Tag: Military

Report from 1945 holds lessons for defence strategic review team

Report from 1945 holds lessons for defence strategic review team

by | Jun 19, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
What defence forces should Australia maintain at a time of strategic uncertainty and rapid technological change? This is the fundamental question currently facing Stephen Smith and Angus Houston, the authors of the defence strategic review. Much has been made of the critical nature of this review and the fact it represents a ‘huge moment in Australian defence history’. Recently, however, I was going through a previous review conducted in similarly uncertain times (although for different reasons) and it was difficult not to be struck by the enduring nature of the key issues at stake.

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Left to ruin: we must preserve our forgotten wartime defences

Left to ruin: we must preserve our forgotten wartime defences

by | Jan 10, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Australia built a number of coastal defences to help protect the country from any enemy attack during the second world war. Now, almost 80 years later, some of the physical remnants of those historic facilities lie forgotten and decaying.

These monuments to the nation’s home defence are in desperate need of preservation. While their condition varies greatly, too many have faded into obscurity.

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Protecting country: Indigenous Australians in the defence of the north

Protecting country: Indigenous Australians in the defence of the north

by | Dec 29, 2022 | | 1

Reading time: 5 minutes
Notions of ‘protecting country’ have, anecdotally at least, been a key motivation for Indigenous people to participate in Australia’s defence services since World War I. It may well be one reason they have been joining the army reserve’s Regional Force Surveillance Units for the past 30-odd years. The youngest of the three units, 51st Battalion, Far North Queensland Regiment, even has as its motto Ducit amor patriae, ‘The love of country guides me’.

Given that it’s been almost three decades since we last considered the defence of Australia’s north, it’s time to think about whether there are new ways to involve Indigenous people in that endeavour.

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War Flying by a Pilot – Audiobook

War Flying by a Pilot – Audiobook

by | Aug 5, 2020 | | 0

Written in training and in active duty during World War 1, published in 1917. This volume was assembled to provide useful information for young men who might like to become pilots for the Royal Flying Corps. A mixture of conversational letters, poems, and descriptions of flying.

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Between the Lines – Audiobook

Between the Lines – Audiobook

by | Jul 14, 2020 | | 0

This book, all of which has been written at the Front within sound of the German guns and for the most part within shell and rifle range, is an attempt to tell something of the manner of struggle that has gone on for months between the lines along the Western Front, and more especially of what lies behind and goes to the making of those curt and vague terms in the war communiqués. I think that our people at Home will be glad to know more, and ought to know more, of what these bald phrases may actually signify, when, in the other sense, we read ‘between the lines.’

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