Assembled by children, laden with bombs and set free to drift across the Pacific, Imperial Japan's armada of Fugo fire balloons were an ingenious, desperate bid to set the United States ablaze. Brilliantly executed but prey from the start to a surfeit of optimism, those behind the offensive somehow managed to overlook their plan's glaring and fatal flaw

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There hasn't been much to delight cricket followers so far this summer. Sure, Australia thrashed the Windies, but there's little to crow about in those two easy victories, the days of Sir Garfield Sobers, Curtley Ambrose and the like being long gone. South Africa held the promise of stiffer competition which, so far, has failed to materialise. All in all, a far cry from 90 years ago when Harold Larwood became the most hated man in Australia

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Jack Kramer revolutionised the presentation and organisation of tennis, undermining the dominance of the old blimps of the amateur associations who for so many years had decided who played and who didn’t. That he was a marvellous player and a gentleman should nopt be forgotten either

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The same academics who claim fuel-reduction burning makes the forest more flammable also advocate that, if burning is to be done at all, it should be adjacent to towns and residential settlements.  Urging more of what the 'experts' insist will increase the fire risk of residential areas seems to me verging on the certifiably insane

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'There will always be an Australian people,' John Curtin told the nation in March 1942, when Darwin was rubble and Broome strewn with corpses. In a remote WA farmhouse my father heard that broadcast and watched an old cocky rise from his chair to clean his rifle. These days, according to a recent poll, more Australians would flee than fight. Where and why has that old spirit gone?

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Australian journalist Robert Haupt took a boat down the Volga as the Soviet Union crumbled and wrote a book about what he saw: an empire falling headlong into senescence, chaos and decay. While more than 20 years have passed since its publication, 'Last Boat to Astrakhan' frames the motives and nationalist shame that have driven Putin's war in Ukraine

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As the Australian Open gets underway in Melbourne and the grunters, marvels, racquet-smashers, wouldbes and wonder kids take their shots at grand slam greatness, thoughts of the great Frank Sedgman and the year he carried all before him come flooding back

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Perhaps it's uncharitable on this day of all days, which has seen the Poms' quest for the Ashes end in abject humiliation at the MCG, to recall another moment when England's best laid plans came to nought. But then again, as it's the Old Enemy we're talking about, charity be damned

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Wimbledon quickens the hearts of tennis buffs, although those who recall an earlier and different era can't help feeling a twinge of regret that today's grunting, screeching and tantrums, not to mention the obsession with defensive play, falls far short of the standards set by Newcombe and Laver in their epic 1969 final

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Like Lawson, my Christmas memories contain some ghosts -- my grandparents and parents among them -- and  some trying times, including being called away to bushfires as I was poised to carve the duck. Unlike Lawson, I've never had to dine on fried plum pudding and salt kangaroo

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