Remembering war hero Teddy Sheean
Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean was anything but ‘ordinary’.
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When HMAS Armidale slipped beneath the waves on 1 December 1942 following a ferocious attack by Japanese aircraft in the Timor Sea she took with her a young seaman named Edward Sheean.
Known by his shipmates as ‘Teddy’ he was born 95 years ago this month on 28 December 1923 at lower Barrington, Tasmania.
Forty sailors lost their lives when Armidale was sunk but what is remarkable about young Sheean is that although badly wounded he returned to his post manning the ship’s aft Oerlikon gun, strapped himself to his weapon and blazed away at the enemy as his ship sank beneath him.
His steadfast act of valour bought his shipmates precious time to get clear of the ship and marauding Japanese fighters that were strafing survivors in the water.
One of his shipmates, Wireman William Lamshed was to recall ‘the front of the ship was turning on its side and going down.
“The rear section was leaning on an angle, when the aft Oerlikon gun started firing, and I saw tracers actually hitting a dive bombing Zero which flew over my head and disappeared into the sea about a quarter of a mile away,” Lamshed recalled.
“A brilliant bit of shooting,
“I thought, considering the deck was at such a steep angle and the gun was still firing as the ship sank under the water”
This unassuming, largely unknown, hero was posthumously awarded a mention in dispatches for his bravery and a Collins class submarine is named HMAS Sheean in his honour.
Darren Chester
Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel
Labor's vegetation management lies continue
The Palaszczuk Labor Government failed to keep its own election promise to ‘put the scientists in charge’ by failing to release the entire State-wide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) reports for 2016-17 and 2017-18.
Instead, the Labor government continued its culture of secrecy and cover-ups by only releasing a 4-page cherry-picked summary of what should have been a combined 100 plus pages of analysis.
Labor’s selective SLATS summary failed to even mention the word drought which was ravaging more than 80 per cent of Queensland at the time of the report.
If this isn’t further proof that Labor are drought deniers, I don’t know what is.
Once again, Labor are hiding the full story and the SLATS report has again failed to explain the full picture of vegetation management in Queensland.
The report doesn’t even measure regrowth and vegetation rejuvenation which is essential when assessing the real state of the environment. It is clear that Labor are more interested in manipulating the data than achieving sensible environmental outcomes.
The Liberal National Party understand that landholders are sick and tired of Labor using vegetation management for political gain at the expense of farmers.
That is why the Liberal National Party has consistently opposed these unfair and irrational vegetation laws that throw scientific consensus out the window to appease green ideological agendas.
Only the Liberal National Party can be trusted to fight against Labor’s anti-regions agenda and give Queensland farmers a fair go.
Dale Last
LNP Shadow Natural Resources Minister
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