The PR Blog

The sea doesn’t warn you. It doesn’t care who you are, what rank you hold, or how well you swim. In 1945, Edgar Harrell -  a young Marine aboard the USS Indianapolis -  found himself tossed into an ocean of blood, oil, and sharks.

Five days he floated. No food. No water. Just faith. When I saw the image of that ship heading into the mouth of a great white -  part nightmare, part truth -  I thought of him.

I thought of two boys on surfboards who once saved my life. And I thought of how, in a world gripped by fear, someone must still call out: look at the sky, stay on your back, breathe -  help is coming.

I had never heard of Edgar Harrell. His name, like so many from the past, drifted quietly beneath the surface of history -  until one day, a video clip pulled him into my world.

In it, an elderly man calmly recounts a nightmare: five days adrift in shark-infested waters after the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed on the 30th of July, 1945.

His voice is steady, but the story is harrowing.

After delivering components for the atomic bombs, the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Hundreds of his shipmates were killed ... not by the explosion, but by sharks.

National First looks into how compulsory voting shackles true democracy.

Australia likes to pat itself on the back for being a model democracy. But there’s something deeply wrong about a system that punishes you for not voting. Worse still, that very system is dragging our politics into a swamp of apathy, bribery, and hollow promises.

• Forcing Australians to vote is undemocratic and breeds political apathy.

• It props up a broken system where major parties bribe disengaged voters.

• Real debate is stifled, and genuine alternatives are crushed.

• The media and institutions steer the public toward the same old choices.

• Removing penalties for not voting could finally shake things up.

While the new aces argue about the runway, the old crew still knows how to land a plane.

What if you could hold one single moment from your entire life, just one, to carry with you forever? Which one would it be? The answer may tell us more about who we are than any story we tell ourselves.

There’s a photograph in your mind, faded, perhaps, but alive...a moment from your past that never quite lets go. Maybe it’s the day you first rode a bike, the night you whispered secrets to a friend, or the first time you saw your newborn child. Why do these moments cling, while others vanish without a trace?