LIFE IN WARTIME GIVES A FURTHER PERSPECTIVE

KAZ as always, solid research combined with either humour or direct comments.

Your Both Barrels article ( GA 20/1), like many others, documents just how both sides see the upholding of what has been accepted in past years.

Warren Mundine et al have certainly touched on the need for both parties coming back to the reality of today — by placing past historical events into a time zone of reality and look to the future. You address the people who arrived in this country not of their own free will, which started us all off.

May I add strength to Warren’s statement by asking both parties where we would all be if the Australian Government was not supported by our dogged military personnel plus the Americans in World War II?

With the bombardment of Darwin by the Japanese, I invite both parties to research historical facts that saw initially the removal of northern children from all creeds/colours to below Alice Springs and beyond.

In that same period this same government was planning to capitulate some half of Australia to the Japanese. How would you cope today had that become a reality?

Both parties would certainly have deep-seated memories of the past as I have, but learned to appreciate any good or bad fortune.

I am heading toward my ninth decade. Like so many others of my generation, I was evacuated in that period, lived in a single parent family, was schooled in the one-room holding classes from prep to Year 8.

Yet I have continued to make my way in the world of today appreciating just how lucky I am to be living in this wonderful country — plus of having had the opportunity in life to work among and in the company of indigenous friends who have had the ability to bring their lives happily into 2018 despite having a “back burner” full of historical awareness. Ben Wright