Dark Times in Bentleigh East

  Blog Day 189 - 30 September 2020 On Wednesday evening a camel walked into a bar and the barman asked him how he was going and the camel said "thank goodness it is hump day". Last evening I attended the opening of a new exhibition at the AWM.  The exhibition is called "Ink in the Lines" and is a photographic exhibition of serving and former serving members of the ADF and their tattoos.  Many of the tattoos appear to be real works of art and extremely large, dense and artistic.  Many of them reflect aspects of service of the people wearing the tattoos and are used to deal with difficulties these people have experienced as a result of their service.  There were a number of tattoos on men and women who served with the ADF in Rwanda.  I know that many of the Rwanda veterans have difficulty dealing with their service there due to their experiences and in some cases their inability to prevent the atrocities occurring around them, not through any fault of their o...

Blog Day 188 - 29 September 2020 A horse walked into a bar and the barmaid said "why the long face"? The lawn mowing man turned up today, so we can get the lawns mowed, the dog trimmed and I still can't get a haircut! I have just finished the regular Tuesday morning Shrine volunteer Zoom meeting.  For this meeting we usually watch movie or a documentary or a TV show prior to the meeting and it makes a basis for the discussion.  What we watch usually has some military, historical or research based relevance.  For this morning's meeting we had watched the SBS TV show, Who Do You Think You Are, in this case the episode featuring Bert Newton. Bert's father was a WW2 veteran who returned from the war and was discharged on medical grounds from the army in December 1943.  The father suffered from ongoing attacks of malaria that he had picked up in New Guinea and was also 'pretty crook' with bad nerves.  This would most likely today be diagnosed as PTSD.  Bert...