Patriot Realm

What happens when the battlefield goes silent....but the war doesn’t end?

When soldiers come home, not to parades, but to tribunals. Not to healing, but to headlines....facing allegations, suspicion, and public misunderstanding.

We trained them to fight, to kill, to survive as lions.

We then expect them to return as house cats. Docile. Tamed. Grateful?

But war doesn’t unmake itself. Combat rewires the mind and body. And without an invisible switch,  a path to retrain, reframe, and reintegrate, many veterans face a different kind of battle.

The war within.

John B. Calhoun’s “rat utopia” experiments of the 1960s, designed to be paradises with unlimited resources, resulted in societal collapse and extinction due to extreme behavioural changes, showcasing a dark side of population density and social roles.

The initial population explosion and flourishing of the rat colonies in these utopias turned into a nightmare as they approached their physical and social limits, leading to a breakdown of social structures, deviant behavior, and eventual demographic collapse.

The experiments serve as a chilling parallel to the trajectory of Western society, where periods of abundance and growth gave way to economic shocks, social stagnation, and a rise in antisocial behaviors, suggesting we are experiencing our own form of “behavioral sink.”

Current societal trends, including the breakdown of traditional roles, rising deviancy, and a loneliness crisis, mirror the decay observed in Calhoun’s rat populations, indicating that Western civilisation might be nearing its own “point of no return.”

Humanity possesses the unique ability to recognise its dire straits and has the power to reverse the downward spiral, preventing us from meeting the same fate as the “rat utopias.”

Throughout history, religion has been hailed as a guiding light, a beacon of morality and compassion. Yet, beneath the gilded robes and sacred hymns lies a more unsettling truth: faith is often a tool not of divine grace, but of human ambition. From the emasculation of rivals in Aristotle’s time to the chilling castration of young boys for the sake of celestial choirs, the pursuit of power and control has frequently eclipsed any notion of godliness.

Even figures like Voltaire, whose cynicism toward religion was fueled by its moral hypocrisy, or George Bernard Shaw, whose early exposure to religious pretense led him toward Fabian socialism, reveal how disillusionment with faith can reshape entire worldviews. And in the case of Ned Kelly, it was not merely the iron of his armour that sealed his fate, but the weight of religious prejudice.

This is not a story of divine will—it is a tale of how men, in the name of God, have repeatedly abandoned Him.

In a fast-changing Australia, where new cultures and identities weave fresh threads into our ever fading national fabric, the quiet streets of Gulgong offer something rare: a living memory of our country’s colonial foundations.

Once roaring with the fever of gold and the voices of bush poets, this small New South Wales town now stands as a fragile monument to a bygone era. As the echoes of horse hooves fade beneath the hum of modern life, Gulgong reminds us of the stories of our past. Gritty, resilient, and deeply Australian, it is a past that must be cherished, lest it slip entirely into folklore. In towns like this, we see not just where we came from, but what we risk forgetting.

We see it throughout the world: towns caught in time in a world where our colonial heritage is becoming a museum piece, gazed upon as an oddity, no more than a fossil frozen in time ............ 

When I was a young lass, I was a fencer. No, not the farming type that wandered around the farm putting up wire and posts to keep stock in a paddock. I mean a swish swish, off with their heads type of fencer. 

It’s been over 55 years since I last stepped onto a piste, mask in hand and heart pounding. Back then, I learned quickly that no amount of reach or muscle could level the playing field against a male opponent.

But fencing taught me something even more valuable - grace under pressure, and the quiet power of standing your ground. So when I saw young Stephanie Turner take the knee recently, right there in the midst of all the formality and tradition, I felt a surge of pride. In a sport that prizes discipline and silence, her gesture spoke volumes.