The PR Blog

In The First Angry Shot I made reference to the defence installations at the Southern end of Port Philip Bay.

These were started in the19th century when Victoria was a colony of the Crown and in the 1880’s was described as the heaviest defended port in the Southern Hemisphere. In the days of sailing ships Port Philip Heads provided much of its own defence via its natural advantages. It sits at the Eastern end beyond the Shipwreck Coast of which Matthew Flinders said "I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline."

Every week, there is a featured article about nostalgia. Things that we remember from our past and, for some inexplicable reason, have stuck with us.

Some are from distant memories of childhoods lived and recollected with great fondness. Others talk about an incident from adulthood. In all cases, they feature an event that has stayed with us as a “ keeper “ in the file cabinet called our memory.

When people approach their end of useful life ( according to the young smart arses that think that they will live forever, or perish due to climate change before their 30^th birthday ) it seems to be that our minds retreat to happier times that our minds chose to save, while deleting so many thousands of days.

Why is that?

Back in the late 1980's, I was a Real Estate Agent. I specialised in properties in my home area and it was an easy sell. All I had to do was walk my buyers down the pathway to my local beach and show them the beach that they could call their own, should they decide to purchase a home in our magnificent little enclave of untouched paradise. It was a gentle ramble through shady melaleuca and, upon arriving a mere 100 or 200 metres later, they would be greeted by a wide and expansive open vista of the ocean that stretched in unspoiled infinity to the far reaches of such places as Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island and New Zealand.

At that time, I owned a house across the road from my Mum, Redhead and her husband, my father, who used to write here as Raymond F Peters.

Over the centuries, we have learned so much about the strength of the human spirit. That incredible ability to triumph over adversity, whether it be physical, emotional or mental agony... or all three at once.

As Easter is uppermost in our thoughts, so too is the concept of war. That conflict that drives us to delve deep and draw upon reserves that we often did not know we had. 

The 31st of March 2021 marked 100 years of service to Australia. Some years ago, I took a tour of a small military museum in Toowoomba dedicated to the Battle at Milne Bay in Papua Guinea. 

One of the Militia units that held the Japanese at Milne Bay was the 25th Battalion from Toowoomba and the Darling Downs, originally raised prior to the First World War. From Milne Bay, the 25th Battalion went on to fight in Bougainville, clearing the Japanese from one of their last strongholds north of Australia. . source 

“Some of us may forget that, of all the Allies, it was the Australians who first broke the spell of invincibility of the Japanese Army.”
- Quote from Field Marshall Sir William Slim, Commander of WW2 Commonwealth forces in Burma (and later Governor General of Australia).

And that first fracture in the Japanese Land Forces strength came at Milne Bay in September 1942.

We have a tug of war going on at present in our countries, our cultures, our communities and our entire fabric of society.

The solid weave that we have relied on for centuries is being unwoven and re-set. In fact, we are witnessing a war unlike any other in history.

Not a war of men with armies gathering on parapets or places of strategic importance, but a war of ideals, commonsense and traditional values. Or are we? Is this a tug of war unlike any we have witnessed before? The tug of war whereby whoever shouts loudest wins in a battle of words, insinuations and accusations?