Action Action Action: The History of the Employment of Australian Artillery 1871-2021

by Nicholas Floyd, Paul Stevens

Over one hundred and fifty years ago, on 1st August 1871, the Colony of New South Wales raised its first permanent Battery, known as the New South Wales Artillery. This battery complemented existing colonial volunteer batteries. The previous year, the last British forces had departed for England, leaving the young, dynamic colonies across Australia to uphold their own defences. This occasion marked the origins of the substantive, permanent presence of professional Australian artillery soldiers – a presence that endures to this day as the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery.
In the years that have followed, Australian Gunners have served their country in war and in peace; abroad, and in the defence of their homeland, with honour and dedication, and will continue to do so into the future.
1st August 2021 marked a century and a half of unbroken dedication in the service of our community and the Nation by Australia’s Gunners – Volunteer, Militia, Reserve, Permanent and Regular; at home, and in far-off lands; defending assaults from the sea, in the sky, and on land; and advising, defending and supporting our comrades-in-arms through summoning and orchestrating devastating fires and effects that are accurate, responsive, dependable & joint. These are, and will remain, the tenets of the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery in all its forms.
This is the story of Australia’s Gunners – so far.

519 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 31, 2024

About the author

Nicholas Floyd was born in the Midwest of the United States of America, where he lived a rather uneventful two decades until, as a young college student, he received sage advice from a fellow Midwestern native who had fled to California and who insisted that Nicholas likewise “get the hell outta the Midwest.” Nicholas overshot California and the entire Pacific Ocean, landing in Japan, where he lived on and off for five years collectively. During that time, he achieved fluency in Japanese thanks to sage advice from a different friend, who had previously lived in Japan and who insisted, “Don’t hang out with other foreigners.”

In the US and Japan, Nicholas worked full time as a systems administrator, and during his mid-twenties he spent several years traveling the world competing as a nationally ranked video game tournament player, but he ultimately gave up the hobby in pursuit of other interests, such as piano composition and photography.

During his late twenties, he toiled over the inverse correlation of his steadily increasing net worth and his steadily decreasing net happiness, and it became obvious that neither spending forty hours per week in an office nor the corporate world in general particularly tickled his fancy. So at the age of thirty, he left a successful and promising career in IT to pursue a lifelong passion far less lucrative but far more enjoyable: writing.

He is particularly interested in anthropology, human sexuality, healthy living, sustainability and minimalism, studies of consciousness (waking, dreaming, and altered states), the beneficial uses of psychedelics, and drug policy reform.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, as well as a minor in Mathematics, both of which are now collecting dust. He happily resides in a tiny apartment on the island of Oahu.