Can anyone solve this WWI mystery?

Excerpt from Item No.11613276
NAA Australian Military records
Click on image to enlarge

On 22 February 1917 a group of soldiers, allegedly under arrest for rioting, were led back into A.I.F. No. 4 Depot, Wareham, possibly in Dorset, England, when the military escort party was attacked by 1,500 troops within the depot grounds.

Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration, Australian troops pelting a military escort with bricks and bottles in the wake of a recent riot, presumably in an effort to free the rioters, should not have gone unnoticed.

Does anyone know the background of this "melee"?

Australian Emergency Call Centres in 2011

This is the ideal.......

The Triple Zero (000) Emergency Call Service is an operator-assisted service that connects you to the relevant emergency service organisation (police, fire or ambulance). Telstra is currently responsible for answering calls to the emergency service numbers Triple Zero (000) and 112, and transferring them, with relevant associated information, to the requested emergency service organisation.
You should only call Triple Zero (000) when a situation is threatening to life or property, or time-critical. If a situation is not urgent but does need the attention of an emergency service organisation, you should obtain the number of your local police, fire or ambulance service from the phone book or by calling directory assistance. ...........
If, at any time and for whatever reason, it is not technically possible for Telstra to transfer a Caller No Response Call to the IVR, it must instead forward it directly to the Police as if it were a genuine request for emergency police assistance. [Australian Communications and Media Authority, 4 June 2002 & 5 April 2011]

This is the reality for many.......

The Queensland flood inquiry has heard a triple-0 operator chastised a mother and her son, shortly before they were swept to their deaths.Two emergency calls made by Donna and Jordan Rice were played to the inquiry as their family wept quietly in the courtroom. [ABC Lateline, 19 April 2011]

Police Association vice-president Scott Weber said police were providing a "bare minimum" coverage of response to triple-0 calls. [The Telegraph 17 March 2010]

This is an emergency, an emergency," he could be heard shouting down the phone line. "I'm lost, I haven't had water for a long period of time. I'm about to faint."
In all, six calls David made to emergency services that day went dead due to what could have been his increasingly fragile health as well as poor reception.
In his final harrowing call, played on the first day of an inquest into his death, David begs the operator, "Can you send a helicopter?" before he is interrupted by her and placed on hold. [The Sydney Morning Herald 15 April 2009]

At 12.56am, early Saturday morning, I rang triple 000 to call an ambulance for a recently discharged surgical patient who was rapidly going into shock with severe internal bleeding.
The phone rang … and continued to ring. It took nearly three minutes get to speak to an ambulance call centre operator.....Then the nightmare began. [Crikey 24 May 2009]

In the dark of February 5, the 27-year-old ran to the telephone connection - it had been deliberately turned off. She reconnected it, dialled the emergency number and it diverted to Cairns police, a thousand kilometres away. She revealed how she had just been raped and that the alleged perpetrator was still outside her building with several of his drunken mates. He'd also stolen a bottle of vodka and she feared he would be back. The police officer said he would immediately ring the community police officer on the island, but reported back to the victim that the local representative of the law had responded it was raining and he was not prepared to walk around to the crime scene in the rain, even though he was told the alleged perpetrator was still on the premises. [The Australian 10 March 2008]

In January 2001, Peter Taber and Ian Styman bound and gagged Joy Alchin, when they broke into her home near Nowra.
They took her money and left.
Styman called Triple-O and asked for police to be sent to the house, but the call was not responded to and Mrs Alchin died nine days later. [ABC News 26 April 2007]

One of two sisters stabbed to death in their Melbourne home early last Saturday called tripl-0 for help as she was dying. But Telstra says the emergency call lasted five seconds before it was terminated, amid reports the woman's throat had been cut, making it impossible for her to speak. Telstra's triple-O service received a call from a mobile phone belonging to one of the sisters about 1:44am on Saturday, more then 19 hours before the bodies were of Colleen Irwin, 23, and Laura Irwin, 21, were found in their Altona North home. Telstra spokesman Andrew Maiden said an operator answered the call but there was no voice or background noise and the call was terminated, at the caller's end, after five seconds. [Geelong Advertiser 4 February 2006]

The Ombudsman is inquiring into complaints that police failed to respond to desperate triple-O calls from the children of a man who was being assaulted.[ABC Stateline 11 March 2005]

Says it all really

Minchin's Storm

Oi, Julia! These bees are bad news. So pull yer finga out!

In December 2010 the U.S. Government banned the import of queen bees and bee packages from Australia because it said that there was a chance of bringing bee diseases (particularly from the Asian Bee) into America.
With a display of blinding stupidity in January 2011 the Gillard Government agreed with the Asian Honeybee National Management Group that it was too hard a task to eradicate this pest bee and it would no longer try - even though these flying cane toads were still confined to North Queensland and older established bee hives were no longer being found only newer ones.
The U.S. ban is still in place and the bees have had a summer season to move into native bee territory virtually unchallenged, but now the Government is supposedly having a bit of a rethink on the subject of pest bee eradication after a Senate committee failed to support the AHNMG’s craven retreat.
Bees and honey are reliable multi-million dollar export earners for Oz or were until the former Howard Government began to mismanage biosecurity.
So it’s not time for PR spin. It’s time for eradication action.
So Jools – remember that you're Australia's number one ranga and put the toe of your prime ministerial boot up the backsides of those AHNMG wimps and make them bluddy move quickly.

Save the nation’s morning honey fix!

Australian Christian Lobby sharing a little bit of God's love

Jim Wallace (tweeting since 3rd February 2010) sharing the love....

Then blamimg Twitter for his own bad judgement....

The Bob Barker has a slight mishap

Digital image of the Bob Barker coming across the bar

The Clarence Valley Review 13 April 2011

After returning intact from its anti-whaling duties in the Antarctic the Sea Shepherd Organisation’s ship Bob Barker ran into a little trouble on 20 April:

The 1200-tonne anti-whaling ship the Bob Barker took a tilt for the worse on Wednesday when an attempt to slip the boat ashore at the Harwood Slipway went awry.

Things went wrong for the vessel when one of the main support arms of the slipway cradle broke under the pressure of the vessel. The broken arm jammed the wheels of the cradle, leaving the Bob Barter stranded half-way up the slip, on a 20 degree list.

At this stage there is no indication that any damage has been done to the Bob Barker, and work is being done this morning to remove the broken arm from the cradle to free-up the trolley assembly. It is expected the boat will be refloated in the Clarence River later today.

(The Daily Examiner, 21 April 2011)

Miles Franklin Award 2011 shortlist

It's only two months away from the Miles Franklin Award announcement and the 2011shortlist promises a good read over the last remaining days of the Easter holiday break for those fortunate to have time off work and a copy of one of these books in their hands, if the judges' remarks are any indication.
Congratulations to the authors.

When Colts Ran is an epic tale, and one never quite knows what to expect of it. Only the thrill of the venture is predictable. So it is apt that McDonald should open with a quote from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘Ready. And I. And I. And I. Were shall we go? Where indeed’.
The novel follows Kingsley Colts, as he cycles through a life of initial rebellion, adventure, misadventure, aspiration and disillusion.

That Deadman Dance, a powerful and innovative fiction that shifts our sense of what an historical novel can achieve. Its language is shaped by the encounter of Noongar and Australian English, producing new writing and speech.
Its central character occupies both indigenous and settler worlds, and yet is contained by neither. Its narration of the early contact of British colonisers, American whalers and the indigenous Noongar people on the south coast of Western Australia in the early nineteenth century is both historical and magical.

As the Spanish Flu epidemic is sweeping Australia, Sergeant Quinn Walker returns home from the Great War to face the ghosts of his past. Ten years before he had fled his far-flung Australian country town, accused of an unspeakable crime. Unable to show himself, he hides in the bush and secretly visits his dying mother.