likely to work for what they need.
The mentality of the Slave is actually enslaving them and they are embracing their slavery through ideology.
They are the unsung heroes who actually did save us from a fate worse than death and they did it in spite of the handicaps heaped upon them by Macarthur and Blamey. They all fell victim to the little man syndrome that afflicted Blamey and the ego of Macarthur that needed constant feeding.
Read more: The Men who saved Australia - Three Unsung Heroes
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