Tony Abbott, every day saying or doing something that reinforces one's sense of not being even of the prime minister's species let alone of his ideological "side", recently declared to his broadcaster soul-mate Alan Jones that "When I've been up close to these wind farms, there's no doubt, not only are they visually awful, they make a lot of noise."

As you can see from our cartoon, some thought the PM's attitude stone-age primitive.

Reader Erwin Feeken of Bywong rather appreciates the wind mills (so does this columnist). Feeken has a persuasive theory that may explain why our Hockeys and Abbotts are so hostile to them.

"Reading 'Mythical ferryman in the mist' [in last Tuesday's Gang-gang column] reminded me not only of the mist over my dam on some mornings, but of wind mills - yes, wind mills! I, for one, think there is something 'mythical' about them.

"When I was a teenager I read Cervantes' Don Quixote. In the story, the knight Don Quixote came upon a series of wind mills. As he thought they were giants, he rode up to fight them, but was repeatedly knocked down by their wings [sails].

"Travelling the Australian landscape, nowadays more and more complexes of modern wind mills cover hills in strategic positions, helping to create a healthier atmosphere in producing clean energy.

"One afternoon I drove past Lake George. I had to stop because a beautiful picture presented itself. The dry lake, wind-torn clouds, part of a strong rainbow, and windmills on the hillside on the opposite side of the lake, gave me a wonderful feeling.

"Later, I visited those wind mills and sat under one. To me they were kind of breathing, or whispering – a pleasant, soothing sound. On the otherwise barren hills, their presence added to complete the landscape.

"Then I thought about Tony and Joe. Both find such wind mills noisy and ugly. I think I have figured out why: They probably think they are giants, as Don Quixote did. Giants of course they are, in size. Hopefully, Tony and Joe will see one day that wind and sun are much cleaner providers than coal."

It is kind of Erwin Feeken to think that it is just a perceptual mistake (it was Don Quixote's feverish imagination that had him mistaking windmills for giants) that has Tony Abbott finds the wind mills "awful" to look at. But for this columnist the PMs aversion to wind mills just reinforces the suspicion that he is a philistine, unable to recognise beauty in anything.

At once, though, having called him a philistine, we leap to apologise ... to the Philistines. The most famous of them, Goliath, was by comparison with our PM a sensitive, poetic soul, and someone who never resorted to the cosmetic artifice of dyeing his hair.

For those of us who have some aesthetic sense the wind mills are really rather beautiful. With such a serendipitous blend of form and function they are works of art. They are sculptures and installations, really. It is rare indeed for anything man-made to actually enhance an already attractive landscape, but as Feeken suggests wind mills can do it. Photographers know this, and Lake George has probably never been so serially snapped as it has been since the wind mills began to further beautify it.

The wind mills can enhance seascapes, too. I was appalled when I first heard that wind farms were going to be established just off the coast of my beloved North Norfolk in East Anglia (for the clifftop views of the vastness of God's sea and sky seemed sacred and perfect as they were). But I've just been on those clifftops and the windmills have done the vistas no harm at all. Windmills (like gorillas) are enhanced by mist and are especially lovely when fog and mist are about. Turner and Constable, great painters of seas and skies, would have defied Tony Abbott's sense of what's ugly by leaping to paint the the wind mills had those objects of beauty been available to them.

And while on the arts, literary readers are responding well to our request for limericks about Nick Kyrgios. We will sprinkle the best of them through next week's columns.

There is a degree of difficulty about composing limericks, for they have a very strict template form. Now, coincidentally, a reader alerts us to another word art form with a high degree of difficulty about it.

Airservices Australia, based in Canberra, composes the five-letter words that name waypoints. Waypoints, Airservices explains to us, are imaginary points, reporting points, "landmarks in the sky" that appear on aviation maps to enable navigation. All waypoint names have to be of just five letters. Usually they are unremarkable names like PULOL and KALUG. But wits have gone to some creative trouble with some other names.

So for example in the north east of corner of South Australia there is a waypoint sequence PUDYA SWEED LIPPS ALIDL that alludes to Jim Reeves' classic country and western ditty that opens so memorably with the line "Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone."

But best of all, for patriots, is the waypoint sequence off the WA coast along longtitude 110 East that goes WONSA JOLLY SWAGY CAMBS BUIYA BYLLA BONGS UNDER ACOOL EBARR TREES.

Prime Minister Abbott, insisting we must all be on the same "side" in Australia's conflicts, would have hated the WW1 pluralism of the Australia of 1915. Even in those overwhelmingly pro-war, "King and country" times, newspapers like Sydney's International Socialist still offered contrary voices.

One hundred years ago this week the weekly tub-thumped to its boutique readership that "To talk of peace at the present moment may seem equivalent to crying for the moon."

"It matters not that, blood is being spilt. Business wants no peace yet. The armament manufacturers are powerful against peace. They want to make money now [and so] we must instil hate and fear for one another in the hearts of the different peoples. This will rejoice the hearts of the kings and statesmen who have invested money in armament firms.

"Meanwhile the German who is killed In a shot from the English artillery can die with the patriotic satisfaction that the shell which killed him was made to the pattern of [German company] Krupp's and that this firm will receive its royalty from the British Government when the struggle is over. The Englishman who perishes in the Dardanelles will have the consolation of knowing that the armaments of the Turk were largely supplied by great British armament makers. The Austrian killed in Serbia will feel gratified that the Serbian guns were made in the Austrian factories.

"It is not in the interests of the armament ring for us to talk of peace just yet."