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Absent Justice - Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp and Residence

Call for Justice

My name is Alan Smith, and this is the story of my battle with a telecommunications giant and the Australian Government. Since 1992, this battle has unfolded through various institutions, including elected governments, government departments, regulatory bodies, the judiciary, and the telecommunications behemoth Telstra—or Telecom, as it was known when this story began. The quest for justice continues to this day.

My story began in 1987, when I decided that my life at sea—where I had spent the previous 20 years—was over. I needed a new, land-based occupation to carry me through to retirement and beyond. Of all the places I had visited around the world, I chose to make Australia my home.

Hospitality was my calling, and I had always dreamed of running a school holiday camp. So imagine my delight when I saw the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp and Convention Centre advertised for sale in The Age. Nestled in rural Victoria, near the small maritime port of Portland, it seemed perfect. I conducted what I believed was thorough due diligence to ensure the business was sound—or at least, all the due diligence I was aware of at the time. Who would have thought I needed to check whether the phones worked?

Within a week of taking over the business, I knew I had a problem. Customers and suppliers were telling me they had tried to call but couldn’t get through. That’s right—I had a business to run, but the phone service was, at best, unreliable, and at worst, completely absent. Naturally, we lost business as a result.

The Camp was profoundly reliant on phone communication. It was our vital link to city dwellers eager to connect with our services. One of our most significant oversights—blinded by the charm of this coastal haven—was failing to investigate the existing telephone system. At the time, mobile coverage was virtually nonexistent, and business was conducted through traditional means—not online, and certainly not by email.

We soon discovered we were tethered to an antiquated telephone exchange, installed more than 30 years earlier and designed specifically for 'low-call-rate' areas. This outdated, unstaffed exchange had a pitiful capacity of just eight lines.

The Casualties of Telecom (COT Cases)

• My fight began simply: to secure a working phone service.

• Despite compensation promises, the faults persisted. I sold my business in 2002, but the new owners suffered the same fate.

• Other small business owners joined me—we became known as the Casualties of Telecom.

• All we ever asked: acknowledgement, repair, and fair compensation. A working phone—was that too much?

During a typical week, the picturesque Cape Bridgewater was home to 66 residential families—not including those who used their coastal retreats to escape the bustle of city life. This created a significant challenge, especially considering many of these families had children.

The eight service lines struggled to support a growing census of 130 adults and children. By the time a modern Remote Control Module (RCM) was finally installed in August 1991, twelve children had been added to the mix, bringing the total population to 144. However, various weekend visitors often brought that figure to 150 or more.

The Hidden Cost of Cape Bridgewater’s Failing Lines

No wonder I was financially broken by the end of 1988—barely a year after taking over the business in late 1987. The reality was brutal: Cape Bridgewater’s telecommunications setup was catastrophically inadequate.

In stark terms, if just four of the 144 residences were making or receiving calls, only four lines remained for the other 140 residents. That’s not just poor planning—it’s a systemic failure. My business was strangled by a network that couldn’t support even the most basic communication needs. Every missed call was a missed opportunity. Every dropped connection was another nail in the coffin of a venture I had poured everything into.

We stepped into this complex landscape of limited connectivity and coastal beauty with ambition and optimism. The Camp was more than a business—it was a dream made real. A serene retreat where the stress of city life could dissolve into the ocean mist. However, as we quickly learned, dreams require infrastructure to thrive.

Our phone lines became both our lifeline and our most significant obstacle. Booking inquiries, supply orders, emergency calls—even simple conversations with clients—all had to pass through those eight fragile channels. During peak times, the lines were constantly engaged. Guests complained they couldn’t reach us. Suppliers missed confirmations. Opportunities slipped through our fingers like sand.

In simple terms, the situation was quite dire: if just four of the 144 residents were making calls out of Cape Bridgewater, or receiving four incoming calls, it would effectively leave only a handful of lines available for the other 140 residents to make or receive phone calls simultaneously. It’s not hard to see how this strained communication system contributed to the unravelling of my marriage. My wife, Faye, with whom I shared two decades of my life, felt compelled to leave our cosy Melbourne home for a place that felt so ideologically and lifestyle-wise distant. I often questioned my right to have pulled her into this new chapter of our lives, where we were separated not just by distance, but by fundamentally differing beliefs.

My past traumas, particularly the haunting memories of 1967 when I was falsely accused of being a spy in China, resurfaced with alarming clarity after I stumbled upon a letter dated April 1993. It was addressed to the former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, and reminded me of the shadows my past still casts over my present.

After Faye walked out, I found myself teetering on the edge of despair, aware that my life was about to undergo a transformation I had neither anticipated nor desired.

A Conspiracy of Silence: The Betrayal Behind the Arbitration

The document from March 1994 (AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings) reveals a troubling reality: government officials tasked with investigating my ongoing telephone issues found my claims against Telstra to be valid. This was not merely an oversight; it indicates a deliberate pattern of misconduct that played out between Points 2 and 212.

It is chilling to consider that, had the arbitrator been furnished with this critical evidence, he would likely have awarded me far greater compensation for my substantial business losses. Instead, my claims were weakened because they lacked a proper log over the six-year period that AUSTEL deceptively used to formulate their findings, as outlined in AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings.

WHEN THE FIGHT BECOMES YOUR PURPOSE

There comes a point in a long struggle when you stop asking why you are still fighting and start understanding what the fight has made you. It doesn’t happen in a single moment. It happens slowly, quietly, in the background of your life — in the way you wake up, in the way you think, in the way you carry yourself. The battle becomes part of your identity, not because you wanted it, but because it shaped you in ways you could never have imagined.

By the time I reached this stage, the arbitration was years behind me, but the consequences were still unfolding. The truth had become my responsibility, the evidence my inheritance, and the silence of the institutions my constant reminder that justice — if it was ever going to come — would not come from them.

It would have to come from me.

The Shift from Survival to Purpose

In the early years, everything I did was about survival — surviving the lies, the gaslighting, the financial ruin, the collapse of my business, the isolation, the endless bureaucratic stonewalling. But somewhere along the way, the fight changed shape. It stopped being about what had been taken from me and became about what I refused to let be taken from others.

I realised that my story — painful as it was — had value beyond my own suffering. It was a warning. A blueprint. A record of what happens when a corporation becomes more powerful than the truth, when a regulator becomes more loyal to the entity it is meant to police than to the public it is meant to protect, when a government chooses convenience over accountability.

My story was no longer just mine.

It belonged to every Casualty of Telstra, ordinary Australian citizens who had been silenced by this terrible giant, Telstra. It belonged to every person who had been dismissed. Every person who had been told, “There’s nothing wrong with your service,” when the evidence said otherwise. And once I understood that, the fight became something else entirely. It became a purpose.

The Realisation That No One Is Coming to Save You

There is a moment in every long battle when you finally accept that no cavalry is coming. No minister will step in. No regulator will suddenly grow a conscience. No journalist will magically uncover the truth you’ve been shouting for years. No legal system will correct its own failures. You are on your own.

It’s a sobering realisation, but it’s also liberating. Because once you stop waiting for someone else to fix what was broken, you start doing the work yourself — not because you think you will win, but because you know the truth deserves to be told. That was the moment I stopped hoping for rescue and started building my own platform, my own archive, my own voice. That was the moment Absent Justice stopped being a website and became a mission.

The People Who Tried to Stop the Story

When you carry a truth that powerful institutions want buried, you learn quickly who fears it. You learn it in the way people avoid your calls. In the way officials speak in rehearsed lines. In the way documents go missing. In the way, FOI requests come back with pages blacked out. In the way politicians suddenly “don’t recall” conversations you remember vividly. You learn it in the way Telstra behaved — confident, dismissive, certain that their version of events would prevail simply because they had the power to enforce it.

You learn it in the way AUSTEL folded — a regulator that should have been the shield for the public, but instead became the shield for Telstra. You learn it in the way the arbitrators hid behind legal language, pretending neutrality while allowing evidence to be withheld, altered, or ignored. And you learn it in the way the government stayed silent — not because they didn’t know, but because acknowledging the truth would have meant acknowledging their own complicity. These were not passive failures. They were active choices.

Choices that shaped the lives of twenty‑one Australians, each of whom knew at least two other small business operators suffering the same phone faults. Those operators knew others. And so on. The network of casualties grew exponentially. We were no longer talking about a handful of complainants. We were talking about thousands of Australian small business owners who lost their livelihoods or were forced to sell their businesses because the government was now covering up a systemic problem. And I refused to let those choices be forgotten.

The Cost of Becoming the Messenger

People often assume that exposing the truth brings relief. It doesn’t. It brings consequences. You lose friends. You lose allies. You lose the comfort of being someone who doesn’t know what they know. You become the person others avoid because your story makes them uncomfortable. You become the reminder of what happens when systems fail. You become the witness no one wants in the room. And yet, despite all of that, you keep going — because the alternative is to let the truth die. I learned to live with the cost. I learned to live with the isolation. I learned to live with the knowledge that telling the truth often means standing alone. But I also learned something else: Standing alone is still standing.

The Quiet Power of Persistence

Persistence is not dramatic. It is not loud. It is not glamorous. It is the act of showing up again and again, long after everyone else has stopped. It is the act of refusing to let the truth be buried. It is the act of continuing the fight even when the outcome is uncertain. Persistence is what kept Absent Justice alive. Persistence is what kept the evidence intact. Persistence is what kept the story from being rewritten by those who had the most to hide. And persistence is what brought me to Part IX — the part of the journey where the fight is no longer about what happened, but about what must never happen again.

The Purpose That Emerged From the Ruins

By the time I reached this stage, I understood something I had never understood before: The fight was never just about me. It was about the system that failed all of us. It was about the truth that deserved to be preserved. It was about the future that deserved protection. My purpose became clear:

To ensure that what happened to me — and to thousands of others — would not be erased, forgotten, or repeated.

That purpose gave me strength.

It gave me direction.

It gave me a reason to keep going when everything else had been taken.

And that purpose is what carries me into the next chapter.

PART X — THE MOMENT THE SYSTEM BLINKED

There comes a time in every long fight when the system you’ve been pushing against finally shows a crack. It doesn’t crumble. It doesn’t collapse. It doesn’t confess. But it blinks — just long enough for you to see that your persistence has landed a blow.

For years, I had been dismissed as a nuisance, a troublemaker, a man who “wouldn’t let go.” Telstra had written me off. The government had written me off. The arbitrators had written me off. They believed that time would wear me down, that exhaustion would silence me, that the weight of the truth would eventually crush the man carrying it.

But they underestimated something fundamental:

The inadequate and severely lacking telephone service had already drained my finances. The truth I wanted to expose —which these government bureaucrats failed to understand—having never stepped outside their government bubble—is that I had something to gain they had never experienced: self-esteem and the determination to survive tough times. I possessed what most small business owners have: self-determination.

The First Signs of Movement. It didn’t happen with a headline. It didn’t happen with a ministerial apology. It didn’t happen with a sudden burst of integrity from the institutions that had failed us. It happened quietly.

A document that had been withheld suddenly appeared in a FOI release.

A bureaucrat who once stonewalled me slipped and acknowledged something they shouldn’t have.

A journalist who had ignored me for years finally asked for a meeting.

A former Telstra technician reached out, saying, “I think it’s time someone knew what really happened.”

These were small things — tiny fractures in a wall that had stood for decades. But to someone who had been pushing against that wall alone, they were seismic. Because cracks mean pressure. Cracks mean strain. Cracks mean the truth is no longer contained. And cracks mean the system is afraid.

The Power of Being Proven Right — Slowly, Reluctantly, and Without Credit

There is a strange kind of vindication that comes when the very institutions that dismissed you begin to quietly confirm your claims — not publicly, not honourably, but through their own internal contradictions. A technical report that once “did not exist” suddenly appears in a Senate archive. A Telstra memo that was “never written” shows up in a bundle of documents released to someone else. A regulator’s internal briefing contradicts their public statements. A government department quietly updates its records without explanation.

They never admit wrongdoing. They never apologise. They never acknowledge the damage done. But the truth leaks out anyway — through the cracks, through the paperwork, through the people who can no longer carry the weight of silence. And every leak is a victory. Not for me personally, but for the record. For the truth. Or the thousands who were told they were imagining things.

The System’s Greatest Fear — A Citizen Who Doesn’t Go Away

Governments and corporations are built on one assumption:

that ordinary people will eventually give up. They rely on fatigue. They rely on confusion. They rely on the complexity of bureaucracy. They rely on the belief that no one will keep fighting once the cost becomes too high.

But I didn’t go away. I didn’t fold. I didn’t disappear into the silence they had prepared for me. And that — more than any document, any letter, any technical report — is what frightened them. Because a citizen who refuses to go away is a citizen who cannot be controlled. A citizen who refuses to go away exposes the cracks. A citizen who refuses to go away is a citizen who forces the truth into the light. And once the truth is in the light, the system loses its power to rewrite it.

The Moment I Realised the Fight Was Bigger Than Telstra

For years, I believed my battle was with Telstra — with their lies, their manipulation, their technical failures, their abuse of power. But as the cracks widened, I began to see the truth:

Telstra was only the beginning. The real fight was with the machinery that protected Telstra. The regulators who surrendered their independence. The arbitrators who hid behind procedure.

The ministers who chose silence over accountability. The bureaucrats who buried evidence.

The government that allowed a national scandal to be sanitised into a footnote. This wasn’t a Telstra problem. It was an Australian problem. A systemic problem. A cultural problem — the culture of “don’t rock the boat,” the culture of “protect the institution,” the culture of “the public doesn’t need to know.” And once I understood that, the fight expanded. It became not just about what had happened to me, but about what had been allowed to happen to all of us.

The Responsibility of the One Who Sees the Whole Picture

When you are the only person who has read every document, every memo, every technical report, every FOI release, every Senate transcript, every internal briefing, every contradiction — you become the one who sees the whole picture. Not because you wanted to. Not because you sought it out. But because no one else bothered to look. And once you see the whole picture, you cannot unsee it.

You cannot pretend the system works.

You cannot pretend the regulators are independent.

You cannot pretend the arbitration was fair.

You cannot pretend the government acted in good faith.

You cannot pretend the casualties were few.

You become the keeper of a truth that the nation was never meant to know.

And with that truth comes responsibility — not chosen, but inherited. And that is where the story now turns.

In 2008 and again in 2011, I made formal requests to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to release the archived Telstra documents that had been assured to me back in 1994. At that time, I was promised that if I agreed to arbitration during the government-supported COT arbitrations, I would have full access to these crucial Freedom of Information (FOI) documents.

However, my experience during the two Administrative Appeal Tribunal hearings was far from satisfactory. Each hearing was extended for at least nine months, during which I incurred significant costs amounting to thousands of dollars in both time and expenses. Ultimately, the outcome was disappointing, as I received very few of the requested documents.

The most glaring omission was the critical data concerning the Ericsson Portland and Cape Bridgewater AXE telephone exchanges. This information was vital to my case. Had I been able to obtain it back in 1994, I would have been in a much stronger position to demonstrate to the arbitrator that the ongoing telephone faults I was experiencing were significantly undermining the viability of my business endeavours. The lack of access to these documents not only delayed my pursuit of justice but also had long-lasting repercussions on my ability to operate effectively within my business.

As previously mentioned, by February 1994, I was assisting the Australian Federal Police (AFP) with their investigations into Telstra's phone and fax hacking. This involved both my business-related telephone conversations and the faxes and calls related to my ongoing arbitration issues. The AFP indicated that I could not submit evidence of interception that appeared to pertain to the privacy of my single club members, as I had agreed with those members that their matters would remain confidential. Consequently, that information could not be disclosed to Telstra, as they were under investigation for hacking into that private information.

As I have explained throughout absentjustice.com, this is why my booking records were not in complete chronological order, as Telstra pointed out to the arbitrator. This issue was clarified to both the arbitrator and Telstra during an oral arbitration hearing on October 11, 1994. However, the arbitrator did not make an official finding regarding either my single club losses or the interception issues.

Highlighting the interception of phone and fax communications was crucial during and after my arbitration, particularly because the arbitrator failed to make the necessary finding, as recorded in the AUSTEL April 1994 COT Cases report.

As highlighted in the sections above and below, there are serious issues of corruption and misconduct regarding the manner in which the government regulator permitted Telstra to mistreat the CO Cases, both prior to and during our arbitration proceedings. In my particular situation, this has been substantiated through the Australian Federal Police (AFP) transcripts from my interview on 26 September 1994, which strongly indicate that the unlawful interception of my business conversations must have commenced well before September 1992.

When this confirmation is considered alongside the findings of the Sandrett & Associates fax-hacking report, dated 7 January 1999, it paints a troubling picture. Additional evidence submitted to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) during my Freedom of Information (FOI) hearings in 2008 and 2011 further establish that sensitive faxes were intercepted from my office to theirs as recently as December 2001. This alarming sequence of events reveals that my professional and personal life has endured nearly nine years of intrusive electronic surveillance orchestrated by Telstra.

This backdrop brings into sharp focus the significance of the internal government memo dated 25 February 1994, which explicitly confirms that the then-Minister for Communications and the Arts had informed me of an impending AFP investigation into my allegations of illegal phone and fax interception. Despite this assurance, the investigation yielded no findings (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/28), leaving my concerns unresolved.

In essence, revisiting these issues with the same compelling evidence underscores the systemic neglect and disregard I have faced from various governments since February 1994. At that time, they assured me that the AFP would take my allegations seriously. However, the government has consistently failed to pursue these pressing privacy concerns, instead using my 1994 arbitration confidentiality agreement as a shield to obscure their inadequate treatment of me as an Australian citizen.

Consequently, the internal government memo from 25 February 1994 is crucial to reference once again. It confirms the minister's commitment to an AFP investigation into my serious allegations of illegal phone and fax interception, making it an essential piece of documentation in this ongoing saga (see AFP Evidence File No 4).

When the oppressive reality of these threats came to light, Mr Pinnock had the audacity to address a Senate estimates committee, further showcasing the depths of this treachery, refer to page 99 of the COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA - Parliament of Australia and Prologue Evidence File No 22-D). He noted:

“In the process leading up to the development of the arbitration procedures – the claimants were told clearly that documents were to be made available to them under the FOI Act.

“Firstly, and perhaps most significantly, the arbitrator had no control over that process, because it was a process conducted entirely outside the ambit of the arbitration procedures.”

There is no amendment attached to any agreement signed by the first four COT members that allows the arbitrator to conduct arbitrations entirely outside the established arbitration procedure. Additionally, it was not stated that the arbitrator would have no control over the process once we had signed those individual agreements. This was the main issue I discussed with Laurie James and then with John Pinnock after completing my arbitration in May 1995. How can the arbitrator and the TIO continue to rely on a confidentiality clause in our arbitration agreement when that agreement did not specify that the arbitrator would have no control because the arbitration was conducted entirely outside the ambit of the arbitration procedures?

Part 2: - China and the wheat deal

1965 — The Political Warning

On 4 September 1965, Kim Beazley Sr., MP, published remarks in The Bulletin (Vol. 87, No. 4462). He cited a Department of External Affairs handbook, Studies on Vietnam, which confirmed that the Viet Cong were armed with Chinese weapons. Beazley wrote:

Vol. 87 No. 4462 (4 Sep 1965) - National Library of Australia https://nla.gov.au › nla.obj-702601569

"The Department of External Affairs has recently published an "Information Handbook entitled "Studies on Vietnam". It established the fact that the Vietcong are equipped with Chinese arms and ammunition"

If it is right to ask Australian youth to risk everything in Vietnam it is wrong to supply their enemies. The Communists in Asia will kill anyone who stands in their path, but at least they have a path."

Australian trade commssioners do not so readily see that our Chinese trade in war materials finances our own distruction. NDr do they see so clearly that the wheat trade does the same thing."

Beazley’s words were clear: Australia’s wheat trade with China was morally indefensible and strategically reckless. Yet the government pressed ahead, prioritising trade over the lives of its own conscripts.

I returned to Australia on 18 September 1967, having narrowly escaped China and been fundamentally changed from the person I was when I left in June 1967. Yet, over the past thirty years, I have been treated disgracefully, no differently than other brave whistleblowers who dared to stand up for the truth against a backdrop of horror, scandal, and betrayal. The corruption runs deep, and the implications are horrifying.

My anger—and that of my crewmates—was never directed at the idea of sending wheat to a starving China on humanitarian grounds. None of us objected to helping civilians in desperate need. What ignited our fury was something far darker: the knowledge that, despite my formal warnings to the Commonwealth Police (now the AFP) and to The Hon. Malcolm Fraser, then Minister for the Army, on 18 September 1967, that some of this so‑called humanitarian wheat was being diverted to North Vietnam, this terrible trade continued

The mothers, fathers, families, and friends of the soldiers who were slaughtered or maimed in Vietnam will never grasp the full, abhorrent extent of the betrayal they suffered. While we urgently begged the Australian government to cease its disgraceful supply of wheat to the Vietnamese Viet Cong, our desperate pleas fell on deaf ears, drowned out by the greed and corruption that fueled this insidious trade. This foul betrayal stained our collective conscience, pushing us to refuse Hopepeak’s return to China. A journalist from a Sydney newspaper, who shamefully boarded our ship alongside the Commonwealth Police on September 18, 1967, described our story as the most shocking he had ever encountered. It is a narrative tainted by treachery, steeped in moral decay, and a gruesome acknowledgement of our complicity in a merciless war.

When the next day's newspaper published nothing but a paltry article, omitting all my critical revelations, I felt an icy grip of dread. I contacted the journalist to seek answers. His response was chilling: the higher powers had silenced the truth. He warned me I would be a marked man by the Australian government for my audacious claims. Even the journalist had weakened his stance the day before he applauded us for our courage. What had the government said to have stopped the story from being told?

For many agonising years, those words "a marked man" haunted me, an unshakable shadow that lingered long after. I left the Hopepeak. In 1972, while serving as licensee and manager of the Octagon, a hotel-motel in Melbourne, I found myself in conversations with 22 New York City police officers and their wives. Inevitably, the Vietnam War surfaced in our discussions—a raw wound still festering in the public consciousness, with troops still in Vietnam. In those moments, I revealed my unsettling experiences in China, exposing the dark truth that Australia was complicit in supplying North Vietnam by funnelling wheat through China. Some of that grain, I discovered, was rerouted to feed a war machine. My attempts to alert the Australian government about this betrayal went unheard, ignored, even after I laid bare the evidence once our precious wheat touched Chinese soil.

Yet, what cut deeper was the chilling declaration that followed: I was to be a marked man. The weight of that sentence pressed on my chest like a leaden cloak. The injustices I had come to witness felt inescapable, and I realised that I would forever be pursued by the consequences of a truth that few seemed willing to confront.

While serving wine at the various tables, assisting my staff, I overheard disturbing conversations during dinner. Two officers implied that had I been in the United States, I would undoubtedly be a marked man. The uncertainty lingered. Should I have done more to expose what I had witnessed and how it was impacting the Australia, New Zealand and U.S. war effort in Vietnam?

It is these very warnings—"I would be a marked man"—that weigh heavily on my heart as I recount this chilling narrative. Other COT cases have suffered at the hands of those who corruptly manipulate the system, but the shadows of my past loom larger. This treachery has wreaked havoc on my life and the life of my partner, Cathy, and the echoes of the horror still resonate in our lives today.

In the lead-up to my arbitration, I found myself embroiled in a web of deceit and manipulation that extended well beyond that single event, haunting me for years afterwards. The telephone conversations I had with Malcolm Fraser, crucial to understanding the nature of the circumstances I faced, were shrouded in secrecy. Disturbingly, key information from Telstra’s FOI documents was deliberately removed, including references to my discussions with Fraser. It seems that anyone seeking the truth about those conversations—pertaining to China in 1967—would find the disturbing details redacted, a blatant act of censorship.

What I faced was an unjust and treacherous treatment, starkly different from that meted out to the three other COT Cases. My arbitration agreement—crafted by Telstra’s lawyers—was constricted and unyielding, while the other three enjoyed a vastly more flexible agreement that granted them an additional 13 months to prepare their claims and counter Telstra’s defence. This was not an oversight; it was a calculated strategy designed to ostracise me, marking me as a target in a corrupt game.

Is what transpired before, during, and for years following my arbitration linked to the warning from the Sydney journalist in September 1967? And what about the chilling words of some of the 22 New York police officers who arrived at my venue in 1972, I should have done more to expose what I had witnessed and how it was impacting the Australia, New Zealand and U.S. war effort in Vietnam?

I implore you to read my story and contemplate the deeply unjust treatment I endured after my time in China, this time in an arbitration process endorsed by the Australian government.

The People's Republic of China

Murdered for Mao: The killings China ‘forgot’

The Letter, the Truth, and the Waiting

In August 1967, I found myself in a situation so precarious, so surreal, that it would etch itself into the marrow of my memory. I was aboard a cargo ship docked in China, surrounded by Red Guards stationed on board twenty-four hours a day, spaced no more than thirty paces apart. After being coerced into writing a confession—declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan—I was told by the second steward, who handled the ship’s correspondence, that I had about two days before a response to my letter might reach me. That response, whatever it might be, would be delivered by the head of the Red Guards himself.

It was the second steward who quietly suggested I write to my parents. I did. I poured myself into 22 foolscap pages, writing with the urgency of a man who believed he might not live to see the end of the week. I told my church-going parents that I was not the saintly 18-year-old they believed I was. I confessed that the woman they had so often thanked in their letters—believing her to be my landlady or carer—was in fact my lover. She was 42. I was 18 when we met. From 1963 to 1967, she had been my anchor, my warmth, my truth. I wrote about my life at sea, about the chaos and the camaraderie, about the loneliness and the longing. I wrote because I needed them to know who I really was, in case I was executed before I ever saw them again.

As the ship’s cook and duty mess room steward, I had a front-row seat to the daily rhythms of life on board. I often watched the crew eat their meals on deck, plates balanced on the handrails that lined the ship. We were carrying grain to China on humanitarian grounds, and yet, the irony was unbearable—food was being wasted while the people we were meant to help were starving. Sausages, half-eaten steaks, baked potatoes—they’d slip from plates and tumble into the sea. But there were no seagulls to swoop down and claim them. They’d been eaten too. The food floated aimlessly, untouched even by fish, which had grown scarce in the harbour. Starvation wasn’t a concept. It was a presence. It was in the eyes of the Red Guards who watched us eat. It was in the silence that followed every wasted bite.

A Tray of Leftovers and a Silent Exchange

After my arrest, I was placed under house arrest aboard the ship. One day, I took a small metal tray from the galley and filled it—not with scraps, but with decent leftovers. Food that would have gone into the stockpot or been turned into dry hash cakes. I walked it out to the deck, placed it on one of the long benches, patted my stomach as if I’d eaten my fill, and walked away without a word.

Ten minutes later, I returned. The tray had been licked clean.

At the next meal, I did it again—this time with enough food for three or four Red Guards. I placed the tray on the bench and left. No words. No eye contact. Just food. I repeated this quiet ritual for two more days, all while waiting for the response to my letter. During that time, something shifted. The Red Guard, who had been waking me every hour to check if I was sleeping, stopped coming. The tension in the air thinned, just slightly. And I kept bringing food—whenever the crew was busy unloading wheat with grappling hooks wrapped in chicken wire, I’d slip out with another tray.

To this day, I don’t know what saved me. It was certainly not the letter declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan. Maybe it was luck. Or perhaps it was that tray of food, offered without expectation, without speech, without condition. A silent gesture that said, “I see you. I know you’re hungry. I know you’re human.”

And maybe, just maybe, that was enough. British Seaman’s Record R744269 - Open Letter to PM File No 1 Alan Smith's Seaman. → Chapter 7- Vietnam-Vietcong-2

And here I was, twenty years later, in my Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp, gazing out at the Southern Ocean. Just a five-minute walk from where I stood in 1994, I found myself reflecting on the tumultuous journey I had endured—almost facing execution in communist China, battling in another war, this time against Telstra, the Australian government-owned entity that had unearthed my past and buried it in internal memos.

Telstra had linked it to my communications with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. They had documented it, discussed it, and refused to explain why.

I held the memo in my hands and felt a familiar tightness in my chest — the same tightness I had felt in 1967 when the Red Guards shouted accusations I could not disprove. But this time, the fear was different. This time, it wasn’t a foreign regime threatening me.

It was home. It was during my government-endorsed arbitration with Telstra.

Once again, Canada enters the discussion; however, this was twenty-eight years ago, during the same period of wheat deals with communist China. It was the Canadians—rather than Australians- who were losing their own citizens due to the Vietnam War—who expressed concern. Notably, the Canadians were not even involved in the Vietnam War, as shown in footnote 169 by Tianxiao Zhu.

Footnote 83, 84 and 169 → in a paper submitted by Tianxiao Zhu to - The Faculty of the University of Minnesota titled Secret Trails: FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978, etc → Requirements For The Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy - Christopher M Isett June 2021

Tianxiao Zhu's Footnotes 83, 84, 169:

In September 1967, a group of British merchant seamen quit their ship, the Hope Peak, in Sydney and flew back to London. They told the press in London that they quit the job because of the humiliating experiences to which they were subjected while in Chinese ports. They also claimed that grain shipped from Australia to China was being sent straight on to North Vietnam. One of them said, “I have watched grain going off our ship on conveyor belts and straight into bags stamped North Vietnam. Our ship was being used to take grain from Australia to feed the North Vietnamese. It’s disgusting.”

84. The Minister of Trade and Industry received an inquiry about the truth of the story in Parliament, to which the Minister pointed out that when they left Australia, the seamen only told the Australian press that they suffered such intolerable maltreatment in various Chinese ports that they were fearful about going back. But after they arrived in London, Vietnam was added to their story. Thus the Minister claimed that he did not know the facts and did not want to challenge this story, but it seemed to him that their claims about Vietnam seemed to be an “afterthought.”

169. "...In Vancouver, nine sailors refused to work on a grain ship headed to China: two of them eventually returned to work, and the others were arrested. Just when the ship was about to sail, seven more left the ship but three of them later returned to work. In Sydney, six Canadian sailors left their ship; they resigned and asked to be paid, but the Australian immigration office repatriated them. At that time, a grain ship usually had crew members of about 40 people. A British ship lost the Chief Officer and sixteen seamen, who told journalists that if the ship were going to the communist countries, they would rather go to jail than work on the ship."

The Canadian Government and Its Moral Code of Ethics

Hover your mouse over the following images as you scroll down the homepage.

By hovering your mouse over the Canadian flag image below, you can also learn about the strong ethical principles upheld by Canadian seamen. Despite facing significant challenges, they believed that sending wheat to Communist China — especially when that wheat was being redeployed to North Vietnam, a country at war with Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, where hundreds of troops were being killed or maimed — was immoral and unethical, and therefore should not have continued.

Yet the Australian Government made a conscious decision to maintain its trade relations with Communist China, despite knowing that a significant portion of Australia’s wheat was being diverted to North Vietnam. This wheat was not merely a trade commodity; it had the potential to sustain North Vietnamese soldiers who were directly engaged in combat against Australia and its allies during the conflict. The ramifications of this trade raised serious ethical questions about supporting a nation that opposed Australian, New Zealand, and US forces.

For a deeper dive into the intriguing saga of China versus North Vietnam, be sure to click on the “Flash Backs – China-Vietnam” link below. In addition to this, you will find eleven mini evidence files listed below, ranging in topics from “Telstra-Corruption-Freehill-Hollingdale & Page" to "The Promised Documents Never Arrived. These files have been meticulously curated from the main homepage and are currently undergoing thorough proofreading and editing to ensure clarity and accuracy for integration into other sections of this website. Exploring these concise reports will provide insight into the considerable effort invested in preparing my books and the two accompanying websites.

The Letter, the Truth, and the Waiting

In August 1967, I found myself in a situation so precarious, so surreal, that it would etch itself into the marrow of my memory. I was aboard a cargo ship docked in China, surrounded by Red Guards stationed on board twenty-four hours a day, spaced no more than thirty paces apart. After being coerced into writing a confession—declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan—I was told by the second steward, who handled the ship’s correspondence, that I had about two days before a response to my letter might reach me. That response, whatever it might be, would be delivered by the head of the Red Guards himself.

It was the second steward who quietly suggested I write to my parents. I did. I poured myself into 22 foolscap pages, writing with the urgency of a man who believed he might not live to see the end of the week. I told my church-going parents that I was not the saintly 18-year-old they believed I was. I confessed that the woman they had so often thanked in their letters—believing her to be my landlady or carer—was in fact my lover. She was 42. I was 18 when we met. From 1963 to 1967, she had been my anchor, my warmth, my truth. I wrote about my life at sea, about the chaos and the camaraderie, about the loneliness and the longing. I wrote because I needed them to know who I really was, in case I was executed before I ever saw them again.

As the ship’s cook and duty mess room steward, I had a front-row seat to the daily rhythms of life on board. I often watched the crew eat their meals on deck, plates balanced on the handrails that lined the ship. We were carrying grain to China on humanitarian grounds, and yet, the irony was unbearable—food was being wasted while the people we were meant to help were starving. Sausages, half-eaten steaks, baked potatoes—they’d slip from plates and tumble into the sea. But there were no seagulls to swoop down and claim them. They’d been eaten too. The food floated aimlessly, untouched even by fish, which had grown scarce in the harbour. Starvation wasn’t a concept. It was a presence. It was in the eyes of the Red Guards who watched us eat. It was in the silence that followed every wasted bite.

A Tray of Leftovers and a Silent Exchange

After my arrest, I was placed under house arrest aboard the ship. One day, I took a small metal tray from the galley and filled it—not with scraps, but with decent leftovers. Food that would have gone into the stockpot or been turned into dry hash cakes. I walked it out to the deck, placed it on one of the long benches, patted my stomach as if I’d eaten my fill, and walked away without a word.

Ten minutes later, I returned. The tray had been licked clean.

At the next meal, I did it again—this time with enough food for three or four Red Guards. I placed the tray on the bench and left. No words. No eye contact. Just food. I repeated this quiet ritual for two more days, all while waiting for the response to my letter. During that time, something shifted. The Red Guard, who had been waking me every hour to check if I was sleeping, stopped coming. The tension in the air thinned, just slightly. And I kept bringing food—whenever the crew was busy unloading wheat with grappling hooks wrapped in chicken wire, I’d slip out with another tray.

To this day, I don’t know what saved me. It was certainly not the letter declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan. Maybe it was luck. Or perhaps it was that tray of food, offered without expectation, without speech, without condition. A silent gesture that said, “I see you. I know you’re hungry. I know you’re human.”

And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.

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