Dusty Gulch Gazette – Special Aerial Edition

By Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble, Chief Nibbler & Aeronautical Correspondent

Mayor Dusty McFookit had been tucked into bed by his wife - shapeshifter, Australian and secret agent for Cat Force Five -  rolling pin close at hand, bearing a cuppa and a lamington. She had kept watch all night, waiting and listening, because in Dusty Gulch, peace is only the calm before the next calamity.

In the early hours, the five cats stirred. Something was amiss. A low hum filled the air - wrong, mechanical, frightening.

Mrs McFookit opened the screen door. Sonic rolling pin in hand.  ( More on that later. )

Overhead, in the vast outback sky, a squadron of orange budgiechoppers - Ratty Airways’ purpose-built combat fleet -  swept in low and fast. Above them loomed the real threat: General Beakmore’s hulking Honklander form, a rogue wedge-tailed eagle circling like a bad debt, and with them a massive swarm of drone sandflies - mindless, metallic, driven only by programmed commands from the Great Honk to destroy Dusty Gulch.

The Battle for Dusty Gulch was about to enter a new phase:

The Budgie versus the Smuggler.

George Orwell, Leader Worship, and the Question We Still Refuse to Ask

In 1944, George Orwell wrote a letter to a reader, Noel Willmett, responding to a question about leader worship. It was not a casual reply. It was a warning.

Three years later, Orwell would begin writing 1984. The ideas that animate that novel - Newspeak, doublethink, the Ministry of Truth, and the erasure of objective reality - are already present in embryo in that letter.

Orwell was not predicting a single tyrant. He was diagnosing a pattern.

That pattern is now uncomfortably familiar.

From Knees to Standing: What Gina Rinehart’s Rise Says About Australia

A company on the brink, a billion-dollar turnaround, and decades of determination - Rinehart’s story is a blueprint for what a nation could achieve if it chooses WILL over drift.

Australia likes to think of itself as resilient. Yet increasingly, we speak of decline as if it were weather - unavoidable, impersonal, no one’s fault.

That is why Gina Rinehart’s story unsettles people. It contradicts the modern habit of managed decay.

When Lang Hancock died in 1992, the company that bore his name was not a monument to success. Hancock Prospecting was burdened by debt, mortgaged assets, legal entanglements, and advice from professionals who believed the sensible option was liquidation. The language was familiar even then: the market has moved on, times have changed, be realistic.

In other words - accept decline gracefully.

Gina Rinehart did not.

During the darkest days of World War II, when the world teetered on the edge of chaos, it was the incredible loyalty and alliance between nations that turned the tide of history. For Australia and Britain, the unwavering support of the United States was not just a matter of strategic necessity...it was a real wave to the spirit of unity and shared purpose that defines our relationships to this day.

Here was a big brother who was there to lend a helping hand when things were looking pretty grim. 

Now, as our big brother is set to go on and become better and braver and more successful, we are sitting here subjected to the domineering bully that is George Orwell's " Big Brother. " 

So let's just have a trip down memory lane and remember when our big brother stepped in   - let us cast our minds back to World War II. 

Before the United States formally entered the war in December 1941, it had already extended a crucial lifeline to its allies through the Lend-Lease Act. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1941, this programme provided Britain, Australia, and other Allied nations with vital military supplies, equipment, and resources. For Australia, facing the looming threat of Japanese expansion in the Pacific, American support was indispensable.

The House That Changed Hands and Still Stood for the same corrupt regime

By The Boundary Rider - part bush philosopher feline, part realist, part stubborn old stockman -  I watch what others overlook and ask the questions most would rather avoid.

I have been taken back in time today. To the days when corruption, greed and power reigned supreme.  It made me think: what has changed?  Only the names of the actors .. but the screenplay is much the same as it was. Same storyline, different cast. 

In the summer of 1808, in a fledgling colony called New South Wales, the governor's house became the stage for Australia's only armed rebellion - a coup fueled not by ideology, but by rum and resentment.

And I was there. As always, simply present but never noticed. 

No one notices a cat when in the shadows or under the table. Or on a shelf, quietly observing. 

I am the Boundary Rider. The cat that sees all and lives in the shadows...