Patriot Realm - Patriot Realm

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Jake Irish; Published: 12 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

Another 26th of January is on our doorstep. Only a few more sleeps before we gather our daggy thongs, ( not from Woolies, of course) search out the shorts with the flag plastered all over them and order in a few slabs, a keg or 3 and assemble around the barbie at the appointed hour ( normally around 11 am ) to tell a few mate jokes and have one too many.

We'll dust off the cricket bat and ball while the missus makes the salads and the kids are reminded that beer always lives in the bathtub on Australia Day.

" Oi ! Get your Dad a beer! " will resonate around this great dusty island and we will pull each other's leg and tell jokes about who had a convict in their ancestry.

Will this happen this year?

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Happy Expat; Published: 11 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

For over 100 years our country’s economy was wrought from gold.

The gold that was mined from the ground and the gold that came from the golden fleeces of our unique strains of merino sheep. The common expression was that Australia rode on the sheep’s back.

John Macarthur is rightly credited as being the father of the wool industry in Australia but he was not the one who introduced them. That honour goes to Governor Hunter and closely followed by Governor Macquarie.

Two naval officers, Capt. Henry Waterhouse and Lieut. William Kent were ordered by Governor Hunter to bring the first merino sheep to Australia.

The sheep had come from a flock originally given by King Carlos III of Spain to Prince William V of Orange. In 1789 Prince William sent two rams and four ewes to the warmer climate of the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope under the care of Col. Robert Gordon. In 1791, Gordon returned the original breeding animals to the Netherlands but kept the offspring.

Read more: The Legacy of Sheep

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Monty; Published: 10 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

It has been nearly three weeks since I was last outside my four walls. Too long since I last entered a store or saw another human being, except for delivery people dropping off food or the building manager dropping off a wheelie bin for my rubbish twice a week. Why the maggots in the lead image?

Well, soon it will become clear.

Today, I managed to stumble, hobble, limp and with grim determination, make it to the community bin area to drop my bag of household waste. A bag chockers with discarded convenience meal packaging and never have I been so delighted to make it to the bin.

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Jake Irish; Published: 10 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

I am not a fan of maggots. Let us be clear on that from the outset. Horrible little squirmy things. Writhing and thriving. .

I do not care who tells me that they are full of protein, I am not eating one.

Yet, they are both fascinating and repulsive. Lifesaving and yet destructive. It all comes down to what kind of maggot they are.

Yet, the bottom line is that they feed, breed and feast. Upon death. Or upon life. Depending upon what kind of maggot they are.

These days, we are surrounded by maggots. Breeding in our cities, our countries, our everyday.

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Monty; Published: 09 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

" A 3-metre wall of water came without warning, tearing through Toowoomba — Queensland’s largest inland city — when rain of “biblical proportions” fell on already soaked earth after months of record-breaking falls across the state "The inland tsunami swept through Toowoomba, washing away cars, damaging buildings, picking up tanks, and thrusting people into the torrent. "

I will never forget the day. It had been raining in Toowoomba. It had been raining across much of Queensland and everywhere was soggy. The rain had been falling steadily all over the state and I had no idea just how bad things were about to get.

I was at an appointment with a client. Just after lunch.

It was coming down more heavily than previously. It got heavier and heavier.

I called an abrupt end to the meeting and decided to head home "just to be on the safe side. "

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Monty; Published: 08 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

Let's face it, they have more brains than the mugs in Canberra.

It seems that the townies have lost the plot and it's time for the boys from the scrub in the outback towns to come in and sort this mess out.

It is a fiasco.

I think the people in the cities have taken control over a situation that they do not understand.

Let's face it, if we keep this rubbish up, we won't have a country.

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Flysa; Published: 07 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

In the 1889-1892 pandemic, the Russian or Asiatic Flu killed more than 1,000,000 people worldwide, and today is thought to have been caused by human coronavirus OC43, so WuFlu is nothing new.

Entire cities throughout Europe shut down, including postal services, banks and trains.

Even the Courts were closed, but unlike today Zoom was not available. Death was rife in London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. Members of royalty died, including Queen Victoria’s grandson Prince Albert Victor aged 28, who was second in line to the English throne.

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Guest Post; Published: 06 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.

As a reality check for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil. Unreliable renewables, like wind turbines and solar panels, only generate occasional electricity but manufacture no products for society.

Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity but, when manufactured into petrochemicals, is the basis for virtually all the products that did not exist before the 1800s being used at these infrastructures like transportation, airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, telecommunications, communications systems, space programs, heating and ventilating, and militaries.

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Happy Expat; Published: 05 January 2024

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I have decided to make a separate episode of the Queen Mary’s service during WW2. Although it is general knowledge that she served as a troopship the detail and consequences of her service are not widely known. This is due to the extremely high level of security surrounding her service during the war and the fog of years after that when things to do with the war were preferably forgotten or became irrelevant.

Her service during WW2 could only be described as stunning. Winston Churchill stated that she, along with her sister ship Queen Elizabeth, shortened the war by a whole year.

Adolf Hitler was equally aware of her importance to the allied war effort. He posted a reward to the skipper of any U-boat that torpedoed her of 1 million Deutschmarks and the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. No U-boat captain ever came close to winning the prize.

Details: Written by: Op-Ed Happy Expat; Published: 04 January 2024

User Rating: 5 / 5

The Queen Mary, the greatest living monument to British engineering excellence ever created. She needs no introduction. She has been on everybody’s lips since the time of her conception in 1929 until the present day. She lies in a state of semi-retirement in her berth at Long Beach, California and still generating income for her owners 90 years later.

Back in the Roaring 20’s Great Britain, France and Germany were vying for the Blue Riband; the record fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean between New York and Southampton. In 1928 the White Star line, owners of the TITANIC, commenced construction of her replacement, an 80,000 ton vessel called OCEANIC. At the same time, its major rival, Cunard, was planning two 75,000 tonners. They had contracted John Brown & Co of Clydebank in Scotland to construct them but their size dictated that they could only be built one at a time.