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Europe

Istanbul - Gallipoli

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Gallipoli

 

 

Gallipoli itself is a heartrending place. We were almost alone to wonder the graveyards and look at the memorials and the old battlefields. There were worse places to land the Anzacs than Anzac cove but they would be hard to find. Just five kilometres to the south and they could have walked across the peninsula; unimpeded by cliffs. Ten to the north and they could have at least landed unimpeded. The goal was to silence the Turkish guns that dominated the Dardanelles straight. Had the Turks been taken by surprise it might have been a walkover.

 

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History would have been changed and I would not be here to write this account; nor you here to read it. But the sands and cliffs of Canakkale would not be soaked in as much Australian; New Zealand; French; British and Turkish blood.

 

Ataturk sacrificed his entire 57th regiment to halting the initial Allied advance. He famously said: ‘I don’t expect you to attack (the enemy) I expect you to die’.

 

There is also a large memorial on the peninsula to the 34 British ships sunk or damaged with huge loss of life. The lower plaque reads: 'In honoured memory of the units and ships that fought on Gallipoli or in the Dardanelles and of those 20,504 British sailors and soldiers and 248 Australian soldiers who fell in this neighbourhood and have no known graves' .

 

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It is appropriate that annually Australians mourn nearly 62,000 dead in World War One at Gallipoli and to ask: 'why we were here?'  But it is also important to remember that, contrary to myth, other combatants' losses were far higher. British military deaths were 42% higher as a percentage of population and far higher in numbers; nearly 900,000 over the duration of the war.

 

As a percentage of population, French military deaths were double those of Britain. Both suffered significant civilian casualties. In addition to its young soldiers, France lost some 300,000 civilians dead. Serbia, with a population almost identical to Australia's, lost 275,000 soldiers and 450,000 civilians. On the other side, Germany lost over two million young men as combatants while Austria-Hungary lost over a million.

 

The Turkish, Ottoman Empire, military losses were 771,844 killed. In addition, over 2.1 million civilians died. To bring that into perspective, their population then was less than ours is today; about four and a half times that of Australia in 1915.

 

How would we cope today with 800,000 of our young men dead; in addition to loosing the entire population of Brisbane?

 

 

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Travel

Burma (Myanmar)

 

This is a fascinating country in all sorts of ways and seems to be most popular with European and Japanese tourists, some Australians of course, but they are everywhere.

Since childhood Burma has been a romantic and exotic place for me.  It was impossible to grow up in the Australia of the 1950’s and not be familiar with that great Australian bass-baritone Peter Dawson’s rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s 'On the Road to Mandalay' recorded two decades or so earlier:  

Come you back to Mandalay
Where the old flotilla lay
Can't you hear their paddles chunking
From Rangoon to Mandalay

On the road to Mandalay
Where the flying fishes play
And the Dawn comes up like thunder
out of China 'cross the bay

The song went Worldwide in 1958 when Frank Sinatra covered it with a jazz orchestration, and ‘a Burma girl’ got changed to ‘a Burma broad’; ‘a man’ to ‘a cat’; and ‘temple bells’ to ‘crazy bells’.  

Read more: Burma (Myanmar)

Fiction, Recollections & News

The McKie Family

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing.  Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred.  Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow. 

The setting is Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and my path winds through a time when the gardens there flowered with exotic blooms and their seeds and nectar changed the entire world.  This was the blossoming of the late industrial and early scientific revolution and it flowered most brilliantly in Newcastle.

I've been to trace a couple of lines of ancestry back six generations to around the turn of the 19th century. Six generations ago, around the turn of the century, lived sixty-four individuals who each contributed a little less 1.6% of their genome to me, half of them on my mother's side and half on my father's.  Yet I can't name half a dozen of them.  But I do know one was called McKie.  So, this is about his descendants; and the path they took; and some things a few of them contributed to Newcastle's fortunes; and who they met on the way.

In six generations, unless there is duplication due to copulating cousins, we all have 126 ancestors.  Over half of mine remain obscure to me but I know the majority had one thing in common, they lived in or around Newcastle upon Tyne.  Thus, they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund. So, it's also a tale of one city.

My mother's family is the subject of a separate article on this website. 

 

Read more: The McKie Family

Opinions and Philosophy

Electricity Pricing

 

 August 2012 (chapters added since)

 

 

 

Introduction

 

The present government interventions in electricity markets, intended to move the industry from coal to renewable energy sources, are responsible for most of the rapidly rising cost of electricity in Australia.  These interventions have introduced unanticipated distortions and inefficiencies in the way that electricity is delivered.

Industry experts point to looming problems in supply and even higher price increases.

A 'root and branch' review of these mechanisms is urgently required to prevent ever increasing prices and to prevent further potentially crippling distortions.

Read more: Electricity Pricing

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