In the summer of 1967-68, Rod Ledingham was with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on the Antarctic Peninsula. High on the polar plateau, he was assisting a geologist, replacing an injured colleague who had to be evacuated. Ledingham had been flown in by a light aircraft, but after their field work had ended, the aircraft […]
The obituary of the renowned theatre producer and award winning television and radio writer Harold Lander in the Sydney Morning Herald on 24 July 2015, was a classic – partly because it was much influenced by the dead man himself.
He had instructed his family to be economical in the way they worded […]
I have played Scrabble most of my adult life – first on a board, with tiles drawn from a cloth bag, but in more recent years, on line through Facebook with Scrabble Mattel.
My regular partners now number about eight. Some play keenly whenever they are on line, others a move every 24 […]
STUBBORN BUGGERS – A new book by Tim Bowden
It was known as Outram Road Gaol, and of all the places to be if you were a prisoner of war of the Japanese, this was the worst place of all – a military prison that made Changi look like heaven. But because so […]
PART ONE
NAGASE TAKASHI – A singular Japanese
In the recent feature film The Railway Man the Japanese soldier who tortured Eric Lomax, an English prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway who was caught with a secret radio, is portrayed as a sadistic officer in the […]
PART TWO
ERIC LOMAX & NAGASE TAKASHI –
The Reconciliation Begins
After the war, Eric Lomax returned to Britain a deeply traumatised and troubled man. The phenomenon of post traumatic stress syndrome was not recognised in 1945, although it should have been. During and after World […]
PART THREE
THE MEETING WITH NAGASE
In 1995, after much soul-searching, Eric and Patti Lomax decided to travel to Thailand to meet Nagase Takashi near the iconic hooped River Kwae Bridge near Kanchanaburi. On Nagase’s suggestion they also planned to accompany him to Japan and visit his home at Kurashiki […]
PART FOUR
SEEING THE MOVIE ‘THE RAILWAY MAN’
At the time of writing, The Railway Man is screening widely in cinemas around Australia. I went to see it with mixed feelings, and I was right to be apprehensive.
First the good news. The movie gave an excellent portrayal the […]
I have a folder in my filing cabinet into which I throw stuff that grabs my attention – generally of a bizarre nature. Time to share some I think…
I lived in Singapore in the mid-1960s when it was a much different place. Most of the old Chinese shop-houses are torn down now and replaced […]
VALE DAME EDNA
There was no way I was going to miss Dame Edna’s last hurrah on the stage during her recent farewell Australian tour.
Edna Everage, the Moonee Ponds housewife, first came to my attention in the 1950s together with the lugubrious Sandy Stone, who both in their inimitable way, took the piss out […]
