Patriot Realm

It all started recently when I was greeted warmly by a female friend of my daughter’s. It was as if it was yesterday when we last met, but it turned out to have been 27 years ago. Where have the years gone? Where have they gone indeed, as Sir Robert Menzies would riposte, and whom subconsciously I still regard as Prime Minister. I last saw him speak in Forrest Place in Perth in 1963, and it once again seems like yesterday.

The Australian government of the Northern Territory is now using military soldiers and army trucks to forcibly round up indigenous people who have merely been near someone else who tested “positive” for covid. With families being separated at gunpoint, one of the most horrifying predictions we made has now come true: Military / medical martial law where innocent civilians are being rounded up at gunpoint and taken to what are essentially covid concentration camps.

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them again in our lifetime.” Sir Edward Grey, 1914

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis

My rescue dog came to me in a moment of intense loneliness and I had been wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.

It was suggested, here on this blog, that I get a dog. I had a few beers that particular night and had decided to go to the local animal shelter and find myself a little bloke to provide a distraction.

Bruce Ruxton is one of my heroes. I never met the man and these notes are drawn from personal recollection of some of his better known controversial escapades with a bit of research added in.

He was born too late to be able to become a hero in the traditional sense. He joined the Army in 1944 and was assigned to the Survey Corps of the Royal Australian Engineers, a natural progression from his civilian occupation. Towards the end of the war, he was transferred as a rifleman during the Borneo campaign.