Sarbi and her handler, Sergeant D, in January 2011.

The Australian Army’s most famous hound, Sarbi, retired from active service on Monday after six years of sniffing out dangerous bombs and weapons and saving countless lives.

Sarbi, who turned nine on September 11, retired as an explosives detection dog to live with her handler, Sergeant D, and his fiancé at their Sydney home.

She joins the experienced handler’s other dog, Vegas, who retired from her job as an EDD in 2005, and their cat.

“She’s settled in well. Vegas didn’t even bat an eyelid. She thinks it’s great that this new dog goes and gets the ball and drops it within easy reach for her to pick up,” Sgt D tells me via email.

The household cat, though, is another matter!

Sergeant D returned to Australia in early December after his fourth deployment to Afghanistan as an EDD handler since 2007 and was eager to lead Sarbi into her new life as a household pet.

The ball-mad black Newfoundland-Labrador retriever cross was twice deployed to Afghanistan with Sgt D – as he is known for operational security reasons – to sniff out improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and a range of other deadly weapons and bomb-making equipment.

She is the star of my fourth book, Saving Private Sarbi, The True Story of Australia’s Canine War Hero, which was published in October by Allen and Unwin and launched (see page 11 in Army, The Soldier’s Newspaper) by the former Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie who told me earlier this year he wouldn’t be sending Sarbi back to a war zone. 

The book is now in its third printing.

Sarbi went missing in action after the joint Australian, Afghan and U.S. patrol on which she was working was ambushed by the Taliban on September 2, 2008. It was the same fire-fight in which SAS Trooper Mark Donaldson was later awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross for courage under fire for rescuing a seriously wounded Afghan interpreter.

Sarbi was taken by the Taliban as a prize of war and kept for nearly 14 months before she was ‘dognapped’ in a deal brokered by a local malek (trusted Afghan elder) and a US Special Forces soldier in Uruzgan Province and returned to the Australian Army based at Tarin Kot.

After several months in quarantine in Dubai, she finally made her way back to Australia last December and has spent all of 2011 training new EDD handlers at the School of Military Engineering at Holsworthy on the outskirts of Sydney.

She was also awarded the RSPCA’s prestigious Purple Cross for services to humans becoming only the second military animal to receive the top honour after Simpon’s donkey Murphy, who helped ferry wounded men from battle in Gallipoli. Sarbi has also received campaign medals for her two deployments to Afghanistan.

She deserves her retirement.

In dogs we trust.

Explosive Detection Dog Sarbi, in her custom-made red jacket to denote the EDD Section, at the launch of the new book, Saving Private Sarbi (picture Laura Robins)

The former top dog of the Australian Army launched my new book, Saving Private Sarbi, The True Story of Australia’s Canine War Hero, this week with a moving speech in which he highlighted the unbreakable bond between the explosive detection dogs and their handlers.

In a distinguished event at Victoria Barracks in Sydney’s Paddington, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, AC, DSC, CSM (ret) introduced the four-legged hero, Sarbi, saying the highly-trained EDD and her canine counterparts were unrivalled in their ability to protect soldiers from the lethal roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices, the enemy’s weapon of choice in Afghanistan.

No technology had yet been developed that could do what the EDDs do on a daily basis – putting their four paws on the line every time they went to work sniffing out IEDs, LtGen Gillespie said.

Sarbi, who turned nine years old on September 11, was a divine doggie diva as she sat politely on the podium while the General extolled her virtues in front of 70 invited guests from the media, military and mutt worlds.

She even signed an exclusive series of the book by dipping her front right paw in non-toxic ink (vegetable dye). Six limited edition, numbered copies of Saving Private Sarbi pawed by Sarbi and signed by me will be auctioned for Legacy and the Australian Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in the coming year.

Sarbi’s handler, Sergeant D, was unable to attend the launch as he is on his fourth deployment to Afghanistan. His identity is protected – for operational security reasons. He joined the army in 1995 and became a dog handler in 2000.

Among the guests at the launch were several officers and members of the Australian Army family including the wife of  Major General Mick Slater, the officer who recently returned from leading the Queensland floods recovery.

Royal Australian Navy specialist clearance diver, Paul de Gelder, attended, as did one of the original ‘tunnel rats’ from the Vietnam War, Sandy MacGregor.

Well known media identities included Miranda Devine and Piers Akerman from News Limited, Janine Perrett from SkyBusiness, radio and television commentator Melissa Hoyer , gun reporter Kate McClymont from The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as one of the stars of Good News World, Mikey Robins. Fellow authors Caroline Overington (also of The Australian), Sue Williams, Lynne Cossar and Jimmy Thomson were also in attendance.

EDD Sarbi signs a limited edition paw-print for her book, Saving Private Sarbi (picture Sandra Lee)

Some background.

Sarbi and Sgt D have been a team since Sarbi joined the Army in 2005.

Sergeant D was Sarbi’s original trainer and has been her only operational handler.

Sarbi and Sgt D were part of the extensive security team for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and in 2007 were on their first deployment to Afghanistan, where they distinguished themselves with some serious ‘finds’ of enemy weapons and bombs and bomb-making material.

In 2008, Sarbi and Sergeant D were deployed to Uruzgan a second time.

On September 2, they were on patrol in the remote region of Khas Uruzgan.

Sgt D was with 11 troopers from the elite Australian Special Air Service Regiment, about a dozen battle-hardened men from the United States Special Forces, and a team of soldiers from the Afghan National Army.

The Special Forces patrol had one mission: to remove the Taliban from the region.

In the previous 24 hours, they had done a pretty good job of it. En route to base after a successful operation, they were ambushed by up to 100 Taliban fighters hidden in well-fortified positions.

So began a four-hour, do-or-die battle in which nine of the 12 Aussies were wounded, including Sergeant D. Three had life threatening injuries.

Sergeant D’s American counterpart, a dog handler by the name of Sergeant Gregory Rodriguez, was killed in the ambush. Several Afghan soldiers were also wounded. An Afghan interpreter was blown off the back of a US Humvee with Sergeant D and sustained near fatal wounds.

As Lt General Gillespie pointed out at the launch on Wednesday, SAS Trooper Mark Donaldson, distinguished himself during the battle by running into the line of fire several times to help draw fire away from his mates, and to rescue the wounded Afghan interpreter. For these heroic actions, he was later awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross.

Another soldier was awarded the Medal For Gallantry for his actions.

Like her handler, Sarbi was also wounded in the ambush when a razor sharp piece of shrapnel from a rocket propelled grenade sheered through the carabiner’s clip that fastened her to Sgt D. At the end the firefight, she went missing in action, lost in the Afghanistan countryside for the next 13 months.

LtGen Gillespie launches Saving Private Sarbi, with the hound in red beside him

A lot of people wonder about the bond between handler and hound in the Army, but as Lt General Gillespie said at the launch, that connection can never be underestimated.

Many in the audience – including me – fought back tears as the General told of meeting Sergeant D in a field hospital at Tarin Kot the day after the ambush. He was at one end of a ward with seven other wounded Diggers, all lying across from each other, toe to toe.

Lt General Gillespie moved through the ward checking on each of the wounded soldiers and finally came to Sergeant D. The General said he was shocked by the soldier’s face.

“It was almost completely pockmarked,” he said.

Sgt D had also been sliced with shrapnel and razor sharp metal fragmentation from rocket propelled grenades. The only parts of his face unmarked were around his eyes where protective glasses had prevented certain blindness. His legs, torso and arms were also wounded.

To get an idea of how bad he looked, it’s worth noting that during interviews for my book, Sgt D told me that as the convoy of five Humvees roared back to their remote Fire Base Anaconda, he tried to stop a fellow Australian with more serious wounds falling unconscious. The Digger kept closing his eyes, and Sgt D feared if he lost consciousness, he might die.

In the hospital the next day, the soldier told Sgt D he was never in danger of slipping into unconsciousness when he closed his eyes.

“He just didn’t want to look at me because my face was so cut up and looked pretty horrible. I didn’t know how bad it was,” Sgt D told me.

That was the face looking up at LtGen Gillespie. The General asked Sgt D what he had done and who he was.

“I’m the dog handler, Sir.”

As Sgt D explained that Sarbi had gone MIA towards the end of the battle, the veteran soldier choked up and couldn’t finish his sentence. The other seven wounded men all turned their heads away, out of respect and because they were, as the General said, equally distraught by the loss of their four-legged warrior.

It was a telling – and extraordinarily moving – part of the General’s speech

The bond between the explosive detection dogs and their handlers is unbreakable, and the dogs also are a shot of morale for the men and women they work with and around in Afghanistan. It’s no wonder the men in the hospital ward with Sergeant D had to turn away as he did his best to explain what happened.

Animals – especially dogs, and more particularly working dogs on whom we humans rely for so many things – have the incredible ability to lift our spirits; they have the power to transform us humans into something better than we are; to teach us compassion and kindness, and the rewards of unbidden loyalty.

In a way, the ability of the explosive detection dogs to foster a sense of camaraderie and kinship with their two-legged compatriots is unrivalled. It’s why the Special Forces soldiers never gave up on Sarbi and kept an eye out for her every time they went out on patrol. It’s why they finally got her back – in one piece, if a little fatter!

Sarbi was a dog, but she was one of them – an Australian Digger. They never get left behind.

Sarbi finally returned to Australia in December last year and is now back at work at the School of Military Engineering in Holsworthy, training new dog handlers.

She will retire when Sgt D returns from his current deployment to Afghanistan and live out the rest of her days as a pampered pooch, with another retired explosives detection dog, Vegas.

You can buy the book online at any number of sites, or by starting at Allen and Unwin’s homepage here. Saving Private Sarbi is also available in eBook format.

Sapper Darren Smith and EDD Herbie, KIA June 7 2010, Mirabad Valley, Afghanistan (picture supplied by Department of Defence)

Australia’s brave four-legged soldiers have been honoured with the inaugural Military Working Dog Day.

The explosive detection dogs and their security and contraband-sniffing canine companions were feted at a ceremony at the RAAF base in Amberley, Queensland, today.

The Australian Defence Force Trackers and War Dogs Association chose the day to commemorate the first anniversary of the deaths of Sapper Darren Smith, an Explosive Detection Dog dog handler who was killed in action in Afghanistan with his four-legged warrior, Herbie.

Also killed in the Taliban attack was Sapper Jacob Moerland, a 21-year-old explosive ordnance engineer who had been in the army three years and was engaged to be married.

Sapper Smith – Smitty to his mates – was killed when the Taliban detonated by remote control an improvised explosive device that Herbie had detected. The patrol was en route to Camp Holland, where the Australian forces are based in Tarin Kowt.

Sapper Jacob Moerland, killed by an IED in the Mirabad Valley, Oruzgan, June 7, 2010 (picture supplied by Dept of Defence)

The ADFTWDA hopes the Military Working Dog Day, which has been endorsed by the chief of the ADF, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, will become an annual event. It was hosted today by Wing Commander Iain Carty.

The tragic deaths of Sappers Smith, who, at 26, was a happily married father of one, and Moerland marked the first double fatality in a single incident for Australian troops since the Vietnam War.

Five four-legged warriors have been killed in Afghanistan since they were first deployed in 2005. They are EDDs Merlin, Razz, Andy, Nova and Herbie.

Twenty six Australian Diggers have been killed in Afghanistan since the global war on terror began in 2001, the first being SAS Sergeant Andrew Russell, who died when his vehicle struck a land mine in Helmand Province in 2002.

An Australian rifleman serving with the British forces has also been killed.

Lest we forget.

Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith after receiving the Victoria Cross for courage under fire in Afghanistan in 2010 (pic by Cpl Chris Moore, via AAP)

Of all the Australia Day awards that have been handed out today the one that stands out most to me is the Commendation for Gallantry to an anonymous Digger identified only as “Private J, NSW”.

The citation reads: “For acts of gallantry in action as a team member during heavy and sustained enemy fire on Operation Slipper in Afghanistan in 2009″.

For acts of gallantry: that is code for bravery and courage under fire against an armed and dangerous enemy. We won’t know who Private J is for some time as he will be a member of either the Special Air Service Regiment like the highly decorated Corporal Benjamin Roberts-Smith, VC, MG, or the Commandos or the Incident Response Regiment – all of whom work under the cover of anonymity for Operational Security reasons.

The Commendation for Gallantry is significant in its own right – it is ranked fourth in the gallantry commendations behind the Victoria Cross, the Star of Gallantryand the Medal for Gallantry. Private J was seriously brave on his patrol, as the commendation is only awarded for “acts of great heroism and conspicuous gallantry in times of great peril”.

The words “great heroism” and “great peril” are indication enough. And he is not alone. Several other “alphabet” soldiers were also recognised including Corporal A and Private A.

But Private J’s award, like those of his fellow soldiers, is especially poignant coming in the same week that Cpl Roberts-Smith, or RS as his mates know him, was awarded the highest honour for courage under fire, the Victoria Cross for Australia.

RS is now Australia’s most highly decorated soldier, having previously been awarded the prestigious MG for his bravery in the line of fire in Afghanistan in 2006. He is the second SAS trooper to receive the VC for actions in Afghanistan and joins Corporal Mark Donaldson, VC, in the very elite club in which there are only three surviving of the 98 VC recipients, the other being Keith Payne, a Vietnam veteran.

It is worth noting that Sergeant P, another member of RS’s SAS patrol, was recognised today in the Australia Day honours with the Star of Gallantry for his bravery under fire.

Earlier this week in a round of interviews held after RS was announced as Australia’s newest VC he said, “Every soldier deserves to have the country know how willing they are to be out there”.

I couldn’t agree more. They put their hand up to serve our country and put themselves in the line of fire.

Signalman Martin 'Jock' Wallace, MG, fighting for his life in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan 2002

When I wrote 18 Hours, The True Story of an SAS War Hero I spent hundreds of hours with Signaller Martin ‘Jock’ Wallace who was the first Australian to receive the Medal For Gallantry since the Vietnam War.

It was an enormous honour to be in the company of such a fine and decent gentleman, but I was always struck by one thing – Martin’s humility. He told me he felt like an imposter.

Not because he hadn’t earned the respect that comes with the MG, which he received for helping save the lives of many coalition troops when they were ambushed by a superior number of al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in the Shahi Kot Valley in southern Afghanistan in Operation Anaconda. But because as he and so many other reluctant heroes say, “I was just doing my job and doing what all my mates were doing. Just about everyone deserved a medal that day”.

Cpl Roberts-Smith said pretty much the same this week. The giant of a man, who has his chest tattooed with the words “I will not fail my brothers”, had a one word answer when asked what made him expose himself to enemy fire to silence Taliban machine-gunners to ensure the safe return of his SAS patrol: “Mateship”.

Goosebumps, right?

Then the happily married, father of twin daughters, added: “I think the biggest sin in my line of work is to let your mates down. You just can’t do it. As those blokes did for me that day, I did for them. It’s that simple. They fought next to me as hard as they could and I gave them 100 percent.”

Now that’s heroism. Real heroism. It is the same type of extraordinary courage in the face of danger displayed by so many ordinary people during the recent floods.

Heroism is instinctive. It can’t be learned. It is innate. That’s why it is so important to acknowledge and celebrate it because when we see it, we understand how it truly can change lives and save souls.

Anna Bligh breaks down at press conference today (image from Herald Sun via Channel Nine)

There are times when you want your political leaders to show leadership, true leadership. Leadership of the nation-saving, things-will-be-all-right kind, or as alright as they can in the circumstances.

And for mine, I’d argue that the performance of Queensland Premier Anna Bligh during the past few days has been the apotheosis of her not always stellar political career.

She remained steadfast and calm as deadly muddy waters tore through the hearts, lives and land of rural Queensland, towns many of us had never heard of before, only to push their way to the capital, Brisbane, where flood waters have destroyed tens of thousands of homes, businesses and livelihoods.

I really started listening to her, and watching her, earlier this week when she stood before the press, fighting back tears, concern and fear etched on her face, and said the floods “might be breaking our hearts but they haven’t broken our will”. I felt an oomph. A real physical pulse, a visceral connection. I was with her. I wasn’t alone. Australia was with her. Is with her.

Leadership is about leading. It is about grit, courage, and providing hope in times of crises, all of which Premier Bligh has shown and done since the floods began weeks ago, but even more so these past few days. Her concerns for Queenslanders are writ large. Her devastation at the unbearable tragic loss of life is gut-wrenching, like all of ours, and so intense as to be almost palpable. Her empathy real, sincere.

Premier Bligh has shown extraordinary strength, grace and compassion. Nations need this in their darkest hours, and for Australia but in particular Queensland, there have been many such hours and more to come.

The "inland tsunami" that hit Toowoomba in QLD

The Twitterverse has been alive to Anna Bligh’s character under crisis and marvelled at its strength, composure and determination. And that’s just a handful of the words used in a medium that is more often laced with cruel, razor sharp and destructive invective than it is praise.

I think there is something else. Communication. Connecting with your fellow Australians – not “my constituents” as Kevin Rudd clumsily called the people in his electorate on Wednesday.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did it during the Depression with his fireside chats, keeping the public appraised of terrible events and giving hope.

Bligh, in jeans and shirt and boots and belt, a sheen of sweat and hair as best as it can look, has not shirked telling us what we want to know: when, where, how and how bad. She has spoken with confidence about how Queenslanders, a tough, resilient breed, will prevail after Mother Nature has done her worst and how the rest of Australia will help them. Confidence in a crisis is king, or queen as it may be in this case.

Bligh has delivered the good news when we most needed it, like yesterday when much of Brisbane was still being threatened by rising waters yet to peak. Our national spirit soared when she revealed that two of the three people who were photographed being swept away on the roof of their white car – a photograph that came to symbolise so much about the humanity of the floods – had been found.

We needed that good news amid the horror and carnage that was played out on YouTube and caught by camera phones, amid the unimaginably heartbreaking stories of families riven by the raging floods, some killed, others surviving – tragic each way. Our hearts sank though when she told us that the search continued for the third person, a racing steward named James Perry whose wife, Jenny, and son, Ted, had been rescued.

There is much more bad news to come, more immeasurably sad stories of death and destruction, and achingly poignant tales of ordinary Australians doing extraordinary things for their neighbours, friends, families and strangers. The heroes among us. The ones who don’t give their surnames, just get on with it.

And the heroes lost to the floods, heroes like Josh Ross who refused to leave his wheel-chair bound mother, Brenda; brave Jordan Rice, just 13-years-old, who perished with his mum Donna Rice after insisting rescuers retrieve his younger brother first; Steve and Sandy Matthews who were swept away after helping save two of their four children. Theirs are names we won’t forget, they are the faces of the floods. There are others we don’t know of yet but when we do, we’ll remember them, too.

Bligh has also done wonders by delivering us heroes to help guide us through the mess, like Major General Mick Slater from the Australian Army who is leading the rebuilding and in whom you automatically have enormous trust.

Major General Mick Slater, who will lead the rebuilding of QLD after the devastating floods

It’s called faith, and we’ve got faith that he will be able to do it and he will, with help from the civilian armies of the State Emergency Services around the nation, the public, and other agencies. We somehow know that Queensland will be rebuilt. There’s no doubt, no hand-wringing. Just doing. It has already begun, he told Channel Seven’s Mel Doyle and anyone else who put a microphone in front of him.

Early today at another televised press conference the enormity of the situation finally tested Anna Bligh’s enormous inner strength, but it didn’t break her. As she addressed the nation again, with her helpers standing behind her, she cried. Australians have been crying for days. We were with her in her tears.

She spent 14 months missing in action and seven more in quarantine but finally Australia’s most beloved pooch has made her way home.

On Saturday, the highly trained explosive detection dog Sarbi was released to her original trainer Sergeant D*, from whom she was separated when they were ambushed by the Taliban in southern Afghanistan in 2008.

Woof, you Sgt D, I really love you

Today, the bomb dog made her first “appearance” and stole the show, proving there was nothing (well, perhaps a slight scent  distraction) that could deter her from her duties. Sarbi leaped, bounded, climbed and tunnelled through, up and over an obstacle course to show off for the cameras.

But, she only had eyes for her trainer and handler, Sergeant D, who, like Sarbi, was injured in the ambush.

Sarbi has spent the past seven months waiting to prove her medical clearance. She passed with flying colours.

Australian soldiers have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001 – not long after Al Qaeda terrorists murdered 2977 innocent victims at the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and the crash site of the downed United Airlines flight 93 in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

Since then, 21 brave Australian Diggers have lost their lives while serving our country in the Middle East.

Each death is a tragedy beyond description; each leaves a family stricken with grief and immeasurable loss; some of these great and selfless men are survived by children who weren’t even born when they deployed. They also leave behind their fellow soldiers who forge ahead, knowing that their work honours the memories of their fallen mates.

Thankfully, we have the voices of the wives and girlfriends, like Mrs Beckie MacKinney, the widow of Lance Corporal Jared “Crash” MacKinney who was killed in action in Afghanistan while serving with the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.

Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney with his wife, Beckie, and daughter Annabell (picture courtesy Defence.gov.au)

Commander of the Joint Task Force 633, Major General John Cantwell said MacKinney was killed by Taliban insurgents while “protecting and supporting his mates” in a firefight in the Deh Rawud region of Uruzgan province on August 24. He was 28 years old.

Mrs MacKinney, who buries her husband today, is due to give birth to hers and Jared’s second child, a son, in a couple of weeks. Her words will break your heart, and it is important that we hear them. And remember them. And keep them in our hearts.

The long journey without Jared has begun for Annabell and me, and soon also little Noah Jared who is due to come into the world in a fortnight. Noah will never get to meet his father but he will come to know him for the incredible man he was through our love and memories.

So many people have helped our families through the dark times of the last few days, people we know and also many people we have never met, who wanted to help ease our pain.

On behalf of the families I would like to very sincerely thank them for their best wishes and generous support.  I would like you to know that it made a very real difference. In the next few weeks I hope I can personally thank as many of you as I can

To Jared’s mates in Afghanistan and back home – we were all very proud of Jared and the work he loved doing.  I want to thank you for your caring and the incredible messages of support and I know Jared would want me to tell you that we are very proud of you and fully support you in the job you are doing for us all.

I would also like to express our appreciation to the media for the very sensitive manner in which they have covered the tragic events of the past few weeks, and also their ongoing respect for our privacy.

We have reached the deepest depths of despair since we were told of Jared’s death, but we have also been helped and comforted by the support and extraordinary generosity of spirit of old friends, new friends, and strangers who cared.

Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney from the 6RAR, killed in action in Afghanistan on August 24, 2010, (picture courtesy Defence.gov.au)

Mrs MacKinney’s statement was released via the Army. More than 700 people are at Crash MacKinney’s funeral in Brisbane today, including his fellow Diggers from the 6RAR, the Chief of Defence, Angus Houston, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott.

His courage was infinite. His mates and family will never forget him, and neither should our nation or the Defence Force for whom he made the ultimate sacrifice.

Lest we forget.

Grant Kirby, 35

Tomas Dale, 21

Jason Brown, 29

Nathan Bewes, 23

Tim Aplin, 38

Ben Chuck, 27

Scott Palmer, 27

Darren Smith, 25

Jacob Moerland, 21

Benjamin Ranaudo, 22

Brett Till, 31

Mathew Hopkins, 21

Gregory Michael Sher, 30

Michael Fussell, 25

Sean McCarthy, 25

Jason Marks, 27

Luke Worsley, 26

Matthew Locke, 33

David Pearce, 41

Andrew Russell, 33

He’s a multi-multi-multi-millionaire who likes to come across as a man of the people, and today he was doing his best to prove that he is.

Renowned train spotter, public transport user and Prius driver Malcolm Turnbull was out in his electorate of Wentworth today physically removing his campaign posters from lamp posts with one other helper.

I spotted Turnbull striding along the streets with requisite equipment to remove the posters that were then dumped in the back of a rental ute driven by an assistant.

Man of the people and member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, in campaign mode

When asked if Turnbull was actually doing the hard yakka himself, the driver said “yes”, with a big grin.

After a short-lived dummy spit in which he announced he was quitting politics before quitting on quitting, Turnbull won almost a 10 percent swing and netted 60 percent of the vote, which explains why he looked like the cat that got the canary on Q&A on Monday night.

ALP rival Steven Lewis had almost the same percentage swing against him winning just 14,416 of the votes to Turnbull’s 41,688.

Turnbull’s leadership intentions indubitably will have been reignited by the unequivocal victory. But he will have to bide his time following Coalition leader Tony Abbott’s amazing resurrection of the party’s failing fortunes in the nine months since he beat the eastern suburbs silvertail to the top spot.

Tonight, the man from Point Piper is taking on regular rival Tanya Plibersek, the ALP’s member for Sydney, at a “politics in the pub” event at The Clock Hotel in Surry Hills.

Plibersek had a 4.62 percent swing against her and scored slightly more than 26,000 of the votes cast in the inner city electorate.

Should be feisty.

Because it’s election day, because this has been one of the wackiest, funniest, most insane, fun and entertaining Federal election campaigns in decades, because Mark Latham was rolled gold for all the wrong reasons, because PM Julia Gillard released doves (yes, she really did, and not a magician in sight), because former PM Kevin Rudd’s axing turned the ALP into a comic tragedy, and because Opposition leader Tony Abbott was armed with a Glock and stun gun, I bring you some funny highlights and observations of the day.

Whose bacon did you save?

Sydney butcher Victor Churchill getting into the 2010 Federal Election spirit

Let’s start with this brilliant window display in one of Australia’s best and most innovative butcher shops, Victor Churchill.

Two pigs – one wearing a red wig a la PMJG, the other in red Speedos like the LOTO wears and a sign: “Vote 1, whose bacon will you save?” Brilliant.

One shop assistant told me people asked if the pigs were real. She’s Irish. No beating around the bush. “It’s a butcher shop. What do they think?”

Well, there were a lot of people who bought the line about former President George W. Bush’s “plastic turkey” at Thanksgiving when visiting the troops in the Middle East.

Election window at Sydney butcher Victor Churchill

But back to the funnies: this from smart Tweeter @WogBlogger: “Overheard in polling queue in Wentworth: “Would you like a Greens how to vote card”? “No … second thoughts, I’ll take one. For comedy value.” Comedy gold.

Wentworth, of course, is the seat held by train spotter Malcolm Turnbull.

Style guru and social commentator @MelissaHoyer tweeted this: “Sad there r no sausages at Paddington St Francis of Assisi school. ‘It’s Paddington. They have sushi’, said one queue wag . .”

Another Tweeter, @marksmithers came up with this: “Outside polling station amusing myself by handing Australian Sex Party how to vote cards back to Family First campaigners #ausvotes”

And then there was this in The Australian by sharp election observer Samantha Maiden: “There was a touch of George W. Bush, a moment of Vladimir Putin, bare-chested, Old Spice-style—“I’m on a horse”—to the magic photographs of Tony Abbott let loose in a Campbelltown cop shop after midnight.”

The idea of Abbott as Old Spice man is too delicious for words and the rest of Maiden’s piece is a Must Read.

If you like your humour dripping with irony, how about former Labor hard-man and self-confessed Pinocchio, Graham Richardson who wrote in the same organ today: “I am confused…I am in utter despair”. Read Richo’s confession about Labor and PM JG’s woes.

Happy voting.

With the Australian federal election campaign in full swing and with Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying she “fully supports” the current 1550-strong deployment to Afghanistan, it’s worth focusing on the families of the brave Diggers who have lost their lives in the Middle East.

Since Australia deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, our nation has lost 17 soldiers – the most recent six in the last two months as the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists increase their deadly campaign of burying improvised explosive devices in the countryside.

I recently spent some time with Victoria Hopkins, the widow of Corporal Mathew Hopkins, for a story in the latest edition of sunday magazine.

Victoria and Mathew Hopkins

I had written about her husband shortly after he was killed in action in March last year, and again when the Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston released a report into his death.

Victoria Hopkins, who is now 24, is one of the bravest women I’ve met. When her husband was killed, she had been married a mere five weeks and had a five-week-old son, Alex.

Like many wives, husbands, partners, parents and family of the serving members of the Australian Defence Force, the unimaginable possibility had lingered in the back of her mind and she lived with the constant dread of that unwelcomed knock on the door ever since he left home in October 2008.

“Mat told me in his last email that he was going to try to ring me as soon as he got back from patrol. I hadn’t heard from him at all that day, I thought he must have been busy. I was actually up typing an email to him when there was a knock at the door.”

Three officers wearing their full dress uniforms and medals broke the news. “It felt like I had all the energy sucked out of me, like what should have been a happy time in my life – being married and having a baby and being a family – was just suddenly taken away by one bullet. They said it was instant, that there was nothing that could have been done to save Mat.”

Every time another Digger has died, Victoria is reminded of her loss in more ways than one.

It happened most recently when 23-year-old Private Nathan Bewes, who was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, was killed by an IED on Friday, July 16, 2010, taking the loss of Australian lives to 17.

Mathew Hopkins and his newborn son, Alex

And yet there is no easy way to cope, each new aching tragedy adds to the last, she told me, especially when she thinks that her young son will not grow up with his proud father. These are the small things that the rest of us don’t know about, but should.

“You just learn to move your life around these sort of things. There is no real way of moving on because it’s always going to be there; you just learn to accept that these sort of things can happen.”

Importantly, though, she has beautiful memories of her time with Mat. She smiles remembering the night they stayed up going through the alphabet from A-Z thinking of names for their unborn son (they chose Alexander Robert John, because it’s a strong name and will stand the test of ages); the night they had a “Sounds of Silence” dinner in the desert under Uluru, listening to an Aboriginal guide telling stories about the constellation; how thrilled Mat was to claim the honour of being the first to change their newborn son’s nappy; and how Mat loved her weekly care packages.

“I sent Mat a can of Spam once and he rang me up and told me off,” she says with a laugh. “For Christmas I sent him a gingerbread house which actually remained in tact all the way there, and a triple choc pudding that he ate in one go, and his Top Gear magazine – he loved his Top Gear magazine.”

She laughs at the folly of him taking on patrol a 1kg bag of lollies she sent so he could share them with his mates. His fully-loaded pack already weighed 60kg but Corporal Hopkins would not leave base without his sweet reminder of home and the woman who loved him.

Corporal Hopkins on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan

They wanted two or three kids and decided to settle in Darwin, where her husband hoped to continue his rising Army career.

“Mat and I had discussed that our kids were going to join the defence force if they didn’t have continuous study like TAFE or uni or they didn’t have a job. That was our decision,” she says.

Those dreams for a shared future were shattered by one single bullet.

But, as Victoria says, she has her memories and a treasured wooden box made by the Army carpenters in Afghanistan who deployed with her husband. It contains dozens of letters written by his mates.

“Reading the great things that they said about Mat really opened my eyes up more as to who he really was. There was a side of Mat that I knew but the side of Mat they were talking about was the side I didn’t know yet. They said Mat was a great leader, he was a funny guy, which I knew about, and it just made it very special hearing and reading those things and knowing that Mat meant more to a lot of other people as well as to Alex and me.”

This is Victoria’s story, as it appeared in the most recent edition of the sunday magazine (July 18, 2010) which is inserted in The Sunday Herald Sun in Victoria, and The Sunday Telegraph in NSW.

Lest we forget.

Victoria’s story, as it appeared in sunday magazine on July 18, 2010