Just finished reading
Peter Dornan's book on Nicky Barr. It was a good read of an incredible man who fought through WWII. It is written pretty lightly, but as about as deep as you can get for a biography where the author is looking into a private world.
Nicky Barr was an Australian ace in the Western Desert in World War II. The Africa campaign was pretty fluid in the early days with the Italians driving the allies back to Cairo, then the allies pushing them back along Africa until Rommel's Afrika Corps then drove everyone back to Cairo before the offensive was broken at El Alamein and Africa was finally won for the allies.
Barr was typical of an ace. He was in a target rich environment, he had the discipline to get in close before shooting and he was aggressive in pursuing aircraft. He racked up his confirmed destroyed in very quick time as well.
3 Squadron RAAF was the leading squadron in the Western Desert. They were in the thick of things during all the back and forth of the ground war, losses were heavy, but they ended up being the top scoring squadron of the campaign. Several aces came out of the squadron including Bobby Gibbes and Barr.
Like most of the Western Desert pilots Barr was shot down several times but because of the fluid front lines and vastness of the desert was able to evade capture and get back to friendly lines. The non-fixed nature of the war and the flat desert environment also meant they would land and pick up downed pilots, or do things like land with a clapped out engine, fix it, then take off again.
Eventually Barr was shot down and badly wounded by a German ace. He was captured and moved to Italy where he escaped several times. Eventually when he escaped he ended up contributing to a guerrilla campaign in Italy. His group also helped down pilots escape back across the mountain ranges to allied lines. Dangerous work.
As Italy was slowly being taken by the Allies Barr made his way to allied lines and was repatriated to Australia where he recovered fully and commanded squadrons again. Quite a remarkable man.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
