ED: Ernie submitted a photo with this article, unfortunately the format would not allow me to copy it.

By Ernie Chamberlain

Several writers have implied that Núi Dat was an Australians-only enclave – however, many other nationalities were serving in the base. The New Zealand gunners (161st Field Battery) first served with 1 RAR in Biên Hòa in 1965, and later moved to join 1 ATF at Núi Dat in mid-1966. In May 1967, NZ Victor Company – from 1RNZIR in Malaysia, joined 6RAR in Ph??c Tuy – with NZ Whiskey Company joining 2RAR in March 1968. Resident US artillery elements supported 1 ATF – eg 105mm and 155mm guns of 2nd Bn/35th Arty Regiment in Núi Dat, and 175mm and 8-inch SP guns of the 1/83rd Arty Regiment in the Heavyweight base about a kilometre south of the 1 ATF base. (US SGT Frank Beltier of 2nd Bn/35th Arty – without permission, joined A/6RAR enroute to Long Tân late on 18 August 1966). Other “resident” US elements at Núi Dat included SIGINT detachments (eg 175th Radio Reconnaissance Regiment) supporting 547 Sig Tp – with direction finding (DF) equipment, and occasionally US DF light aircraft were based at the Núi Dat strip Two US SIGINTers were killed in the Province by VC mines – one near Hòa Long in February 1969, and another near Long Dien on Route 44.

US Liaison Officers (LOs) were routinely attached to 1 ATF – from the US Air Force, from HQ II Field Force Vietnam (II FFV) at Long Bình, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, 9th US Infantry Division, 25th US Infantry Division, 199th US Light Infantry Brigade, 3rd Brigade/1st US Cavalry Division etc. 1 ATF also exchanged LOs with the Royal Thai Army Volunteer Force (RTAVF) based at Bearcat in south-central Biên Hòa Province. LOs were also sometimes deployed from the 18th (nee 10th) ARVN Division to HQ 1 ATF when elements of that ARVN formation were operating in Phuoc Tuy.

Former NVA/VC soldiers were also stationed in Núi Dat – as “Bushman Scouts” (ie NVA/VC who had rallied to the Government side – termed “Kit Carson Scouts” by the US), serving with Australian units. Bushman Scouts served principally with the RAR battalions and the Reinforcement Unit, but also with 1 Field Squadron RAE and 1 PSYOPS unit (3). NVA/VC ralliers were also employed in Armed Propaganda Teams of the PSYOPS unit for direct contact with the local “VC families”.

“Regular” ARVN personnel also served at Núi Dat – principally members of the 10th Military Intelligence Detachment (10th MID) who were “integrated” into Det 1 Div Int Unit and facilitated the Div Int’s “Acorn raids” against the Viet Cong underground/infrastructure across the Province. ARVN NCOs – often as interpreters, also served with the Civil Affairs Unit and the PSYOPS Unit (about five). NVA/VC prisoners were kept for a short period at the RAACMP “cage” at Núi Dat before processing and movement to formal camps.

In February 1971, AATTV founded the Jungle Warfare Training Centre (JWTC) in the former 8RAR “lines” at Núi Dat – for training ARVN junior officers and NCOs. About 1,500 Vietnamese were trained over two years before the Centre relocated to the ARVN National Training Centre at Van Kiep on Bà Ria Town’s eastern outskirts.

Núi Dat was not quite the “United Nations” – but quite a multi-cultural environment at times.

IF Gaius Petronious Arbiter didn’t exist, someone at Fort Zinderneuf on Canberra’s Russell Hill would have invented him.

Perhaps they already had.

Petronius Arbiter is oft quoted in military circles for his pithy observations on reorganisations.

“We trained hard-but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganised,” he wrote.

“I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.

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Does anyone progress in Army’s reshuffle | Australian Defence History, Policy and Veterans Issues (targetsdown.blogspot.com)

G’day Ray

My name is Ken Wriedt, and I am looking for Robert Edwards (3791170) and Allen Green (3791112) and I was referred to you by the secretary of 1RAR Association.

In a past life, we all worked in the Commonwealth Bank, got conscripted and went to Vietnam.

I am now attempting to garner together as many ex-CBA Victorian ‘Nasho’s’ with a view to a get together sometime in 2024.

If you have details of either Robert or Allen, I would appreciate it you could onforward this email to them.

Many thanks

Cheers

Ken Wriedt

HQ 1ALSG 69/70

kmwriedt@iinet.net.au

Australia’s decision to procure a nuclear-powered submarine fleet is perceived as a new kind of national insurance policy, primarily centred on a post-Taiwan geopolitical landscape. This represents a significant departure from Australia’s traditional defence and strategic planning post-World War II.

The new defence approach emphasizes “impactful projection” and “national defence,” with the upcoming nuclear-powered submarines acting as the forefront of this deterrence mechanism. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles highlights the need for a defence force that can project power further from Australia’s shores.

The Defence Strategic Review has underscored the diminishing reliance on American primacy. It asserts that Australia’s defence capabilities relative to emerging threats can only be robust when collaborating with allies like the US. Still, it also emphasizes the need for Australia to have the capability to deter adversaries independently.

A significant focus has been the rise of China and its stance towards Taiwan. The Defence Strategic Review illuminates the intricacies of the Indo-Pacific’s changing dynamics, marked by economic, military, and strategic competition.

Australia’s pursuit of nuclear-powered submarines has been controversial, with debates on costs, the feasibility of domestic production, and the expected timeline. Critiques from figures such as The Australian’s Greg Sheridan highlight concerns about Australia’s commitment and the potential financial implications of the submarine program.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr questions the feasibility of the US supplying Australia with initial nuclear submarines, hinting at a potential strain on the US Navy’s capabilities and the high costs associated with Australia’s future submarine fleet.

A prevalent notion is that Australia’s policymakers anticipate a potential Chinese annexation of Taiwan, resulting in reduced confidence in the US alliance. In such a scenario, Australia’s nuclear submarines would play a pivotal role in safeguarding the nation’s interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Dr. Ross Babbage emphasizes the need for economic resilience alongside military capabilities. For Australia to thrive amid rising great power competition, the nation must prioritize long-term strategic planning, economic strength, and proactive collaboration between policymakers, officials, and the public.

By David Barton.

In 1983, as a naïve youth worker and concerned by what I had been reading since the early 1970s about what was happening with Aborigines in Alice Springs, I moved there to see what I could do to help. All told, I spent six years in Central Australia, leaving both depressed and convinced that the situation could never be fixed. …

Unfortunately, much of what passes for Aboriginal ‘culture’ today is an invention of the last 50 years. Fortunately, much authentic Aboriginal culture of the past has vanished. The gruesome initiations, genital mutilation, inflicted cicatrices, burns, ritual spearings, sorcery and payback murders have by and large disappeared. Nevertheless, inter-tribe clan grievances often remain, as can be seen at some football indigenous matches, both on the field and amongst the spectators. Even though these encounters can still become violent, at least those conflicts are mostly played out with a football, not spears and clubs.

Meanwhile, the Aboriginal Industry is chock full of ill-informed, urban myth-makers and illusionists, this caste of urgers and deluded pretenders giving rise to the patronising insistence on the uniqueness of ‘Aboriginal knowledge’ about everything from agriculture and fish farms (a lá Bruce Pascoe), water and fire management (a lá ‘cultural burning’) to Aboriginal ‘art’, ‘fashion’ and even ‘astronomy’, and not to mention Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley’s thoroughly overdone ‘Welcome to Country”. This is mostly snake oil fakery, an effort to convince contemporary Australians that the Aborigines of old were something they clearly never were not.

Worse, histories and observational accounts of early Aboriginal life and culture are vanishing from library shelves, replaced by the anti-white post-modern dogma of ‘invasion, colonisation and inter-generational trauma’. It is unusual today to find any history book about Aborigines in a secondary or tertiary institution that is more than fifteen years old. This is cultural censure and erasure happening right under our noses. We are all the poorer for it, black and white alike.

Meanwhile, the recent invention, exaggeration, distortion and misrepresentation of the alleged ‘frontier wars’ serves as a made-to-order replacement ‘history’ intended to raise the status of Aboriginal people and degrade that of settlers. It is yet another bill of goods, a distorting sham, being hawked by a power-grabbing activist elite in whose interest it is to falsify and distort our history. The goal, need it be said, is an attempt to paint a genocidal racism as Australia’s original sin. …

Equality of opportunity is not enough for the power hungry, to whom any perceived inequality in outcome is an opportunity:

Unfortunately, self-determination for many people who today identify as Aboriginal is taken to mean the normal rules — keeping children in school, eschewing clan and domestic violence — aren’t thought to fully apply. This is nowhere more apparent than on the troubled streets of Alice Springs.

• ‘Self-determination’ means ‘we’ll do what we like and you can pay for it’.
• Self-determination’ is about colonising and taking control, accepting all that whitefellas have to offer while offering nothing in return.
• Self-determination is about undermining whitefella institutions, judiciaries, organisations and bureaucracies.
• Self-determination is about enculturated white people who, on the strength of what may be a mere speck of indigenous DNA, now identify exclusively as Aboriginal, thereby giving themselves an economic and social leg-up.

For the activist cadre it always was and always will be about money, power and control, all underscored by the notion that members of one race enjoy a preeminent ascendency over all other Australians.

More examples of ‘self-determination’ can be found in the ban on climbing Ayers Rock (Uluru), Mt Warning (Wollumbin), Mt Gillen, and many Grampians climbs, all for ill-defined or unexplained ‘cultural’ reasons’. After much outcry, consideration is now being given to re-opening the Mt Warning climb, but only for those who pay a fee and are escorted by indigenous guides. More rent-seeking, what a surprise!

Australian place names are also rapidly being overwritten with (most likely made-up) Aboriginal names (eg: K’gari, once known as Fraser Island). All of this is about claims to ownership, to ‘sovereignty’. These changes should not be mistaken for deference to Aboriginal culture; it’s no more nor less than an insidious takeover. What we are experiencing here is cultural guerrilla warfare, the picking off one target after the other. Don’t believe it? Look no further that what has happened in New Zealand.

The Voice:

Self-determination is not about ‘closing the gap’, nor Aborigines ‘having a voice’ — all of that can be achieved without a change to the Constitution. Indeed, the $35+ billion currently spent on Aboriginal affairs and the 11-plus current Aboriginal members of parliament are more than enough to fulfil both aims.

The Voice referendum is purely and simply about the drive towards Aboriginal sovereignty, which can only be achieved by changing the nation’s foundational document and charter.

Under the Albanese government, self-determination means the coming referendum, whose barely concealed intention is to divide Australia along lines of race. …

What is hiding in plain sight is the Albanese government’s intention to de-facto fund and promote the ‘Yes’ campaign whilst hamstringing ‘No’ advocates. Anything the No campaign says can and will be construed as “misinformation”. We have seen this already with the appalling attacks by Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton’s on Jacinta Price. Brace for much more of that — and wonder, too, if the bile and attempts at character assassination are a foretaste of an empowered Voice? …

Meanwhile, Australians are subjected to a daily and massive pro-Yes propaganda barrage by the taxpayer-funded ABC and SBS.

Remote Aboriginal Australians are unfortunate mascots in a power struggle among the white majority. The Voice is just the latest attempt by the left-bureaucratic class to get more control and further exploit the rest of us.