The past may be a different country, but has well trodden paths and byways. In 1938 politically peripatetic Winston Churchill seemed a lone voice against British PM Neville Chamberlain’s attempted appeasement with Hitler. Churchill warned against the Axis powers who...
Ross Eastgate
Commentary – Holy lands sown with Australian sacrifice
Saturday 8th Apr 2023
Peace remains elusive in the lands described on British maps as the Middle East, or Moyen-Orient on French maps. “What,” its multifaceted citizens might ask, “Has Australia ever done for us?” READ MORE
Commentary: A leader who ranked among our best
Saturday 21st Jan 2023
AUSTRALIAN General John Monash was that rare combination of entrepreneur, polymath and military strategist who was arguably Australia’s outstanding military leader. Professional engineer, lawyer and part-time soldier, he rose to senior command through service at...
Opinion: I Say, I Say, I Say – Old leadership lessons are still relevant
Saturday 7th Jan 2023
MAJOR Charles McMoran Wilson MC, Silver Medal of Military Valour (Italy), twice MID, knew more than most about soldiers and soldiering. As 1st Bn Royal Fusiliers RMO on the Western Front in World War I, he treated their wounds, observed their reactions to climate and...
Opinion: Pollies stuck to their own Laws of Physics
Saturday 22nd Oct 2022
DOZING under an apple tree in his Lincolnshire garden during summer in 1666, Isaac Newton was jolted awake when a falling apple struck his head. Momentarily losing his composure, Newton said to no one in particular, “I think I’ll discover gravity!” Thus was born...
Comment: Anatomy of Courage remains relevant
Saturday 1st Oct 2022
MAJOR Charles McMoran Wilson MC (later Lord Moran) was a multi-decorated World War I British Army medical officer who served in France with an infantry battalion, and later a base hospital. After his return to the UK in 1919 he read in The Times of a Royal...
Townsville link to military disasters
Saturday 20th Aug 2022
CARELESS commentators lacking the ruthless scrutiny of a sub-editor’s pencil are wont to describe mass casualty ADF incidents as the “worst peacetime military accident ..since…” Townsville has tragic connections with three of the worst Australian Defence Force...
Opinion: No Place in Defence Review for Politics
Saturday 6th Aug 2022
The appointment of former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith and former CDF Angus Houston to conduct of a strategic review of the Australian Defence Force does not inspire confidence among those Australians with recent memories of senior defence administration. If...
Commentary: Treat Each and Every Case on Its Merits
Saturday 30th Jul 2022
CHARLES McMoran Wilson enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a 32- year-old specialist physician on the declaration of war in August 1914. As 1Bn Royal Fusiliers RMO until 1917, then senior medical officer at a large hospital at Boulogne, France he was...
Opinion: Herbert MP will discover opposition is a long and tough slog
Saturday 18th Jun 2022
Up here we are pretty chuffed the Member for Herbert, Phillip Thompson, a returned veteran in the old definition of that word, is the Opposition’s assistant spokesman for defence. He knows the region is not a given for either side of politics, has worked hard to...