The PR Blog

In the closing stages of WW2 the Australian Army was given a role that offended the higher echelons of the defense forces.

While MacArthur and Nimitz were doing their island hopping towards the Japan, the Australian forces were given the task of mopping up areas already by-passed. This angered the likes of Blamey who saw it as a deliberate snub to Australia by not including them in the inevitable defeat of Japan.

I reject that notion completely.

My father's small failed mission and its members will never be mentioned anywhere.

Just blips in history.

Z Special Unit His small group 'Platypus VII' of four " Commandos"  sent off in a botched raid at almost the end of the War, to help with an invasion that was mostly for vanity whether for Australia's or for General MacArthur's benefit I'm not sure.

The Japanese in Borneo in July 45 should have been a 'mopping up' operation rather than an invasion from what I've read. The US had broken their fighting forces in the Pacific and sent most back to Japan, where the possibility of a long, difficult fight still looked very likely, before the Atomic bomb was dropped.

I joined the Army as a conscript in 1953 during the Korean War. In those days conscription was compulsory, no exemptions, when boys turned 18. I was in the 3^rd intake and went to Puckapunyal. I was a corporal in the 15^th National Service Training Battalion. I was not a reluctant conscript. I had been a sergeant in the school cadets and liked the life.

After completing the initial 98 day stretch in camp one was then assigned to a CMF (Citizens Military Forces) unit for another two years.   

_{Black holes, time warps and wormholes may be understood only by physicists, but they exist in everyday life.  As I become older, my encounters are on the increase.  I fear I may eventually be swallowed up.}

_{An actual black hole is formed when a star collapses at the end of its life, and gravity is so strong that everything around is sucked in and nothing can escape, even light.  The nearest one known to astronomers is 1500 light years away, which means that it takes light travelling at 300,000 kilometres per second 1500 years to reach us.  They are however around us.}

_{A common occurrence is that which I refer to as the  " Shopping Hole.  "}

Another 26th of January is on our doorstep. Only a few more sleeps before we gather our daggy thongs, ( not from Woolies, of course) search out the shorts with the flag plastered all over them and order in a few slabs, a keg or 3 and assemble around the barbie at the appointed hour ( normally around 11 am ) to tell a few mate jokes and have one too many.

We'll dust off the cricket bat and ball while the missus makes the salads and the kids are reminded that beer always lives in the bathtub on Australia Day.

" Oi !  Get your Dad a beer! " will resonate around this great dusty island and we will pull each other's leg and tell jokes about who had a convict in their ancestry.

Will this happen this year?

For over 100 years our country’s economy was wrought from gold.

The gold that was mined from the ground and the gold that came from the golden fleeces of our unique strains of merino sheep. The common expression was that Australia rode on the sheep’s back.

John Macarthur is rightly credited as being the father of the wool industry in Australia but he was not the one who introduced them. That honour goes to Governor Hunter and closely followed by Governor Macquarie.   

Two naval officers, Capt. Henry Waterhouse and Lieut. William Kent were ordered by Governor Hunter to bring the first merino sheep to Australia. 

The sheep had come from a flock originally given by King Carlos III of Spain to Prince William V of Orange. In 1789 Prince William sent two rams and four ewes to the warmer climate of the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope under the care of Col. Robert Gordon. In 1791, Gordon returned the original breeding animals to the Netherlands but kept the offspring.