Patrolling tropical forest is no holiday even in the dry. […]

Rick lay back in the bath with a sigh of […]

It was the time of in-between. The strong south-easterlies of […]

Drafting a New Constitution for Australia, by Charles S. Mollison and Ross E. Garrad;

Cobbs Crossing Publications/Foundation for National Renewal, 2009, 491 pages, $32.99.

The First Draft of a Constitution for the Sovereign Nation of Australia, by Charles S. Mollison;Cobbs Crossing Publications/Foundation for National Renewal, 2008, 248 pages, $21.99.

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage…Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberation at its best, the battle is not lost.

—F.A. Hayek

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles S. Mollison (Rtd) commanded Alpha Company 6 RAR in Vietnam in 1966–67. His 2005 book Long Tan and Beyond has, as Brigadier George Mansford wrote in its preface, something for all Australians. In fact the battle of Long Tan was a splendid example of courage in the face of tremendous odds. So much so that afterwards the enemy avoided the region, showing more respect for our men than Australia did in its disgraceful treatment of returning Diggers.

When debating the Beersheba photograph it helps if one has […]

We sat at the crossroads; it was early in the rainy season and we all sweated gently in the humidity. I say crossroads, but really they were just dirt tracks. The one from the east led in from the coast and went on to the big lake, to the village where we lived and from which we had motored early in the morning in the Land Rover. The southern track wasn’t up to much but the north-going one went on to the diamond mines.