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The Anzac Theme: Like most of you, we are very proud Australians. We are especially proud during the period falling around April 25, Anzac Day in Australia & New Zealand.

People in Australia and New Zealand have been happily volunteering to go to far distant places & fight for causes that were clearly perceived as worthy ones. To the average Australian, it may seem a strange concept, but it is difficult to convey in 21 st Century terms the very real sense of sacrifice that people in the early-to-mid 20 th Century were willing to make. They were only vaguely aware of the very real dangers involved in volunteering to fight in, say, the Western Front in WWI. They felt that there was a profound obligation to do so however, so that mum & dad, baby brothers & sisters at home would be safe from a dangerous & hostile enemy. The idea that if the enemy prevailed, their loved ones were in real danger of losing the carefree life that Australians all so unconsciously enjoy.

It is easy to dismiss these sentiments, with the benefit of hindsight. Not so during the early years of WWII this was a very distinct possibility.

We decided to use the Anzac theme to encourage people to have more children because we feel that the generosity of our Anzac brethren with their heroic sense of sacrifice compares very starkly with our generation’s pathetic sense of selfishness.

There, we said it

We are far too preoccupied with material possessions. This, more than anything else seems to be the reason why our birth rate is in decline. It’s a very sad reason indeed.

Can you imagine this...

Someone invents a time machine. One of us visits an Australian soldier dying in a boggy trench on the Western Front. Let’s call him Harry. Harry’s lungs are disintegrating from a chlorine gas attack. He is slowly drowning in the fluid accumulating in his now useless lungs. He volunteered to go to the “Great War” (as it was called then) so that his 12-year old brother could take over the dairy farm & not have to go to war if the war went much longer. Harry is the oldest of 5 kids, going down to young Daphne, aged 3. Dad was hoping to buy the farm next door so that all the kids could stay in the area as farmers.

As sad and hopeless 18 year old Harry looks, you try to explain to him how much you appreciate what he has done for his country. You explain that, at 35 you wanted a career first & you intended to have “only one” child shortly.

Harry, with scant formal education would have little concept of the elite life you choose to lead, with your expensive Euro cars & yearly overseas holidays.

Harry dies, unbelievably, with a cigarette in his mouth.

Over 60,000 Australians like Harry were killed in WWI. They were generally buried where they died in unmarked, mass graves. No headstone for them except perhaps a cross at a distant war cemetery.

Harry was a naïve idealist. Most people were then. They were born at a time when it was dawning on most Australians that to be born in Australia was really something wonderful. Sure the country started as a gulag, but that was all over in around forty years. The incredible prosperity of the country hadeople clamouring to come & take their chances at farming or digging for gold. It seemed that the opportunities were boundless. Having lots of children was something that you just did.