Patriot Realm

The story I am about to relate to you is one which will be vaguely familiar to some, the detail unknown to almost all. Australia’s contribution to the defense of the Empire in the very early days of WW1 is barely recognised and never acknowledged such was the extent to which we were taken for granted by Britain.

In my posting of The First Angry Shot I described the German strategy known as The Schlieffen Plan and its Pacific and Far East Asian Empire. It is suffice to say that Germany was very well prepared for WW1. If it had not been triggered by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Grand Duke of Austria and his wife, then I am sure that some other cause or incident would have taken its place.

We have so many Veterans taking their own lives and disappearing into a sea of despair, that I have to wonder if there is an answer that is right in front of our noses?

Recently, it was World K9 Day: the day that the world is supposed to celebrate the gift of loyalty and dedication that our four-legged friends have given to our Military men and women.  Our canine friends have fought beside us and stood beside us and comforted us in times of trouble and we are increasingly, as a species, forgetting their dedication and love and consigning them into the same bin that we place our unborn children.

We are reading more and more stories of heartbroken and dispirited Veterans who are taking their own lives. 

After so many decades of service to us, surely we should recognise the role these quiet companions play in a world post-war? Are dogs the answer to the pandemic of Veteran suicides confronting our Nations?

As a child, we spent our Christmas holidays at a remote coastal sheep farm, The car would be loaded up with camping gear and we would head off on the long drive to spend 2 weeks of fishing, mucking around in the shearing shed, hiking across the paddocks and exploring the rock pools at low tide. Our Aunts and Uncles would already be there and our cousins would be smug that they had already scanned out the best places to build forts, swim and generally get into mischief.

On 19 March 1932 the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened to the public. This landmark bridge is almost the poster child that is synonymous with Australia and is no doubt one of the most instantly recognizable bridges in the world.

The brainchild of John Bradfield, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is tribute to the man who brought us the concept of the much touted " Bradfield Scheme " and also the Storey Bridge in Brisbane and Sydney's rail system. He oversaw the rebuilding of the bridge over the Hawkesbury River and the construction of dams such as the Cataract and Burrinjuck dams. In 1917 he wrote a paper predicting Sydney’s population would nearly triple by 1950 to more than 2.2 million. This was used in Bradfield’s day as an argument for suburban electrified trains as a way to open up new land for development. source. 

Last year ANZAC Day was subsumed by the Coronavirus lockdown and we were denied the right to celebrate it and honour our Diggers in the usual way by government decree.

As the day approaches it looks like this year it may be subsumed again by the furore of the March 4 Women’s Rights movement or the demonstrations by the Aboriginal Industry asking for MORE.

Either way, I expect that we will still get the usual collection of the bearded unwashed telling us how wrong we were/are for participating in any war because we should be celebrating peace.

These angry shots are not the first, nor will they be the last salvos we ordinary grateful citizens will be subjected to by this ignorant element in our society. Ignore them and roll with the punches.

When one talks about real angry shots and the peaceful scenario of Port Philip Bay on a calm and cloudy day one does not normally connect the two in the same sentence but on 4^th August 1914, they did.