The PR Blog

Just before dawn on August 7, 1915, the men of the 8th and 10th Australian Light Horse Regiments waited in silence on a narrow strip of Turkish soil known as the Nek. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark, clutching rifles with bayonets fixed, their nerves tight as piano wire. In the trenches behind them, mates shared final words, quick prayers, a letter home folded into a breast pocket. Some kissed crucifixes, others stared ahead into the blackness, hearts thudding. Then, as the first grey wash of light crept over the ridgeline, the whistle blew.

The 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments were filled with young men from Western Australia and Victoria. They were country boys and bushmen.....riders, shearers, farmhands, clerks.....many of whom had signed up expecting to fight as cavalry. At Gallipoli, their horses had been left behind in Egypt. Now, they fought as infantry in the steep, unforgiving gullies and ridges of Anzac Cove.

They went over the top in lines - neat, ordered, hopeless. They charged not into glory, but into annihilation.

Within minutes, dozens lay dead, cut down by Turkish machine guns positioned just yards away. Still the whistle blew again. And again. And again.

A deserter, a dreamer, and a stretcher bearer who found purpose in the fire of Gallipoli ... and carried it, one wounded man at a time.

It is not often that a hero can also be a larrikin and vice versa. But John " Scotty " Simpson was such a man. A deserter who found himself thrust into the horror of Gallipoli instead of implementing his plan to jump ship in England  

John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an Englishman of Scottish parentage who wanted to get away from his wife.... so he joined the Merchant Navy in 1909. 

In 1910 he deserted from his ship when it was docked at Newcastle in Australia. He led an itinerant lifestyle as a cane cutter, coal miner and various jobs on coastal merchant ships. He also became a left wing activist with The Industrial Workers of the World. Hardly the stuff of heroes.  

But he went on to become a hero. 

RETIRED BUSH COPPER GRADUATES FROM REDHEAD’S BOOT CAMP – WITH HONOURS (AND A NEWFOUND RESPECT FOR HIS SPLEEN)

Dusty Gulch, Somewhere Out West

In what locals are already calling the most expensive “welcome back” in recent memory, Bushie,  the district’s much-loved retired bush copper,  has officially graduated from Redhead’s Boot Camp.

Not by choice. And not gently.

Yesterday, while tending to routine equine duties, Bushie received a full-powered endorsement from one of Redhead’s four-legged instructors ... delivered squarely via the hind legs. Witnesses describe the impact as “a sonic rolling pin to the midsection.”

The result? A ruptured spleen, internal bleeding, and bruising that currently suggests he went ten rounds with a gravel truck… and lost on points.

In the quiet grief of ANZAC mothers lies a deeper truth: to remember what we once knew is to honour what we cannot stop loving. 

On ANZAC Day we remember the fallen, the brave, the heroic. But behind every name etched in stone was a mother who gave life, and often, gave that life up to forces beyond her control. I suppose I am thinking about a reflection on grief, not just of war, but of all we have lost and still carry. It is a quiet meditation on the love that never stops, even when the world does.

At what point does loss become grief?

Loss can live quietly for a time. It can trail behind us like a shadow we refuse to turn and face. We speak of absence, of change, of distance. We say things have been lost - as if they might be found again. We tell ourselves stories of adaptation, of coping. But grief? Grief doesn’t ask us to cope. It asks us to stop and feel. To stand still in the debris of what once was and realise...  our problem is that we remember too much to ever truly let go.

Loss becomes grief not when something leaves us, but when we realise it will not return. And then....what then?

Two names. Two battles. One legend. At Chunuk Bair and Lone Pine, ANZAC soldiers faced hell on earth and forged a legacy that still shapes Australia and New Zealand more than a century later.

They climbed in darkness and fought in blood. In August 1915, on the rugged hills of Gallipoli, New Zealanders stormed Chunuk Bair while Australians clashed hand-to-hand in the trenches of Lone Pine. These weren’t just battles....they were crucibles.

From the smoke, terror, and sacrifice, the ANZAC spirit emerged: fierce, loyal, unyielding.

Though separated by ridges, Chunuk Bair and Lone Pine stand together in memory as the defining moments of courage, tragedy, and national identity.