Anzac Day
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@NTA told mine as soon as they are out, we are selling our house and buying a motorhome!
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@taniwharugby said in Anzac Day:
@NTA told mine as soon as they are out, we are selling our house and buying a motorhome!
Nice! Would like to do that around NZ and then Europe around TdF time.
As of next year, both kids will be in high school (in NSW Year 7 of 12 is high school commencement, where most kids turn 12 or 13) and therefore we don't have to burn part of our annual leave on minding the little bastards. I like taking our holidays out of school break in order to avoid peak pricing. Bloody rort.
Once ours are finished their high school exams I think we're free, or at least free enough.
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@taniwharugby said in Anzac Day:
@NTA told mine as soon as they are out, we are selling our house and buying a motorhome!
Did you consider telling them nothing and just letting them see a for sale sign on the lawn?
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@taniwharugby said in Anzac Day:
@NTA told mine as soon as they are out, we are selling our house and buying a motorhome!
Did you consider telling them nothing and just letting them see a for sale sign on the lawn?
Along with all their shit in boxes?
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Google is not being my friend at the moment, can any Aussie ferners refer me to where I can find a list of Anzac services around Melbourne? Can only find the main one at the Shrine of remembrance.
edit. Found it: http://www.rslvic.com.au/media/365488/Sub-Branch-ANZAC-Day-Activities-12-April-2019.pdf
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For those in London
5.00am: Dawn Service, Australian War Memorial, Hyde Park Corner
The main service will take place in front of the Australian War Memorial at Hyde Park Corner. At the conclusion of the service wreaths will then also be laid at the New Zealand Memorial. The service lasts approximately 45 minutes and is a non-ticketed event open to the public.
Gates open at 4am for the Dawn Service. Enter from the Green Park side of Hyde Park Corner. Please keep bags to a minimum, and do not bring any large bags, to avoid delays. Full security checks will be in place.Probably want to arrive by 4.30am at latest if you want to get inside the cordon. The security in usually through the Wellington Arch.
For those that haven't been the Oz Memorial is in the dip and that means that if you are back from the cordon (ie don't go through security) it is difficult to see anything at all or even hear most of it.
The Cenotaph and Westminster Abbey services are ticketed and you had to apply some time ago.
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Great clip showing the kiwi soldier @antipodean mentioned yesterday
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Happy ANZAC Day all.
Respects were paid the traditional solemn way this morning.
This afternoon we've closed our street. Beers and food.
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A sober reminder in today's Australian newspaper - Rocket was a mate of mine.
No escaping pain after seeing ‘black demon’ steal loving husband and father
When she thinks of her husband, Queen Dunbar cherishes the memory of the wonderful man he was, not what the “black demon” did to him after Afghanistan.
As Australians commemorate the service and sacrifice of those who fought for this country, Ms Dunbar wants Adam’s story told because it’s the side of the Anzac legend that plays out in the shadows, the living nightmare of combat trauma for veterans and their families.
It ended all too tragically for her husband. Despite medical help and the love of his wife and their two children, 42-year-old Adam Dunbar committed suicide in November 2017, stricken by PTSD.
“I call it the black demon because that’s what it was like when it got hold of him,” Ms Dunbar said. “It was like something was riding him. This person that I loved changed in front of my eyes; we fought it and fought it, but it was always there and in the end it took over.”
The casualty count is still rising, even though the last Australian combat troops left Afghanistan five years ago, ending the longest war this nation has fought.
Deaths by suicide of returned soldiers dwarf the 41 killed on active duty between 2002 and 2014 in Afghanistan. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported last year that the incidence of ex-servicemen under 30 dying by their own hand was 2.2 times that of Australian civilian men the same age. In the period 2001-16, 373 serving, reserve and ex-serving military personnel had committed suicide, the study found.
“Any suicide is a tragedy and it is an issue that impacts on all Australians,” the Department of Veterans’ Affairs said. “Around eight Australians a day take their own life and suicide remains the greatest cause of death for men between the ages of 14 and 44.”
It’s hard for Ms Dunbar to talk about Adam’s struggle with PTSD. His life was the army and their family. A career officer, he graduated from Duntroon in 1999 and quickly rose to become a major in the artillery.
In 2005, he deployed to Iraq with an Australian taskforce at the height of the insurgency there. He then accepted a demotion in rank, to captain, and transferred to army intelligence because he wanted to be closer to the action. In 2011, he was sent to Afghanistan.
Ms Dunbar said he experienced at least four traumatic events in the war zone, one of them involving the death of a friend. He had learnt Arabic and was posted to Jordan on his return to polish his language skills. The kids, Joshua, now 16, and Sarah, 12, were settled in school, so they decided that Adam should go alone.
That’s when his spiral began.
“He was a different man when he came home,” his widow said. “He became very internal. He would go for days and days when I would not see him. He struggled with noise, he struggled with light. He lived in a room that was like a cave.”
He saw army psychiatrists, went in and out of hospital. A fit, active man, he hated it when his weight ballooned on the medication, up to 20kg at a time. It would eventually come off, but then the tablets would stop working and he would have to go on a new drug and the cycle would start all over again.
At first it was a relief to know he had post-traumatic stress disorder — at least the demon had a name, Ms Dunbar said. But nothing could prepare for the family for its impact. Adam stopped sleeping. He would prowl the house through the night. The kids had to learn not to slam the door when they arrived home from school; it would spook dad. He became a ghost to them.
“I was expecting the flashbacks, but the insomnia was something else,” Ms Dunbar said. Bit by bit, the man she loved slipped away. “People think PTSD is an illness … you take some drugs and it’s like an antibiotic, the problem goes away. But it’s not like that at all. It’s a cycle … you are always fighting it and it’s always coming at you.”
His death was a terrible thing for the family. Numb with grief, Ms Dunbar didn’t know how she would cope. They had a mortgage and debts. The children were distraught. But Legacy, the charity set up after World War I to help the widows of the original Anzacs and their successors, stepped in, and the three of them came through “pure hell” together, she said.
Today, Sarah will lay a wreath at the Martin Place Cenotaph in Sydney while Joshua will be a flag-bearer in the Legacy service for Anzac Day. Ms Dunbar will be looking on, proud of the kids.
Most of all, she will be remembering a conversation she had with her husband when he was deep in the throes of his struggle with PTSD. Did he regret it? she asked him. Did he regret going to war in the service of his country? Adam looked at her and said: “Never.”
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Haven’t done my usual ANZAC war movie watching, instead I spent much of the day moving furniture from my property, niggly but necessary shit.
Tonight I’ll be taking my boys to the BBall and enjoying beer and pizza with them and their stepdad.
God fucken bless my grandparents for helping make these little pleasures and freedoms possible
Stuff
