Jed Beaton holds off Kyle Webster to claim second consecutive Manjimup 15000 All Stars title
The Tasmanian cemented his place in Australian motocross folklore at Cosy Creek MX Circuit, joining Monster Energy CDR Yamaha team manager Craig Dack in the exclusive list of multi-time champions of the Manjimup 15,000.
The title did not come without a contest, with Honda Racing Australia's Webster taking the All Stars title fight right down to the final race of the weekend.
'That one was definitely down to the wire,' Beaton said after the victory.
'Kyle got the lead early and started pushing and I thought, 'woah, OK, we really are going for it'.'
'I couldn't have done it without the support of my team.'
The victory means Monster Energy CDR Yamaha and Beaton become the first rider-team combination to claim back-to-back titles since Kirk Gibbs with KTM Motocross Australia in 2014 and 2015.
Beaton's teammate Ryder Kingsford also managed to claim the MX2 Manjimup 15,000 crown, going back-to-back as well in his class, making it a clean sweep for CDR Yamaha.
Monster Energy CDR Yamaha team manager Craig Dack said Beaton and his team had gone from strength to strength.
'I can tell you categorically, I have won three of these things and rode here many a-time, but there is nothing better than having one of your guys win it,' he said.
'To have Jed on this team and to do it back-to-back is incredible.'
Dack said CDR Yamaha was here to make history.
'I said to him (Beaton) last night, let's try to knock off the record of mine, Todd Waters and Jeff Leisk, let's get Jed to win four,' he said.
CDR Yamaha's celebrations juxtaposes yet another year without victory for Honda Racing Australia and WA local Webster, who now has reached the unfortunate milestone of 10 years of racing in Manjimup without a title.
The current national ProMX1 champion did not let the weekend go lightly, winning race two and then fighting back from dead last after a crash on the opening lap in race three to finish second.
'I actually hit my foot on Regan's (Duffy) back wheel, and it actually pushed me off the back of the bike, so my fault,' Webster said after race three.
Webster's teammate Brodie Connolly, who stepped up to a 450 for the first time this weekend, had a much brighter weekend, claiming a handful of MXStore Holeshots and notably winning the Berry Sweet Shootout.
'Yeah I think I got every start except one,' the New Zealander said after his Shootout victory.
'It all comes down to the starts . . . I love stuff like that, it's fun.'
Bridgetown's Patrick Butler finished eighth on the All Star standings, while Regan Duffy's inspirational comeback continued with a 10th-placed result.
Event organiser Willie Thomson said this year's event had some of the best racing Manjimup had seen in recent memory, in front of an incredible turnout.
'It started out all wet and muddy for the juniors, but it turned out brilliant,' he said.
'The last race went right down the wire. What more can you ask for in motocross?'
Thomson said he was already looking forward to bringing a bigger and better Manjimup 15000 in 2026.
Final Standings
Jed Beaton - 102 points Kyle Webster - 96 Brodie Connolly - 85 Brock Flynn - 69 Alex Larwood - 65 Sonny Pellicano - 65 Sth Shackleton - 55 Patrick Butler - 48 Brett Metcalfe - 43 Regan Duffy - 35 Todd Waters - 34 Deacon Paice - 30 Liam Atkinson - 27 Jake Rumens - DNF
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The Advertiser
5 minutes ago
- The Advertiser
Bulldogs star on verge of return, debutant picked
Injury-plagued Western Bulldogs star Adam Treloar is pressing to return via the VFL this week following his latest calf setback. Treloar won't play in the AFL against West Coast on Sunday, but father-son recruit Jordan Croft will. The 20-year-old was told he will make his AFL debut on Wednesday at training, after being drafted with pick 15 in 2023. Croft, who is 201cm tall, has kicked six goals in the VFL during the last two weeks and can play at either end of the ground. The son of Matthew continues a long line of father-sons at the Bulldogs, with Sam Darcy, Tom Liberatore and Rhylee West already established in the senior team. Coming off a career-best season in 2024 when he was named All-Australian for the first time, Treloar has been restricted to a career-low of just four games this year. The 32-year-old again trained strongly at the Whitten Oval on Wednesday, following a match simulation session last weekend. The Bulldogs will be extra careful with Treloar given his wretched run with soft-tissues this year. But the star midfielder is being strongly considered to play for Footscray in the VFL on Sunday when they host Carlton. "He's had a couple of good weeks, almost surprising weeks," Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said of Treloar, who is a "chance" this week. "Encouraging stuff, to the point where now we can consider him for some state league minutes. "My philosophy around playing players who are under prepared is they can't compromise the team at any level. "But we believe that he won't, because he's done the necessary preparations. "We just need to firm it up, it's still early in the week and we've got another session on Friday." The Bulldogs need to win both of their remaining games against West Coast and Fremantle to be guaranteed of playing finals. Even if they only win one and finish the season on 14 wins, it will likely not be enough to qualify. If that happened the Bulldogs would have a strong case to be one of the most unlucky teams of all-time given 12 or 13 wins is usually enough to make finals, and no team has ever missed out with 14. Even if the Bulldogs and their VFL team make strong runs into the finals, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan is increasingly unlikely to make an appearance at any level. The troubled forward has been back at training, at times, following an extended break. Bulldogs assistant coach Brendon Lade believed Ugle-Hagan had "put himself back a couple more weeks". "The way the VFL is playing at the moment he might be lucky to get a game," Lade told 3AW on Sunday. Beveridge called Lade's comments "tongue-in-cheek". "I think it was more about how well Footscray are going, rather than Jamarra's preparation," Beveridge said. "Ladey' will live and learn. "That's the thing about taking lines like that in different contexts, it can come back to bite you. "So he's learned an early lesson, if he's hopefully part of that market for a senior coaching job." Beveridge was also bullish on the senior coach prospects of another assistant at the club. Former Eagles coach Adam Simpson said last week Bulldogs assistant Daniel Pratt was more than ready to be a senior coach. Injury-plagued Western Bulldogs star Adam Treloar is pressing to return via the VFL this week following his latest calf setback. Treloar won't play in the AFL against West Coast on Sunday, but father-son recruit Jordan Croft will. The 20-year-old was told he will make his AFL debut on Wednesday at training, after being drafted with pick 15 in 2023. Croft, who is 201cm tall, has kicked six goals in the VFL during the last two weeks and can play at either end of the ground. The son of Matthew continues a long line of father-sons at the Bulldogs, with Sam Darcy, Tom Liberatore and Rhylee West already established in the senior team. Coming off a career-best season in 2024 when he was named All-Australian for the first time, Treloar has been restricted to a career-low of just four games this year. The 32-year-old again trained strongly at the Whitten Oval on Wednesday, following a match simulation session last weekend. The Bulldogs will be extra careful with Treloar given his wretched run with soft-tissues this year. But the star midfielder is being strongly considered to play for Footscray in the VFL on Sunday when they host Carlton. "He's had a couple of good weeks, almost surprising weeks," Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said of Treloar, who is a "chance" this week. "Encouraging stuff, to the point where now we can consider him for some state league minutes. "My philosophy around playing players who are under prepared is they can't compromise the team at any level. "But we believe that he won't, because he's done the necessary preparations. "We just need to firm it up, it's still early in the week and we've got another session on Friday." The Bulldogs need to win both of their remaining games against West Coast and Fremantle to be guaranteed of playing finals. Even if they only win one and finish the season on 14 wins, it will likely not be enough to qualify. If that happened the Bulldogs would have a strong case to be one of the most unlucky teams of all-time given 12 or 13 wins is usually enough to make finals, and no team has ever missed out with 14. Even if the Bulldogs and their VFL team make strong runs into the finals, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan is increasingly unlikely to make an appearance at any level. The troubled forward has been back at training, at times, following an extended break. Bulldogs assistant coach Brendon Lade believed Ugle-Hagan had "put himself back a couple more weeks". "The way the VFL is playing at the moment he might be lucky to get a game," Lade told 3AW on Sunday. 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Croft, who is 201cm tall, has kicked six goals in the VFL during the last two weeks and can play at either end of the ground. The son of Matthew continues a long line of father-sons at the Bulldogs, with Sam Darcy, Tom Liberatore and Rhylee West already established in the senior team. Coming off a career-best season in 2024 when he was named All-Australian for the first time, Treloar has been restricted to a career-low of just four games this year. The 32-year-old again trained strongly at the Whitten Oval on Wednesday, following a match simulation session last weekend. The Bulldogs will be extra careful with Treloar given his wretched run with soft-tissues this year. But the star midfielder is being strongly considered to play for Footscray in the VFL on Sunday when they host Carlton. "He's had a couple of good weeks, almost surprising weeks," Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said of Treloar, who is a "chance" this week. "Encouraging stuff, to the point where now we can consider him for some state league minutes. "My philosophy around playing players who are under prepared is they can't compromise the team at any level. "But we believe that he won't, because he's done the necessary preparations. "We just need to firm it up, it's still early in the week and we've got another session on Friday." The Bulldogs need to win both of their remaining games against West Coast and Fremantle to be guaranteed of playing finals. Even if they only win one and finish the season on 14 wins, it will likely not be enough to qualify. If that happened the Bulldogs would have a strong case to be one of the most unlucky teams of all-time given 12 or 13 wins is usually enough to make finals, and no team has ever missed out with 14. Even if the Bulldogs and their VFL team make strong runs into the finals, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan is increasingly unlikely to make an appearance at any level. The troubled forward has been back at training, at times, following an extended break. Bulldogs assistant coach Brendon Lade believed Ugle-Hagan had "put himself back a couple more weeks". "The way the VFL is playing at the moment he might be lucky to get a game," Lade told 3AW on Sunday. Beveridge called Lade's comments "tongue-in-cheek". "I think it was more about how well Footscray are going, rather than Jamarra's preparation," Beveridge said. "Ladey' will live and learn. "That's the thing about taking lines like that in different contexts, it can come back to bite you. "So he's learned an early lesson, if he's hopefully part of that market for a senior coaching job." Beveridge was also bullish on the senior coach prospects of another assistant at the club. Former Eagles coach Adam Simpson said last week Bulldogs assistant Daniel Pratt was more than ready to be a senior coach.
The Advertiser
32 minutes ago
- The Advertiser
Tales of the jungle: how WWII's eyes and ears endured
Deep in the dense, overgrown jungles of New Guinea, the eyes and ears of World War II Allied soldiers faced a greater danger than the Japanese warplanes that flew overhead. It rained most days and poured almost every night, turning the perpetually soaked ground into muddy swamps as oppressive temperatures hung heavy in the air of the Australian-administered territory. Olive-green canvas propped up by wooden poles hardly shielded those on the backline of the war from the unbearable conditions. Yet the watchers of the seas and skies never wavered. There were no roads, and you couldn't walk far from campgrounds that were perched on elevated hills without stepping into creeks or shrubland. It was a "malarial pest hole" where mosquitoes and insects thrived and diseases were rife. For Ron Gee Kee, a coder freshly deployed to Milne Bay on the southern point of the island's east, it was the "worst place in the world". The Pacific theatre of the Second World War opened in 1941 between Japan and the allies, with campaigns fought in east and southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. After Japanese bombs had devastated parts of Darwin and where he lived in north Queensland, an 18-year-old Mr Gee Kee enlisted in 1943. "Would you run away and hide in the bush, or would you join up?" he said of his decision. Every night as dusk fell on the humid grounds of Milne Bay, air sirens would sound, piercing the sky with drawn-out wails, alerting to enemy planes approaching. "You could hear the planes coming, but you couldn't see them because the sun was always behind them," Mr Gee Kee said. He and his team would shelter in their huts as half a dozen Japanese fighters shot past their base on the side of a hill, locked onto the coconut trees below. But they didn't concern the non-combat servicemen too much after Allied forces led by Australian soldiers had decisively repelled the Japanese invaders in the battle of Milne Bay in 1942. By early 1943, about 7752 Australian and American soldiers had died in battle in New Guinea. That was dwarfed by the casualties from tropical diseases, numbering 37,360, including 27,892 cases of malaria. "A couple of my mates died from malaria, and if they hadn't, they had dysentery and big sores on their bodies," Mr Gee Kee said. "Most of the time we didn't wear shirts, we just wore shorts because it was so hot and wet up there." Air force radar operator John Patrick McAuley had already narrowly dodged death after a bout of Dengue fever while based in Townsville. By the time he was deployed to Merauke in Dutch-controlled New Guinea, now West Papua, his skin was a yellowish hue due to the tablets fed to servicemen to inoculate them from tropical diseases. Merauke had been left in ruins from a Japanese bombing when he arrived in 1943. "It's not a pleasant place for people to live. It's not suitable," Mr McAuley said. "It was hot all the time. An older person would find it impossible, I'm sure, but we had youth on our side." Growing up in Broken Hill, a scrawny Mr McAuley never got to meet his father, who died when he was 15 months, so he followed in the footsteps of a "cluey" friend into radar defence. "I wanted to do my share of saving Australia from the Japanese, who were already advancing down. No way were they going to come and take over," he said. On the ground, work was never-ending. Mr Gee Kee had the top-secret responsibility of sending and translating messages sent by cryptic codes to arm the Allied forces with intelligence on ships in the Pacific. Mr McAuley would sit in front of radar sets and twiddle with control knobs before relaying information on the skies back to headquarters in Bankstown in Sydney. Despite constant contact with headquarters, letters to and from family and friends arrived with splotches of black ink censoring information, and the lack of access to newspapers meant they were effectively shut off from the world. "We were young. We did what we were told ... we were happy with that," Mr McAuley said. After 12 months at Milne Bay and a short stint in Madang on the north coast, Mr Gee Kee returned to the Brisbane office of American General Douglas MacArthur, who led the Allies' response in the Pacific theatre. He contracted malaria but recovered in a Brisbane hospital, unlike many of his mates in the field hospitals of New Guinea. His final deployment took him to an old bank building in Darwin in 1945, which had remained a scene of destruction from Japanese bombings years earlier. It was there on August 15, 1945, that the message came through. On August 6, 1945, American bomber Enola Gay dropped the 'Little Boy' atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By the end of the day, 45,000 people were dead. Three days later, another atomic bomb fell about 400km away in the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing 22,000 almost immediately. US President Harry S. Truman justified the twin bombings as a means to an end to ongoing suffering. The gamble, which stole hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, paid off when Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his nation's surrender days later. The news came quickly, spilling through the Darwin outpost with cheers and screams. The jubilation soon morphed into a rush of people wanting to return to their old lives. "We were trying to get discharged as quickly as possible and go find some work. We didn't want to stay in the service any longer," Mr Gee Kee said. Discharged in 1945, Mr McAuley went on to marry the love of his life, Margaret, earn a degree in economics and continue serving the nation across high-profile roles in the finance industry. Eighty years on, age has finally wearied Australia's protectors. Memories are slowly fading, as is the number of veterans left to tell the story. For 101-year-old Mr McAuley, the events at the end of the war are fleeting. "That's a pivotal date in your calendar, but one day was the same as another, and we didn't know anything about the atomic bomb," he said. Fewer than 1300 WWII veterans are alive today from the almost one million Australians who served during the war. The youngest surviving veteran is 95, while the oldest is 108. There's a greater sense of relevance and urgency as the nation prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory in the Pacific. "The legacies and consequences of the Second World War remain with us still," the Australian War Memorial head of military history Karl James said. "The greatest tribute we can pay to those Australians who fought the Second World War is to not forget their service and sacrifice." RSL president Greg Melick said the anniversary was important as the number of WWII veterans diminished. "If not for their sacrifices and those of our allied service men and women, our lives today would be significantly different," Mr Melick said. Nowadays, the 101-year-old Mr Gee Kee lives a quiet life in Sydney with his wife Betty, whom he married right after the war. While 80 years on, Mr McAuley remains an idealist, advocating for a lasting peace in the world. "I'm a survivor, and I have that responsibility to my friends, my mates and to past generations," he said. RSL NSW will hold a Victory in the Pacific commemoration service at the Cenotaph at Martin Place in the Sydney CBD on Friday. Other ceremonies will be held at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Canberra's Australian War Memorial, and the State War Memorial in Perth. Lifeline 13 11 14 Open Arms 1800 011 046 Deep in the dense, overgrown jungles of New Guinea, the eyes and ears of World War II Allied soldiers faced a greater danger than the Japanese warplanes that flew overhead. It rained most days and poured almost every night, turning the perpetually soaked ground into muddy swamps as oppressive temperatures hung heavy in the air of the Australian-administered territory. Olive-green canvas propped up by wooden poles hardly shielded those on the backline of the war from the unbearable conditions. Yet the watchers of the seas and skies never wavered. There were no roads, and you couldn't walk far from campgrounds that were perched on elevated hills without stepping into creeks or shrubland. It was a "malarial pest hole" where mosquitoes and insects thrived and diseases were rife. For Ron Gee Kee, a coder freshly deployed to Milne Bay on the southern point of the island's east, it was the "worst place in the world". The Pacific theatre of the Second World War opened in 1941 between Japan and the allies, with campaigns fought in east and southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. After Japanese bombs had devastated parts of Darwin and where he lived in north Queensland, an 18-year-old Mr Gee Kee enlisted in 1943. "Would you run away and hide in the bush, or would you join up?" he said of his decision. Every night as dusk fell on the humid grounds of Milne Bay, air sirens would sound, piercing the sky with drawn-out wails, alerting to enemy planes approaching. "You could hear the planes coming, but you couldn't see them because the sun was always behind them," Mr Gee Kee said. He and his team would shelter in their huts as half a dozen Japanese fighters shot past their base on the side of a hill, locked onto the coconut trees below. But they didn't concern the non-combat servicemen too much after Allied forces led by Australian soldiers had decisively repelled the Japanese invaders in the battle of Milne Bay in 1942. By early 1943, about 7752 Australian and American soldiers had died in battle in New Guinea. That was dwarfed by the casualties from tropical diseases, numbering 37,360, including 27,892 cases of malaria. "A couple of my mates died from malaria, and if they hadn't, they had dysentery and big sores on their bodies," Mr Gee Kee said. "Most of the time we didn't wear shirts, we just wore shorts because it was so hot and wet up there." Air force radar operator John Patrick McAuley had already narrowly dodged death after a bout of Dengue fever while based in Townsville. By the time he was deployed to Merauke in Dutch-controlled New Guinea, now West Papua, his skin was a yellowish hue due to the tablets fed to servicemen to inoculate them from tropical diseases. Merauke had been left in ruins from a Japanese bombing when he arrived in 1943. "It's not a pleasant place for people to live. It's not suitable," Mr McAuley said. "It was hot all the time. An older person would find it impossible, I'm sure, but we had youth on our side." Growing up in Broken Hill, a scrawny Mr McAuley never got to meet his father, who died when he was 15 months, so he followed in the footsteps of a "cluey" friend into radar defence. "I wanted to do my share of saving Australia from the Japanese, who were already advancing down. No way were they going to come and take over," he said. On the ground, work was never-ending. Mr Gee Kee had the top-secret responsibility of sending and translating messages sent by cryptic codes to arm the Allied forces with intelligence on ships in the Pacific. Mr McAuley would sit in front of radar sets and twiddle with control knobs before relaying information on the skies back to headquarters in Bankstown in Sydney. Despite constant contact with headquarters, letters to and from family and friends arrived with splotches of black ink censoring information, and the lack of access to newspapers meant they were effectively shut off from the world. "We were young. We did what we were told ... we were happy with that," Mr McAuley said. After 12 months at Milne Bay and a short stint in Madang on the north coast, Mr Gee Kee returned to the Brisbane office of American General Douglas MacArthur, who led the Allies' response in the Pacific theatre. He contracted malaria but recovered in a Brisbane hospital, unlike many of his mates in the field hospitals of New Guinea. His final deployment took him to an old bank building in Darwin in 1945, which had remained a scene of destruction from Japanese bombings years earlier. It was there on August 15, 1945, that the message came through. On August 6, 1945, American bomber Enola Gay dropped the 'Little Boy' atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By the end of the day, 45,000 people were dead. Three days later, another atomic bomb fell about 400km away in the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing 22,000 almost immediately. US President Harry S. Truman justified the twin bombings as a means to an end to ongoing suffering. The gamble, which stole hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, paid off when Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his nation's surrender days later. The news came quickly, spilling through the Darwin outpost with cheers and screams. The jubilation soon morphed into a rush of people wanting to return to their old lives. "We were trying to get discharged as quickly as possible and go find some work. We didn't want to stay in the service any longer," Mr Gee Kee said. Discharged in 1945, Mr McAuley went on to marry the love of his life, Margaret, earn a degree in economics and continue serving the nation across high-profile roles in the finance industry. Eighty years on, age has finally wearied Australia's protectors. Memories are slowly fading, as is the number of veterans left to tell the story. For 101-year-old Mr McAuley, the events at the end of the war are fleeting. "That's a pivotal date in your calendar, but one day was the same as another, and we didn't know anything about the atomic bomb," he said. Fewer than 1300 WWII veterans are alive today from the almost one million Australians who served during the war. The youngest surviving veteran is 95, while the oldest is 108. There's a greater sense of relevance and urgency as the nation prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory in the Pacific. "The legacies and consequences of the Second World War remain with us still," the Australian War Memorial head of military history Karl James said. "The greatest tribute we can pay to those Australians who fought the Second World War is to not forget their service and sacrifice." RSL president Greg Melick said the anniversary was important as the number of WWII veterans diminished. "If not for their sacrifices and those of our allied service men and women, our lives today would be significantly different," Mr Melick said. Nowadays, the 101-year-old Mr Gee Kee lives a quiet life in Sydney with his wife Betty, whom he married right after the war. While 80 years on, Mr McAuley remains an idealist, advocating for a lasting peace in the world. "I'm a survivor, and I have that responsibility to my friends, my mates and to past generations," he said. RSL NSW will hold a Victory in the Pacific commemoration service at the Cenotaph at Martin Place in the Sydney CBD on Friday. Other ceremonies will be held at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Canberra's Australian War Memorial, and the State War Memorial in Perth. Lifeline 13 11 14 Open Arms 1800 011 046 Deep in the dense, overgrown jungles of New Guinea, the eyes and ears of World War II Allied soldiers faced a greater danger than the Japanese warplanes that flew overhead. It rained most days and poured almost every night, turning the perpetually soaked ground into muddy swamps as oppressive temperatures hung heavy in the air of the Australian-administered territory. Olive-green canvas propped up by wooden poles hardly shielded those on the backline of the war from the unbearable conditions. Yet the watchers of the seas and skies never wavered. There were no roads, and you couldn't walk far from campgrounds that were perched on elevated hills without stepping into creeks or shrubland. It was a "malarial pest hole" where mosquitoes and insects thrived and diseases were rife. For Ron Gee Kee, a coder freshly deployed to Milne Bay on the southern point of the island's east, it was the "worst place in the world". The Pacific theatre of the Second World War opened in 1941 between Japan and the allies, with campaigns fought in east and southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. After Japanese bombs had devastated parts of Darwin and where he lived in north Queensland, an 18-year-old Mr Gee Kee enlisted in 1943. "Would you run away and hide in the bush, or would you join up?" he said of his decision. Every night as dusk fell on the humid grounds of Milne Bay, air sirens would sound, piercing the sky with drawn-out wails, alerting to enemy planes approaching. "You could hear the planes coming, but you couldn't see them because the sun was always behind them," Mr Gee Kee said. He and his team would shelter in their huts as half a dozen Japanese fighters shot past their base on the side of a hill, locked onto the coconut trees below. But they didn't concern the non-combat servicemen too much after Allied forces led by Australian soldiers had decisively repelled the Japanese invaders in the battle of Milne Bay in 1942. By early 1943, about 7752 Australian and American soldiers had died in battle in New Guinea. That was dwarfed by the casualties from tropical diseases, numbering 37,360, including 27,892 cases of malaria. "A couple of my mates died from malaria, and if they hadn't, they had dysentery and big sores on their bodies," Mr Gee Kee said. "Most of the time we didn't wear shirts, we just wore shorts because it was so hot and wet up there." Air force radar operator John Patrick McAuley had already narrowly dodged death after a bout of Dengue fever while based in Townsville. By the time he was deployed to Merauke in Dutch-controlled New Guinea, now West Papua, his skin was a yellowish hue due to the tablets fed to servicemen to inoculate them from tropical diseases. Merauke had been left in ruins from a Japanese bombing when he arrived in 1943. "It's not a pleasant place for people to live. It's not suitable," Mr McAuley said. "It was hot all the time. An older person would find it impossible, I'm sure, but we had youth on our side." Growing up in Broken Hill, a scrawny Mr McAuley never got to meet his father, who died when he was 15 months, so he followed in the footsteps of a "cluey" friend into radar defence. "I wanted to do my share of saving Australia from the Japanese, who were already advancing down. No way were they going to come and take over," he said. On the ground, work was never-ending. Mr Gee Kee had the top-secret responsibility of sending and translating messages sent by cryptic codes to arm the Allied forces with intelligence on ships in the Pacific. Mr McAuley would sit in front of radar sets and twiddle with control knobs before relaying information on the skies back to headquarters in Bankstown in Sydney. Despite constant contact with headquarters, letters to and from family and friends arrived with splotches of black ink censoring information, and the lack of access to newspapers meant they were effectively shut off from the world. "We were young. We did what we were told ... we were happy with that," Mr McAuley said. After 12 months at Milne Bay and a short stint in Madang on the north coast, Mr Gee Kee returned to the Brisbane office of American General Douglas MacArthur, who led the Allies' response in the Pacific theatre. He contracted malaria but recovered in a Brisbane hospital, unlike many of his mates in the field hospitals of New Guinea. His final deployment took him to an old bank building in Darwin in 1945, which had remained a scene of destruction from Japanese bombings years earlier. It was there on August 15, 1945, that the message came through. On August 6, 1945, American bomber Enola Gay dropped the 'Little Boy' atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By the end of the day, 45,000 people were dead. Three days later, another atomic bomb fell about 400km away in the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing 22,000 almost immediately. US President Harry S. Truman justified the twin bombings as a means to an end to ongoing suffering. The gamble, which stole hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, paid off when Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his nation's surrender days later. The news came quickly, spilling through the Darwin outpost with cheers and screams. The jubilation soon morphed into a rush of people wanting to return to their old lives. "We were trying to get discharged as quickly as possible and go find some work. We didn't want to stay in the service any longer," Mr Gee Kee said. Discharged in 1945, Mr McAuley went on to marry the love of his life, Margaret, earn a degree in economics and continue serving the nation across high-profile roles in the finance industry. Eighty years on, age has finally wearied Australia's protectors. Memories are slowly fading, as is the number of veterans left to tell the story. For 101-year-old Mr McAuley, the events at the end of the war are fleeting. "That's a pivotal date in your calendar, but one day was the same as another, and we didn't know anything about the atomic bomb," he said. Fewer than 1300 WWII veterans are alive today from the almost one million Australians who served during the war. The youngest surviving veteran is 95, while the oldest is 108. There's a greater sense of relevance and urgency as the nation prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory in the Pacific. "The legacies and consequences of the Second World War remain with us still," the Australian War Memorial head of military history Karl James said. "The greatest tribute we can pay to those Australians who fought the Second World War is to not forget their service and sacrifice." RSL president Greg Melick said the anniversary was important as the number of WWII veterans diminished. "If not for their sacrifices and those of our allied service men and women, our lives today would be significantly different," Mr Melick said. Nowadays, the 101-year-old Mr Gee Kee lives a quiet life in Sydney with his wife Betty, whom he married right after the war. While 80 years on, Mr McAuley remains an idealist, advocating for a lasting peace in the world. "I'm a survivor, and I have that responsibility to my friends, my mates and to past generations," he said. RSL NSW will hold a Victory in the Pacific commemoration service at the Cenotaph at Martin Place in the Sydney CBD on Friday. Other ceremonies will be held at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Canberra's Australian War Memorial, and the State War Memorial in Perth. Lifeline 13 11 14 Open Arms 1800 011 046 Deep in the dense, overgrown jungles of New Guinea, the eyes and ears of World War II Allied soldiers faced a greater danger than the Japanese warplanes that flew overhead. It rained most days and poured almost every night, turning the perpetually soaked ground into muddy swamps as oppressive temperatures hung heavy in the air of the Australian-administered territory. Olive-green canvas propped up by wooden poles hardly shielded those on the backline of the war from the unbearable conditions. Yet the watchers of the seas and skies never wavered. There were no roads, and you couldn't walk far from campgrounds that were perched on elevated hills without stepping into creeks or shrubland. It was a "malarial pest hole" where mosquitoes and insects thrived and diseases were rife. For Ron Gee Kee, a coder freshly deployed to Milne Bay on the southern point of the island's east, it was the "worst place in the world". The Pacific theatre of the Second World War opened in 1941 between Japan and the allies, with campaigns fought in east and southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. After Japanese bombs had devastated parts of Darwin and where he lived in north Queensland, an 18-year-old Mr Gee Kee enlisted in 1943. "Would you run away and hide in the bush, or would you join up?" he said of his decision. Every night as dusk fell on the humid grounds of Milne Bay, air sirens would sound, piercing the sky with drawn-out wails, alerting to enemy planes approaching. "You could hear the planes coming, but you couldn't see them because the sun was always behind them," Mr Gee Kee said. He and his team would shelter in their huts as half a dozen Japanese fighters shot past their base on the side of a hill, locked onto the coconut trees below. But they didn't concern the non-combat servicemen too much after Allied forces led by Australian soldiers had decisively repelled the Japanese invaders in the battle of Milne Bay in 1942. By early 1943, about 7752 Australian and American soldiers had died in battle in New Guinea. That was dwarfed by the casualties from tropical diseases, numbering 37,360, including 27,892 cases of malaria. "A couple of my mates died from malaria, and if they hadn't, they had dysentery and big sores on their bodies," Mr Gee Kee said. "Most of the time we didn't wear shirts, we just wore shorts because it was so hot and wet up there." Air force radar operator John Patrick McAuley had already narrowly dodged death after a bout of Dengue fever while based in Townsville. By the time he was deployed to Merauke in Dutch-controlled New Guinea, now West Papua, his skin was a yellowish hue due to the tablets fed to servicemen to inoculate them from tropical diseases. Merauke had been left in ruins from a Japanese bombing when he arrived in 1943. "It's not a pleasant place for people to live. It's not suitable," Mr McAuley said. "It was hot all the time. An older person would find it impossible, I'm sure, but we had youth on our side." Growing up in Broken Hill, a scrawny Mr McAuley never got to meet his father, who died when he was 15 months, so he followed in the footsteps of a "cluey" friend into radar defence. "I wanted to do my share of saving Australia from the Japanese, who were already advancing down. No way were they going to come and take over," he said. On the ground, work was never-ending. Mr Gee Kee had the top-secret responsibility of sending and translating messages sent by cryptic codes to arm the Allied forces with intelligence on ships in the Pacific. Mr McAuley would sit in front of radar sets and twiddle with control knobs before relaying information on the skies back to headquarters in Bankstown in Sydney. Despite constant contact with headquarters, letters to and from family and friends arrived with splotches of black ink censoring information, and the lack of access to newspapers meant they were effectively shut off from the world. "We were young. We did what we were told ... we were happy with that," Mr McAuley said. After 12 months at Milne Bay and a short stint in Madang on the north coast, Mr Gee Kee returned to the Brisbane office of American General Douglas MacArthur, who led the Allies' response in the Pacific theatre. He contracted malaria but recovered in a Brisbane hospital, unlike many of his mates in the field hospitals of New Guinea. His final deployment took him to an old bank building in Darwin in 1945, which had remained a scene of destruction from Japanese bombings years earlier. It was there on August 15, 1945, that the message came through. On August 6, 1945, American bomber Enola Gay dropped the 'Little Boy' atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By the end of the day, 45,000 people were dead. Three days later, another atomic bomb fell about 400km away in the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing 22,000 almost immediately. US President Harry S. Truman justified the twin bombings as a means to an end to ongoing suffering. The gamble, which stole hundreds of thousands of civilian lives, paid off when Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his nation's surrender days later. The news came quickly, spilling through the Darwin outpost with cheers and screams. The jubilation soon morphed into a rush of people wanting to return to their old lives. "We were trying to get discharged as quickly as possible and go find some work. We didn't want to stay in the service any longer," Mr Gee Kee said. Discharged in 1945, Mr McAuley went on to marry the love of his life, Margaret, earn a degree in economics and continue serving the nation across high-profile roles in the finance industry. Eighty years on, age has finally wearied Australia's protectors. Memories are slowly fading, as is the number of veterans left to tell the story. For 101-year-old Mr McAuley, the events at the end of the war are fleeting. "That's a pivotal date in your calendar, but one day was the same as another, and we didn't know anything about the atomic bomb," he said. Fewer than 1300 WWII veterans are alive today from the almost one million Australians who served during the war. The youngest surviving veteran is 95, while the oldest is 108. There's a greater sense of relevance and urgency as the nation prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of victory in the Pacific. "The legacies and consequences of the Second World War remain with us still," the Australian War Memorial head of military history Karl James said. "The greatest tribute we can pay to those Australians who fought the Second World War is to not forget their service and sacrifice." RSL president Greg Melick said the anniversary was important as the number of WWII veterans diminished. "If not for their sacrifices and those of our allied service men and women, our lives today would be significantly different," Mr Melick said. Nowadays, the 101-year-old Mr Gee Kee lives a quiet life in Sydney with his wife Betty, whom he married right after the war. While 80 years on, Mr McAuley remains an idealist, advocating for a lasting peace in the world. "I'm a survivor, and I have that responsibility to my friends, my mates and to past generations," he said. RSL NSW will hold a Victory in the Pacific commemoration service at the Cenotaph at Martin Place in the Sydney CBD on Friday. Other ceremonies will be held at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Canberra's Australian War Memorial, and the State War Memorial in Perth. Lifeline 13 11 14 Open Arms 1800 011 046
Perth Now
33 minutes ago
- Perth Now
Channel 7 star's heartbreaking fertility update: ‘Here we go again'
Channel 7 presenter Erin Holland has 'broken up the highlights reel with some real talk' on her ongoing fertility battle. The 36-year-old's hopes of starting a family with her Australian cricketer husband Ben Cutting, 38, have been set back in recent years. The couple learned soon after their February 2021 wedding that IVF was their 'only real option to have a baby' but the process has proved challenging on several fronts. In a devastating update on Instagram this week, Holland detailed how they are almost back at square one nearly four years later. 'Here we go again...' she wrote with a photo from hospital. 'Breaking up the highlights reel with some real talk. 'Many losses, many failed transfers down, today was all about exploratory surgery, internal 'renovations' and starting testing from scratch again to try and find some answers to the soul-destroying unknown. 'What's the missing piece of the puzzle? 'Injections, steroids, so many drugs... it's far more emotionally and physically draining than we ever bargained for.' Erin Holland is searching for answers to her IVF struggles. Credit: Instagram Holland's post included a picture of several vials piled up in a bathroom and footage of the couple's husky Skylar interrupting her nap on the couch. 'My emotional support animal needs some work though,' she laughed. More seriously, Holland also sent a message to others in the same situation. 'Infertility feels like your face is pressed up against the glass of a club you so badly want to be a part of, but no one is letting you in,' she wrote. 'To all going through it, life can be tough… but my darling, so are you. Hang in there x.' Holland received support from high-profile friends and fans, from Channel 7 colleagues Lisa Sthalekar and Alex Hartley to Olympic gold medallist Shayna Jack and the likes of Tayla Broad, Chrishell Stause and Nadia Bartel. Holland first opened up on the IVF process in 2022 when the first round resulted in 'nothing viable'. 'As someone who went in just wanting to freeze embryos until the time was 'right', I've grappled with the confusing feelings of the loss of any 'normality' of this process, feeling like the universe was telling me I'm not meant to be a mother,' she said at the time. Ben Cutting and Erin Holland married in 2021. Credit: Instagram Holland shared that she felt a mix of emotions, including the 'guilt of letting Ben down, the 'am I even ready' thoughts, and feeling physically broken'. 'The sense of failure is overwhelming,' she said. 'The toll on the mind and body, the injections, the cost... but I'm so grateful for modern medicine - it will take a village to create this baby, let alone raise it. 'The fact that IVF is even a possibility blows my mind. I know it's only the very beginning of this journey, and I thought about only sharing it when it was over, if ever.' Holland has been a regular on Channel 7's cricket coverage across men's and women's Big Bash and international matches. She and Cutting both travel throughout the year presenting at and playing in cricket tournaments around the globe. Cutting suffered what Holland described as an 'unexpected bump in the road' last year when he went under the knife after months of back and nerve issues. Ben Cutting underwent back surgery in 2024. Credit: Instagram 'The last six months I've dealt with numb legs, weak legs, drop foot, severe nerve pain, days where I couldn't walk, a spinal surgery, and a ruptured plantar fascia,' he said. 'I still rehabbed my arse off and got back on the park and played some good cricket. 'This week capped it off, I went back under the knife, in an effort to play on. I am out, but I will be back.' Cutting most recently played in the World Championship of Legends tournament in the UK.
