Forward Observers and Coastwatchers

More than 600 Coastwatchers served in Australia, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands during World War II. They included RAAF, AIF, RAN, 1 WRAN, (Women’s Royal Australian Naval Officer) US Marines and US Army personnel, members of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force and 13 civilians. The thirty eight Coastwatchers who died are not

Lieutenant Thomas Currie Derrick, VC, DCM (1914–1945)

Mark Johnston’s edited book Derrick VC in his own words: The wartime writings of Australia’s most famous fighting soldier of World War II.  The book was purchased through Amazon and is a great read. A mix of diary and commentary by Mark Johnson, I thoroughly recommend it. I new about the history of Derrick’s war service

More rising sun

A while ago I started putting together my Bolt Action 28mm Japanese Army. See here for details. Over the last week or so I have been putting together the rest of the plastic models. This has limited my painting somewhat to the “vignette” WW2 Australians, although the research for these has also added much to

Kingsbury!

When in my last year of primary school we moved to a brand new suburb of Kingsbury, complete with sporting ovals, parks, and a proposed new university, I was unaware of the suburbs history. It wasn’t until I went to secondary school that this became very much a part of my growing up. My first

Australian Flame Thrower Team

“Possibly one of the most terrifying and demoralising infantry weapons ever produced is the portable flamethrower. As the introduction to the 1944 Australian Army training pamphlet for flamethrowers states: ” … flame has a powerful psychological effect in that humans instinctively withdraw from it, even when their morale is good. In addition, it is a

New Guinea Sniper

An unidentified soldier uses a .303 Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle Drawn from hunters, competitive shooters, natural marksmen, outdoorsmen, city dwellers, farmers and veteran soldiers, they fought to assert local battlefield dominance and instil among their enemy a paralysing fear. Sometimes admired and other times reviled by their own comrades because of the retaliation they

Wednesday on the weekend!

Yesterday IRO replied to one of my comments on his post Medieval tale by saying “our weirdness unites us“, but I don’t think you can get much weirder (in a good way) than the concept of a TV series about the Goth teenage version of Wednesday Addams. I was expecting one of those teenage “coming

Australian Command

The command units for my Bolt Action Australian Jungle Platoon are now completed. They consist of a Captain and a Lieutenant both with and ADC accompanying them. The Captain is armed with a rifle and the others with SMG’s. Captain Lieutenant I do have another aide with SMG to add to each officer, but do

My Father plays dominoes………

This collection was a small ten figure Kickstarter from Midlam Miniatures. Like other small manufacturers they are now regularly testing a new range on Kickstarter before commencing manufacture. I like their work but until this starter there was nothing I was really interested in. It was not that cheap at about AU$6.00 per figure but

“When life gives you lemons…..suck the juice out of them and spit out the pips”

Or you can watch the second season of “Warrior Nun” I don’t think I am making a spoiler with this one – a corrupt Vatican whodah thought! Now I don’t pretend that this is any high brow intellectually stimulating show, but it has b#tch fights, attractive ladies and has an excellent action-adventure story. What’s not