Aussie Daily

In November 1944, a soldier from western Victoria made Australian military history when he marched out of officer training school with pips on his shoulders.

His name was Reginald 'Reg' Saunders, a proud Gunditjmara man who became the first Indigenous Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army.

Born near Framlingham Aboriginal Station, Saunders enlisted in 1940 following the outbreak of the Second World War, carrying forward a family tradition of service that began with his father and uncle at Gallipoli. Serving with the 2/7th Battalion, he fought through the Libyan desert, Greece, and the fierce Battle of Crete.

When Allied forces were evacuated from Crete, Saunders was among those left behind. For eleven months, he evaded enemy patrols in the rugged Cretan mountains, sheltered and fed by local villagers at enormous risk to their own lives, before orchestrating a daring escape by submarine.

Rather than taking leave when he returned to Australia, he immediately rejoined his unit in New Guinea. Recognising his natural tactical judgment and calm under fire, his commanding officers recommended him for officer training—breaking deep-seated military conventions of the era.

Years later, Saunders volunteered again for the Korean War. As a Captain commanding 'C' Company, 3 RAR, he led his men through the pivotal Battle of Kapyong in April 1951, holding off waves of enemy attacks and earning a US Presidential Unit Citation.

Soldiers who served under him remembered him simply as an exceptional battlefield commander who never asked a man to do what he wouldn't do himself.

Lest We Forget.

What do you think makes Captain Reg Saunders one of the most inspiring battlefield leaders in our nation’s history?

SOURCE:: Australian War Memorial (Captain Reginald Saunders Collection); Department of Veterans' Affairs; Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Few parenting choices ignite as much instant judgment or fierce debate in Australian shopping centres and street crossings as the sight of a toddler wearing a backpack leash or wrist tether.

For parents who use them, safety harnesses are non-negotiable tools that prevent tragedy. In crowded supermarket car parks, near high-speed suburban arterial roads, or in massive transit hubs, an energetic two-year-old can slip a hand and bolt into traffic in a fraction of a second.

Supporters and child safety advocates point out that toddler reins give young children the independence to walk on their own feet—rather than being strapped into a pram for hours while giving parents peace of mind, especially those managing twins, multiple young siblings, or children with neurodivergent needs like autism or ADHD.

On the other side of the debate, critics argue the practice looks demeaning, often comparing it to walking a family pet.

Opponents frequently claim that leashes can become a crutch for inattentive parenting, arguing that mothers and fathers should instead hold their child’s hand and focus on teaching verbal boundaries, impulse control, and road safety awareness without tethering them.

While completely legal across Australia and endorsed by groups like Kidsafe as a practical harm-prevention option in high-risk zones, parents who use them still report facing glares, side-comments, and online shaming.

Where do you stand do you support Aussie parents using a child leash to keep their little ones safe, or do you think they should be left in the past?

(Image note: Illustrative image. Background image generated using AI.)

SOURCE: Kidsafe Australia child road safety guidelines; Australian Child Safety Foundation; Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne safety resources.

Len Waters was born at Euraba Mission, near Boomi in New South Wales, on 20 June 1924. When he was two, his family was moved to the Toomelah Aboriginal Reserve. He went to school at Nindigully, over the Queensland border.

He was a Kamilaroi man growing up under laws that controlled where Aboriginal people could live, where they could work, where they could travel, and whether they counted as citizens of their own country.

He wanted to fly aeroplanes.

Getting in the door

He walked into a Brisbane recruiting office and joined the RAAF on 24 August 1942. Not as aircrew. As a flight mechanic.

He was very good at Morse code, and that worried him. He was afraid they would make him a wireless operator and he would never get near a cockpit.

Within a year he applied to transfer to aircrew.

The officer who interviewed him wrote that his appearance and manners were a bit rough, and then concluded that Waters should make a fighter.

He trained at Narrandera and then Mildura, among more than a hundred trainees, of whom only a fraction graduated as pilots. He earned his wings in 1944.

Black Magic

On 14 November 1944 he was posted to No. 78 Squadron, flying P-40N Kittyhawks out of island bases in the South West Pacific.

The aircraft he was allocated already had a name painted on the nose. A previous pilot, Flight Lieutenant Denis Baker DFC, had called it Black Magic.

Waters thought the coincidence was funny and kept it.

He flew 95 operational sorties over New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, from Noemfoor, Morotai and Tarakan. Ground attack, close air support, low and under fire over Japanese-held territory.

He also won the RAAF middleweight boxing title while he was up there, which tells you something about the man.

The photograph

During the war, Len had a portrait done through a mail-order portraiture business, the sort of thing servicemen sent home to family.

When it came back, his skin had been lightened.

An employee of the company had decided that was the version of him worth framing. The portrait survives, and it is held in the Australian War Memorial collection.

Coming home

He was discharged on 18 January 1946 as a Warrant Officer.

He had a plan. He wanted to start a regional airline in western Queensland, flying the kind of country he had grown up in. He had the skill and the hours. What he could not get was the backing, and his attempts to obtain a civil pilot’s licence ran into delays he could not outlast.

He never flew an aircraft again.

He went back to shearing sheep, and he and his wife Gladys raised six children on it.

The date

Len Waters died at Cunnamulla, Queensland, on 24 August 1993. He was 69.

Fifty-one years to the day since he walked into that recruiting office in Brisbane.

He remains the first Aboriginal Australian to qualify as a military pilot, and the only Aboriginal fighter pilot known to have served in the RAAF during the Second World War.

Should stories like this be taught in every Australian classroom? Tell us what you think. 🇦🇺✈️

Sources: Australian War Memorial collection records, Warrant Officer Leonard Victor Waters, 78 Squadron; Anzac Portal, Department of Veterans’ Affairs; Robert A. Hall, Black Magic: Leonard Waters, Second World War Fighter Pilot, Aboriginal History 16, 1992; National Archives of Australia service record 78144.

For generations, conventional thinking held that once a wild horse matured in the bush, it was too flighty, unpredictable, or stubborn to ever adapt to human handling.

Today, dedicated rehoming sanctuaries and horse trainers across the country are proving that assumption wrong.

Through events like the Australian Brumby Challenge and regional retraining programs, experienced handlers take completely unhandled wild horses trapped from public lands and, using patient natural horsemanship techniques, transform them within months into quiet, versatile riding mounts.

Trainers routinely discover that because brumbies must constantly calculate risk, navigate treacherous terrain, and look out for their mob in the wild, they possess an innate survival intelligence and emotional loyalty rarely found in domestic-bred horses.

Once trust is established with a human handler, retrained brumbies often excel in competitive trail riding, equine therapy, working cattle, and long-distance endurance events.

Sanctuaries and volunteer rehomers dedicate thousands of hours and personal funds to handle veterinary expenses, microchipping, and retraining. They demonstrate daily that managed adoption networks can offer a dignified, practical pathway for horses that would otherwise face lethal culls.

What do you think is the biggest misconception everyday Australians have about our wild horses?

SOURCE: Australian Brumby Alliance; Victorian Brumby Association; Equine welfare and adoption records.

In a quiet street in Maylands, in Perth's inner north, neighbours say they can't hang washing on the line without bringing it in early.

More than a dozen cats are living at one property. They cross fences, sit on roofs, run up and down driveways. One neighbour described the smell as a litter tray amplified a thousand times over. Another says the family hasn't properly used their backyard in a long time.

The City of Bayswater says it has been dealing with complaints about cats at the property for a number of years unless you have a 2016 doc in hand. If 9News says 2016, cite them: 9News reports the City has been dealing with the property since 2016

RSPCA WA has laid 12 animal cruelty charges, alleging a dozen cats were confined in a way that caused or was likely to cause harm. The matter is before the court next week.

Nothing has been proven. The resident is 82 years old, and we have chosen not to name her or her street.

Here is the part nobody is talking about

This has happened at this address before.

Ten years ago there were reportedly more than 30 cats at the same property. The council intervened. The home was deemed unfit to live in. A tribunal allowed the resident to stay, but ruled the cats had to go.

And they did go. Temporarily.

A decade later, the neighbours are making the same complaints about the same house.

That pattern has a name

Animal hoarding is a recognised mental health condition. It sits in the diagnostic manuals alongside other hoarding and obsessive-compulsive disorders, and it has one statistic attached to it that explains everything about this story.

When animals are removed and nothing else changes, the recurrence rate approaches 100 per cent.

Nearly every time. Which is precisely what happened here in 2016, and what is happening again now.

People experiencing it are not usually cruel. Most genuinely believe they are rescuing animals, and cannot see the harm accumulating around them. That does not make the animals any less unwell, and it does not make the neighbours' situation any more liveable. But it does explain why enforcement alone has failed this street twice.

The question worth asking

The neighbours deserve to use their own backyards. The cats deserve proper care. Those things are not in dispute.

But if removing the animals in 2016 led straight back here, it's fair to ask what else was offered, and whether anyone followed up with an elderly woman over the following ten years.

Councils can enforce. The RSPCA can prosecute. Neither is designed to treat a mental health condition, and without that part, everyone involved — neighbours, cats, and the woman herself — ends up back in the same place.

If this sounds familiar

If someone in your life is struggling with an accumulation of animals, early help works far better than enforcement. A GP is the starting point, and the RSPCA in your state can advise on animal welfare without it automatically becoming a prosecution.

We're moderating comments closely on this one. Discussion of the laws, the council's handling and how these situations get prevented is welcome. Comments attacking an 82-year-old woman who hasn't had her day in court will be removed. 🐈

Sources: 9News; City of Bayswater; RSPCA WA; Cat Act 2011 (WA).

Long before modern debates over national park management, the rugged wild horses of the Australian bush helped forge one of the greatest military legends in the nation's history.

When the Australian Imperial Force formed the Australian Light Horse during the First World War, military buyers travelled through regional sale yards and station homesteads searching for remounts capable of enduring extreme conditions. They found their answer in the 'Waler'—a distinct saddle-horse type descended from early colonial thoroughbreds, Arabians, and hardy station horses that had lived and bred in the open bush.

Years of surviving rocky ridgelines, drought, and poor feed had gifted these horses unmatched bone density, tough hooves, and extraordinary endurance.

In the blistering sands of the Sinai and Palestine, while European mounts struggled and perished, the Australian bush-bred horses marched for up to thirty-six hours without water, carried riders laden with heavy battle kit, and famously charged through artillery and machine-gun fire to take Beersheba in October 1917.

Veterans of the Light Horse routinely credited the survival of their units to the unique stamina forged in the Australian terrain.

Today, many bush historians and brumby advocates point out that the free-roaming herds surviving in pockets of regional New South Wales and Victoria carry the living genetic heritage of those legendary wartime mounts.

Lest We Forget.

Do you view the Australian brumby as an essential piece of our living frontier and military heritage?

SOURCE:
Sources: Australian War Memorial (Australian Light Horse Remount records); Desert Mounted Corps campaign logs; Australian Waler Horse Society.

Image: Sydney Mail / Australian War Memorial, J00450 - Public Domain.

Ken Weeks was born in Grafton on 5 October 1913.

Today he turned 113. He is now the oldest Australian man ever recorded, the first in this country's history to reach that age.

And somewhere in Brazil, there is one man older than him. Exactly one.

The coincidence nobody planned

João Marinho Neto is the oldest living man in the world. He was born on 5 October 1912.

The same day as Ken. One year earlier, to the day.

Staff at Ken's care home in Grafton put the two of them in touch. They have been writing to each other ever since. Today João turned 114 and sent his birthday wishes across the Pacific, and Ken recorded a video message back.

Two men, born a year apart on the same date, on opposite sides of the world, now the two oldest men alive, sending each other birthday greetings.

You could not make it up.

How Ken spent the day

He made his bed, as he does every morning.

He had a cup of tea with his granddaughter.

Then a quiet celebration with his family.

He also went out for a drive in a vintage car with his son Ian and granddaughter Eunice, touring the places that shaped his life around Grafton. The eldest of five children, he has lived in that part of the Clarence Valley his whole life.

What 113 actually looks like

He was still walking into town every single day to do his own shopping after he turned 100.

He stayed in the family home, living independently, until shortly before his 105th birthday.

As he says himself, he can still walk about.

His son put it well: reaching 113 is one thing, but still being able to get out, see things and do what you love is something else entirely.

The part his family wants you to know

His granddaughter Eunice says she thinks it comes down to resilience, independence and faith.

But it was the next bit she said that stays with you. She loves that he has lived a simple, ordinary life of hard, industrious work. To her he is a typical Aussie battler who just happens to be her grandad.

A hundred and thirteen years, and that is the sentence his family reaches for.

One more thing

A few years back, at 110, Ken became so well known for his love of baked beans that a company made him his own bespoke batch.

He kept opening the tins himself until the can opener got the better of him at around 105.

Happy birthday Ken. And happy birthday João.

Drop a birthday message for Ken in the comments. His family and the team at Grafton read them. 🎂🇦🇺

Sources: 9News; LongeviQuest; AAP, 5 October 2026.

When the Light Horse regiments were raised in 1914, a great many men rode in on their own horses. Station hacks. Stock horses they had broken themselves. Animals that already knew them.

They were given a promise. When it was over, they could bring them home.

In late 1918 the war ended, and that promise was broken.

Australia had sent 39,348 Walers overseas to the AIF. Quarantine rules, shipping shortages and cost meant the surviving horses in the Middle East were not coming back. Around 13,000 surplus Australian horses were there at war's end. About 11,000 were sold on, most as remounts for the British Army in India.

One came home. A horse called Sandy, who had belonged to Major General Sir William Bridges. Bridges himself had been killed at Gallipoli in 1915. So Sandy made the voyage home without the man he was coming home with.

The man who wrote it down

Among the men in those desert camps was Oliver Hogue, born in Darlington, Sydney, in 1880. A journalist before the war, he had enlisted with the 6th Light Horse Regiment in September 1914.

He wrote dispatches home under a pen name the whole country came to know: Trooper Bluegum. By 1919 he had been commissioned and risen to Major, but the name stuck, because it was the name of an ordinary man writing about ordinary men.

He had come through all of it. Gallipoli. Sinai. Palestine. Damascus.

And at the end of it, facing the order that the horses would stay, he wrote a poem.

The Horses Stay Behind

It is still, more than a century later, the most quoted thing any Australian wrote about that war's forgotten casualties.

It is not grand. It is a stockman talking about his horse. It moves through what the men had imagined, buying the horse back from the army, the ride home, the good years ahead in country the animal had never seen, and then it turns, and arrives somewhere much harder.

Hogue puts into it a sentiment that was real in those camps: that many men would rather their horse did not pass into unknown hands at all. What a man might be willing to do about that, and what he might be willing to say about it afterwards, is where the poem ends.

It is a short piece of verse by a journalist in a tent in Egypt. It has outlived almost everything else written about the campaign.

He never made it home either

Hogue took leave to England in January 1919.

The influenza pandemic was sweeping the world. On 27 February he was admitted to the 3rd London General Hospital, dangerously ill. His brother Stephen was at his bedside. He died five days later, on 3 March 1919.

He was 38. He was buried in England with full military honours.

The man who wrote the poem about being unable to come home with his horse never came home at all.

Why it still lands

There is a reason this story keeps being retold at dawn services and in bush halls.

These were not cavalry officers with grooms and stables. They were stockmen, drovers, farm boys, men whose relationship with a horse was built over years of work, not parade grounds. They had shared water rations with these animals in country that would kill you without them.

And then they were told to walk away.

What do you think made that bond so unbreakable? And does anyone in your family have a Light Horse story? We'd love to hear it. 🐴🇦🇺

Sources: Australian War Memorial; State Library of New South Wales, Light Horse records; Oliver Hogue, The Horses Stay Behind, published in Australia in Palestine, 1919.

Image credit: Australian War Memorial / Public Domain.

On 19 March 1932, hundreds of thousands of spectators gathered around the southern approach of the newly completed Sydney Harbour Bridge to witness what was planned to be a strictly orchestrated civic celebration.

NSW Premier Jack Lang stood ready with scissors to formally cut the ceremonial ribbon and declare the engineering marvel open to the public.

Suddenly, an unidentified horseman in full military uniform trotted out from the official cavalry es**rt. Drawing an 1860s cavalry sword, he galloped directly toward the barrier, raised his blade, and slashed the ribbon in two.

Before stunned police could tackle him from his saddle, the rider shouted across the crowd that he opened the bridge "in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales" and the King.

His name was Francis de Groot, an antique dealer and prominent member of the New Guard—a right-wing paramilitary group that fiercely opposed Premier Lang's government. De Groot believed only a member of the British royal family or the Governor had the constitutional right to open the landmark.

De Groot was swiftly arrested, assessed for sanity, and later fined five pounds for offensive behaviour. Meanwhile, officials hurriedly tied the ribbon back together so Premier Lang could officially cut it as scheduled.

Nearly a century later, the sword-slashing episode remains one of the most eccentric, theatrical political protests in modern Australian history.

Did you know the wild story behind the official opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge?

SOURCE:
Sources: State Library of New South Wales; National Archives of Australia; NSW Police Service historical records (1932).

Image - Public Domain

If you run a small business and you have ever paid a BAS bill with a credit card to buy yourself a few weeks, this one is for you.

From 1 December, you cannot do it anymore.

The Australian Taxation Office announced on 1 October that it will stop accepting credit cards Visa, Mastercard and American Express — after 30 November 2026. It covers all tax payments: BAS, PAYG instalments, income tax, the lot.

Why it's happening

On 1 October, the Reserve Bank's ban on card surcharges took effect. Businesses can no longer add a separate fee when a customer pays by card.

The ATO used to charge exactly that kind of surcharge on card payments. With the ban in place, it had two options: absorb the merchant fees itself, or stop taking cards.

It chose to stop taking cards. Its position is that it would not be appropriate for those fees to be passed on to the wider community.

Why small business is angry

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Andrew McKellar says small businesses made up about 40 per cent of credit card payments to the ATO. He has called the decision utter hypocrisy.

The argument is straightforward. A cafe cannot stop accepting cards — customers would walk. So it absorbs the fee. The Tax Office can simply refuse the payment method, and does.

Deputy Opposition Leader Jane Hume has said the ban is unfair because many small businesses have no choice but to keep taking cards. Senator Pauline Hanson called it a double tap on small business. Both the Coalition and One Nation want the Treasurer to intervene.

For a lot of operators the issue is not the fee at all. It is timing. A credit card could put up to about 55 days between the tax bill and the money actually leaving the account. That gap is how plenty of businesses survive a slow quarter.

The other side of it

Worth knowing, because it rarely makes the headlines: credit cards accounted for roughly 2.3 per cent of all tax payments in 2024–25, and more than 60 per cent of those came from privately owned and wealthy groups, public companies and multinationals.

So the measure is far from small-business-only. But small operators are the ones for whom the timing gap actually matters, and that is where the pressure is coming from.

What you need to do

If you have an ATO payment plan linked to a credit card, act now. Card payments after 30 November will fail. If your instalment bounces, your plan can go into arrears or default. The ATO is writing to affected taxpayers, but don't wait for a letter — update the payment method at ato.gov.au/managepaymentplan.

Alternative methods are listed at ato.gov.au/howtopay.

And one tip worth knowing. Between now and 30 November, the ATO is charging no card fee at all. If you have a current tax bill and a card, paying it before the deadline costs you nothing extra.

Where it goes

With business groups, the Opposition and the crossbench all pushing for a reversal, there is pressure on the government to find some middle ground before 30 November.

Until that happens, 30 November is the date that counts. Put it somewhere you'll see it.

Does this one affect your business? How have you been managing tax payments lately? Tell us below — and share this with anyone you know who pays their BAS on a card. ⚠️🇦🇺

This is general information, not financial or tax advice. Check your own situation with your accountant or at ato.gov.au.

Sources: Australian Taxation Office announcement, 1 October 2026; RBA Review of Merchant Card Payment Costs and Surcharging; ACCI; SmartCompany.