The Cannes photo meme and me

Photo: Stephane Cardinale/CORBIS via Getty Images

French photographer Stephane Cardinale snapped this great image above at the 74th Cannes film festival earlier this month. It was a publicity shot for Wes Anderson’s new film The French Dispatch and featured Anderson (second left) with actors Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray. The photo is wonderfully awkward and was immediately picked up on social media for what Vulture called “extremely mismatched — and extremely on brand — fashion choices”. Vulture tweeted the photo with the caption “tag yourself” and many did. The best examples I saw of the memes that followed was Christopher Bonanos’s “Book proposal, manuscript, publication day, sales figures” and Tim Callanan’s “French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open”.

Several more appeared in the following days as the meme lended itself to anything with four contrasting components. Then on Wednesday Channel Seven news came live from a party at Southbank as the 2032 Olympics decision was about to be announced from Tokyo. This was an underwhelming announcement as Brisbane was the only city in the “race” as announced a few months earlier. Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk copped flak for flying to Tokyo during the pandemic but hosting an Olympics is a big deal and they still had to present to the IOC to prove the city could pull it off.

That evening at 6.30pm Queensland time, Channel Seven went live to Tokyo where IOC president Thomas Bach announced the winner. In the seconds it took him to say “And the winner is….” there was bizarre tension for a supposed one horse race. It quickly evaporated – Brisbane it was – and cue an explosion of delight in Southbank. I have ambivalent feelings about the Olympics and its purported benefits but was pleased my home town had won it. On Twitter I noted that it would have been hilarious had any other city had been named instead.

I also noted other early reactions including someone who pointed out the next four Olympics were in Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles and now Brisbane. What immediately struck me was the incongruity of Brisbane in that list of alpha cities and the second thing was there was four cities on the list. I immediately thought of the Cannes meme and checked out the photo to see if it worked. Chalamet was obviously not Japanese but looking hopefully into the distance with his young geeky wear he could pass for Tokyo (particularly as this was the Games no one could dress up for). Onto Anderson and his presumably expensive white suit. Paris? Yeah why not. Then the impossibly cool Tilda Swinton in her even more expensive blue suit, and the lipstick and the hair, not to mention those shades. LA? Definitely! Finally Bill Murray, so utterly different from the others and yet comfortable in his holiday-wear, happy to stare off into a future 11 years away. He looked relaxed and Australian, something captured in the tennis version of the meme. But the Australian Open is played in supercool (in every sense) Melbourne where no-one dresses like that. Brisbane, however, was perfect.

This summarised 10 seconds of decision making in my head then another 10 seconds to confirm this indeed was the order of the next four Olympics. I crafted the tweet around 15 minutes after the announcement. Just seven words “Next four Olympics Tokyo, Paris, LA, Brisbane” with the picture. I was pleased with my work. I have a modest amount of followers, but I have been around the platform since 2009 so I was sure this would attract some attention, As soon as I saw influential people in my followers retweeting or liking it, I saw this would do particularly well. One person early on was critical in a polite way: “LA and Paris don’t really work though! Sorry”. Most thought I’d nailed it, and everyone, including the polite fashionista, seemed to think it was funny.

I went to bed that evening with likes and retweets slowly climbing and it kept gathering pace as other parts of the world got into their day. One guy said “this perfection should end this meme”, while proud Brisbanites (and Bill Murray fans) said “By far the best one is Brisbane, wouldn’t want I any other way”. Daniel Hopkins went all caps for Murray as Brisbane. “I LOVE BRISBANE, HE SUCH A GREAT GUY!!!!” “Canberra Muse” said “People are so quick and I am *here* for it” while Steve Allen said “The first gold medal goes to…” a thought echoed by “I think this one is the winner” and “the accuracy of this”. There were GIFS of perfection and standing ovation.

On it went on Thursday morning as the likes climbed into the thousands. Lance Masina thought it was funny but said “Ya’ll leave my hometown alone.” Presume he meant LA. On it went. “Timmy’s Olympics would be lame as shit.” wrote one, clearly not a fan of Chalamet’s work. The “meme winner” theme continued. “This is the only good one”, “This is the winner. Pack everything else up, we’ll send the full results to the listserv”, while Lucile thought it was “rude but true”. Matthew Clayfield reminded me how close I was sailing to the wind: “This meme got old quickly, but this is correct.”

Even formidable Crikey political writer Bernard Keane was impressed, “OK this is the only one of these that I reckon is absolutely dead on. Perfect.” That was generous of him. Many years ago, I saw a photo of Keane and I was struck by the physical resemblance to the great Irish writer Samuel Beckett, I don’t remember Keane’s exact response but sadly, he did not find it flattering.

Not everyone was seeing the funny side. Scottish tweeter “StewMcD” was not happy with the bread and circuses of the Olympics. “Hopefully, during that period, commonsense might creep out and either scrap the corrupt, extravagence (sic) of Olympics and relocate them permanently to Athens, with international financial aid (or end them).” Buddy Hasgeny wrote “the least appealing Australian capital city is now set to also become hopelessly insolvent by 2032.” “El Presidente” thought it was “boredom in four installments”. Klaus Kaulfuss said “Next 4 Olympics, people/families will still be sleeping rough.”

These quibbles were swamped by the lol and rofl emojis. And hats off to Terry Baucher. Having liked the tweet the night before, Terry admitted a day later he was “still crying over this”. Alicia Powell wasn’t much interested in me or the Olympics. “I would love to be trapped in a lift with these 4 people,” she said. Nory wrote “もしくは裸足か” which Google translates from Japanese as “or barefoot” so I’m none the wiser. On it went through Thursday and into the night. It wasn’t until Friday morning that it ran out of juice. People finally moved on. The tweet had nearly 550,000 impressions, 32,500 engagements, nearly 20,000 clicks on the photo, nearly 5000 likes, over 800 retweets, almost 700 profile clicks, 252 link clinks and a handful of new followers, who no doubt are underwhelmed by my subsequent content. They were big numbers though I then saw a funny video featuring a squirrel that got 10 times my traffic.

Like the squirrel, my tweet was ephemeral and fun while it lasted. In these days of serious viruses, it was fun to watch harmless viral content do its thing. I only wish they congregated in similar numbers at the rest of my writing. Timing is everything, I just got in quick with that one. But it is a reminder to strive to make all my writing as spot on as that one tweet. I’m keen to see The French Dispatch when it lands on our shores, hopefully sometime before the Brisbane Olympics.

The road to war: Mount Isa to the Territory

The caravan resting site 50km west of Mount Isa, with sections of the old road next to the new Barkly Highway.

I’ve driven west from Mount Isa numerous times, heading to Camooweal and the Territory. The first time I drove it was in 2002 when the Mount Isa to Camooweal stretch was mostly just one lane. But otherwise it was a fine road to Tennant Creek, and since those times even the Queensland section has improved out of sight. Around 50km west of Mount Isa there is a caravan resting site with a monument commemorating the opening of the site in 1995 and also a section of the older original road still visible. Nearby, as cars and trucks zoom past at 110kph, interpretative signage tells the history of the road, which was a wartime project.

The signage notes the preserved old road shows the design standards of the 1940s. The road hugged the natural surface crossing floodplains and crests. The sign said the adjacent raised modern road, the Barkly Highway, built in 1994 is a stark contrast. The sign acknowledges the site was built on Kalkadoon land, who formed part of the wartime workforce.

The monument to the 1994 rebuilding of the road.

Before World War II, the road between Mount Isa and Camooweal was little more than a droving track. The track followed the 1897 telegraph line and meandered from waterhole to waterhole across ridges and black soil plains. That was fine for moving cattle but was useless for moving 1940s war materiel. Australian governments had to look seriously at the problem of getting soldiers, equipment and supplies to Darwin, where the threat of the Japanese was all too real. In 1940 the Queensland Main Roads Commission got the task of building a road west from Mount Isa to Tennant Creek, while other crews built a connecting road north from Alice Springs.

Queensland engineers designed a new route, 10km shorter than the Telegraph route and work started in January 1941. Progress was slow. There was not enough money allocated to the project and there were chronic shortages of manpower and equipment. Nevertheless pressing war concerns meant traffic used whatever sections were available as soon as they were built. By year’s end 1000 vehicles a day used the road, adding to its wear-and-tear.

Interpretative signage at the 50km rest site.

In May 1942 the new Allied Works Council took over management of the road. With Commonwealth funding and machinery borrowed from across Queensland, the road took shape. Work continued around the clock to gravel the road. By October they had completed bridges over Spear Creek and the Buckley, Georgina and Rankine rivers meaning jeeps could avoid boggy causeways. Heavy use meant constant maintenance and by end 1943 the road was almost five metres wide, which it remained to war’s end.

Former serviceman Alex Tanner writes of the war roads in his 1995 book The Long Road North. His main focus was on the Stuart Highway, which linked Alice Springs with Darwin but the Barkly is also part of his story. Tanner notes the incredulity of local cattlemen who scoffed at the idea of putting an all-weather road over the treacherous black soil plains or sealing the stretches of shifting bulldust which grinds down to fine powder under the slightest of traffic. Nevertheless the power of bulldozers and graders made it happen.

Creeks were a major problem requiring reinforced concrete fords over larger creeks while smaller ones were kerbed and gravelled, as there was not enough time to install pipe drains. They pulled down trees with soft-tempered steel wire rope. Diesel-powered Caterpillar angledozers and trailbuilders worked around the clock to clear the land ahead of the formation graders with hurricane lamps used at nighttime. Problems included ever-present dust, flies, snakes and anthills which regenerated on the road as quickly as they were pulled down. Tanner took a four day journey from Alice to the Isa and on the last day “winding gullies cut deeply into the soft rock and the road traced a circuitous way in and out of gullies and narrow creek flats.” Late that day “the curling smoke from the mine stack at Mount Isa, hanging in the still afternoon sky, pointed the location of the dusty little mining town.”

List of the WW2 camps between Mount Isa and Yelvertoft (100km west).

The Pearl Harbor attack brought the US into the war in December 1941 and into Australia the following year. They used the railroad to Mount Isa and the new East-West road springing up to Tennant Creek. By early 1942, 56 trains a week were arriving in the Isa and American troops were stationed there until April 1943. The road west was thrashed by the huge increase in traffic with 1500 vehicles regularly using the road. Tanner said American jeep drivers were not disciplined when it came to speed limits and accidents were common. Crews were admonished for travelling 50mph “grossly excessive over the newly constructed gravel surface” while trucks overturned in the treacherous bulldust. The Mains Roads Commission had to rebuild the entire Queensland section in 12 months. A plan to build a pipeline from Isa to Birdum in NT to transport fuel was ruled out as impractical.

Initially the east-west road was unsealed but it was always Queensland’s intention to seal it. Based on the north-south experience the Allied Works Council decided the most appropriate technique was emulsified bitumen. A better method would have been “straight” bitumen heated in a continuous mixer but the quantities of fuel required made that prohibitive with few trees along the line. Emulsified bitumen was a more liquid product which penetrated into the gravel base rather than forming a carpet over it. Workers applied a primer coat of crude tar which sank into the gravel. A “tack” coat of emulsified bitumen was followed by a machine-rolled “penetration” coat and finally a seal coat with finer grit, rolled and drag broomed.

The high water content needed for emulsified bitumen was a transportation problem with few natural water supplies. They solved this by mixing the bitumen and emulsion at Mount Isa using the least amount of water, then transporting the rest to dumps along the road where the balance was added from bores. The emulsified bitumen was carried in 44 gallon drums to 400 ton dumps spread at 32km intervals. The final cost of the road was £1,020,700, a substantial amount at the time. But the end product was testament to the army’s work. The legacy of the road was that it was unaltered for another 20 years improving the lives of North West Queenslanders and making the rest of the state and the Territory accessible.

Mount Isa to Brisbane via Charleville

Last weekend was time for another big drive from Mount Isa to Brisbane. I’ve done it several times stopping in different places such as Winton, Blackall, or doing it in one hit. This time I stayed in Charleville, not a normal stop as I usually take the short cut from Augathella to Morven. But I wanted to visit the Cosmos Centre observatory on a Friday night plus the town’s parkrun the following morning. I left Mount Isa in the dark at 5am and caught the dawn south of Cloncurry, with bonus cattle crossing their field.

About 100km south of Cloncurry is McKinlay. There’s not much here as the town’s service station-cum-shop closed down a couple of years ago leaving Walkabout Creek Hotel as the town’s only business. It is the site of the pub scenes in the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. The movie set is at the back of the pub for people to visit. I was there in 2016 when the town celebrated the 30th anniversary of the movie with a weekend of celebrations as the town swelled from 15 to 300 people.

A further 200km south there are reminders of other movies as I drive through the striking terrain of Winton Shire. Winton is the home of the Outback Film Festival, held a week ago and its wild west locations attracts many filmmakers. John Hillcoat filmed the Meat Pie western The Proposition here in 2005.

For a remote Western Queensland town, Barcaldine, 110km east of Longreach, has a surprisingly strong link to the Labor Party. Labor mythology says the party was founded under the town’s Tree of Knowledge after the 1891 Shearers’ Strike. Near the tree is the Workers Heritage Centre, in the grounds of the former Barcaldine State School. It opened in 1991 containing historical exhibits about labour history and the strike. After a major upgrade, the Queensland premier reopened the facility on the 130th anniversary of the Shearers’ Strike in May.

The oldest town in Central West Queensland is Tambo. Many tribes lived in this fertile area on the Barcoo including the Wadjabangai. Sir Thomas Mitchell was the first European to explore here in 1846 and selectors followed in the 1860s. The town of Carrangarra was founded in 1863, renamed Tambo in 1868, the name from an Indigenous word meaning hidden place. Tambo remains charming and the Shire Hall is one of many grand buildings in the town.

I arrived at Charleville as the sun was setting, 12 hours after leaving Mount Isa. Glistening in the late evening sunshine is the 30 metre-high water tower on which Brisbane artist Guido van Helten painted a mural in May 2019. The mural is in Van Helten’s 3D monochromatic mural style and features four children intertwined through sport. Van Helten painted another tower on the same theme in Cunnamulla, 200km south.

My home for the night was the wonderful 1920s-style Corones Hotel. Remarkable Greek immigrant Harry Corones built the hotel when Charleville was a stopping point for international air travellers from Brisbane. Completed in 1929 after five years of planning and construction, the new hotel contained a lounge and writing room, a dining-room for 150 people, a barber’s shop, and a magnificent ballroom seating 320 people. Upstairs were ornate bathrooms, 40 rooms and a private lounge. It was “the best equipped and most up-to-date hotel outside the metropolis”. Aviator Amy Johnson stayed here on her flight from Britain to Australia in 1930, filling her hotel bath with 24 magnums of champagne which guests drank in her honour. Other visitors included Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, the Wright brothers, Nancy Bird and English singer Gracie Fields. Fields caused a sensation when she stood at the open windows and sang the song “Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye” in Beatles Let it Be-style to a large crowd outside.

That evening I braved the south-west Queensland winter chill and went to the Cosmos Centre observatory on the edge of town. I hadn’t been here in 10 years and I was looking forward to stargazing. I was doubly lucky. Firstly they had unusual winter rain and a cloudy evening 24 hours earlier, and secondly it was a new moon, so perfect for stargazing. They had three telescopes for 30 people and we had opportunities to look at the Alpha Centauri double star, the Jewel Box star cluster, Omega Centauri cluster, a nebula in Carinae, and finished with Saturn and her rings, magnificently rising in the low eastern sky.

On my way to parkrun the following morning I passed a peculiar Charleville attraction, the Vortex Rainmaking Guns off the road to Cunnamulla. The guns were the brainchild of Queensland meteorologist Clement Wragge, the man who first named cyclones, in his 1902 plan to seed clouds with rain during the five-year Federation Drought. The idea was based on guns Italian grapegrowers successfully used to dispel hailstorms. Wragge’s guns were unsuccessful. The drought eventually broke at the end of 1902 and 10 Charleville guns were abandoned and left to rot until most became dilapidated and sold for scrap. Today two guns remain intact, lovingly restored in Charleville’s biggest park.

That park, Graham Andrews park, gives its name to Charleville’s parkrun. Andrews was mayor of Murweh Shire (which includes Charleville) from 1988-2008. The Graham Andrews parkrun was tricky thanks to recent rain making the course slippery. I found the complex figure eight course hard to follow in places. Those are my excuses anyway, for a time of 24.18 for the 5km, about 30 seconds slower than usual. It was my 90th parkrun and my 32nd different course.

After freshening up and enjoying breakfast, I continued east along the Warrego Highway to Morven. Named for a town in Aberdeenshire, Morven lost its only pub to fire in 2016. Devastated by its absence in the community, eight families banded together to build a new one. The result is Sadleir’s Waterhole, which was the town’s name until 1876. The pub is a low-set, modern-looking building with a big front deck built on the site of the old hotel. Down the road in Muckadilla, another pub is rising from the ashes of a 2019 fire, which I’m pleased about having fond memories of the Mucka pub from my Roma days.

Around 50km east of Morven, near the even smaller town of Mungallala is Ooline Park. The Ooline tree (Cadellia pentastylis) is a vulnerable species with rainforest origins two million years back to the Pleistocene Era when Australia was much wetter. The tree is of biogeographic and horticultural interest as a relic of an extensive rainforest vegetation that once covered much of Australia and it is a sole species. Oolines grow to 10m, and rarely to 25m with dark, hard and scaly bark. It was widespread in the bottle tree-dominated softwood scrubs, brigalow and belah areas of central and southern Queensland and north-western New South Wales but after extensive land clearing (now outlawed), it is now restricted from west of Rockhampton to the NSW border.

South of the Warrego, 50km west of Roma, is Mount Abundance. The area was the home of the Mandandanji people who enjoyed its rich landscape and fertile soil. NSW Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell also saw the area’s potential when he came through in 1846 naming the mountain for its sign of plenty. “I ascended an elevated north-eastern extremity of Mount Abundance, and from it beheld the finest country I had ever seen in a primeval state—a champagne region, spotted with wood, stretching as far as human vision or even the telescope could reach,” he wrote. Mitchell’s “champagne” meant lightly wooded though others were drunk at the prospects he described. A son of Mitchell’s friend named Allan Macpherson was quick to take up Mt Abundance and though Macpherson failed in his accommodation with unhappy prior owners, less scrupulous owners cleared out the black inhabitants in the frontier war that followed, with the assistance of Native Police. Mt Abundance was also the last place Ludwig Leichhardt was heard from before his party disappeared in 1848.

Mitchell was the first European to see Brachychiton rupestris, the Queensland Bottle Tree, which like the ooline thrives in south-western Queensland. He selected the genus name to honour Henry De la Beche, head of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, while rupestris (meaning living among rocks) alludes to the rocky hilltop habitat Mitchell observed at Mt Abundance. The fat tree trunk reaches a 2m diameter after five to eight years, with a maximum height of 18-20m. The tree drops leaves before the flowering period of October to December. The characteristic bottle shape develops in five to eight years. The canopy will also thin out during a drought. This hardy species is endemic to Central Queensland through to northern New South Wales, growing in heavy clay soil, silt, sand and volcanic rocks. Roma’s largest bottle tree has a girth of 9.51 metres, a height of six metres and a crown of 20 metres, The century-old tree was transplanted in 1927 from a local property to site in town near the Bungil Creek. Roma historian Peter Keegan tells me there is an even wider tree near Mt Abundance, though we never got around to looking for it.

Entitled “A Bush Conversation” this Dion Cross installation featuring two chatty cockatoos was the People’s Choice winner in the Sculptures Out Back Exhibition 2021 by the side of the highway on the eastern approach to Roma near the Big Rig. Dion’s vision was to show the need for conversation in the often lonely bush environment. “A yarn in the back paddock can make a big difference,” Dion said. Sculptures Out Back is an outdoor exhibition that runs annually from July to September. Artists are invited to display their works by contacting the Roma on Bungil Gallery Committee.

The Boonarga Cactoblastic Hall, 12km east of Chinchilla, is probably the only building in Australia named for an insect. The South American cactoblastis was introduced to consume prickly pear, the common name for several cacti species of the American native genus Opuntia. Prickly pears arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788 as Governor Arthur Phillip saw them as the basis for a possible cochineal industry. The prickly pear got out of control as it was drought resistant, had no natural predators, loved the climate and its tough seeds passed through the digestive system of birds ready for germination. With much of Queensland’s pasture land overrun by the pest, government scientist Dr Jean White turned to another invader to solve the problem. Her experiments at Chinchilla led to the introduction of the Cactoblastis cactorum moth in 1926 that eventually brought prickly pear under control. Cactoblastis is a moth which feeds on cacti in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil. It proved ideal for the Australian task, a rare example of an introduced predator achieving its outcome without unintended consequences.

Around 30km west of Dalby is Macalister, named for an early Queensland premier. Macalister is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town where traffic is only forced to slow down to 80kph. There are no shops but it has two distinguishing features. In the foreground is the chute that loaded coal from nearby Wilkie Creek mine to the rail line by the side of the highway. Peabody closed the mine in 2013 and when I was working in Dalby in 2015 there was a shortlived plan for a Japanese company to reopen it. But making money from coal is increasingly difficult and climate change will ensure the remaining coal will stay in the ground. In the background is the still active GrainCorp silo. The country between Dalby and Chinchilla is renowned for its high yield crops which end up in the Macalister silo for processing.

Botswana: A United Kingdom

Ruth and Seretse Khama arrive at Southampton in 1950 with baby daughter Jaqueline.

The 2016 film A United Kingdom tells of the love story between Englishwoman Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama, heir to the throne of Bechuanaland, and later president of the successor nation of Botswana. While they created a “united kingdom” of sorts (Khama had renounced his right to the throne by the time he led Botswana as president), the name is a reminder of the United Kingdom behaving badly again as a colonial power. The film has been praised for the acting of leads Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo but was also criticised for being cosy and sentimental. Nevertheless it tells a remarkable true story, based on Susan Williams’ nonfiction book Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation, and is worthy of big screen treatment.

Khama was studying law in England after World War II when he met Ruth Williams, a clerk for Cuthbert Heath, a firm of underwriters for Lloyd’s of London. They met at a London Missionary Society dance and bonded over their love of jazz, particularly American vocal jazz group The Ink Spots. Khama was the son of the kgosi (a Bamangwato title meaning king, though the British preferred paramount chief). The Bamangwato were the ruling tribe of Bechuanaland and one of the Tswana people that gave its name to Botswana (Land of the Tswana) when it achieved independence in 1966.

It was a long road to independence. Bechuanaland’s proximity to the Cape Colony was a double-edged sword. Trade with southern merchants brought prosperity, but it also brought Boer migrants to the borderlands. An 1860 peace agreement established the current-day South Africa-Botswana border. Christian missionaries including the LMS took advantage of the peace to establish a strong foothold and links with Bechuana elites that would eventually lead to the fateful meeting between Williams and Khama.

The movie condenses their courtship but they dated for a year before marrying in September 1948. While the couple loved each other, no one else was happy with the match. In post-war Britain, only 0.02 percent of the people were black. Prejudice was widespread and interracial couples were largely nonexistent. Ruth’s father, George Williams, disowned his daughter. Though not depicted in the film, her employers fired her.

There were also political implications as Bechuanaland was a British protectorate after the war. Britain was dealing with partition in India and did not want another fractured colony. The film’s “Sir Alistair Canning” is fictional but Britain strongly opposed the marriage. South Africa was about to implement apartheid including a ban on interracial marriage and their regime was appalled. There were concerns South Africa would invade and even if they didn’t, they could not be ignored. Britain relied on South African gold and uranium. Seretse’s uncle, Tshekedi Khama, who was acting king, also strongly opposed the union.

The couple married in a civil ceremony after the Bishop of London refused consent. After living in London, Seretse returned to Bechuanaland and was confronted by his uncle. Tshekedi demanded the right to choose his nephew’s partner, someone from their own country, preferably of royal blood. He wanted Seretse to divorce his wife or renounce his right to the throne. Seretse would do neither. During meetings in 1948, Seretse tried to convince his Bamangwato tribe, finally getting their support to accept him as chief (kgosi) at a tribal meeting (kgotla) in June 1949. Ruth joined Seretse in Bechuanaland after the kgotla but had her own difficulties being accepted by black and white. Fortunately her arrival in August 1949 coincided with the best rainy season in decades, a good omen for the Bamangwato who called her the Rain Queen.

Despite the kgotla’s decision, Britain had other ideas. They appointed Walter Harrigan as judge of the High Court of Bechuanaland Protectorate to conduct an inquiry into the legitimacy of the kgotla and whether Khama was a “fit and proper person” to be chief. Harrigan was a disappointment to Whitehall. His report showed the opposite of what they had hoped, exposing the real reasons the British government didn’t want Seretse as kgosi. The embarrassed government hid the Harrigan Report until 1981.

Failing to get legal satisfaction, Britain resorted to trickery. They invited Khama to London who left a pregnant Ruth behind in case she was barred from leaving England again. The British government asked him to relinquish all claims to the chieftainship in exchange for a yearly tax-free stipend of £1000. He refused. In 1951 Britain barred him from returning to Botswana for five years, citing bogus findings in the secret report. Seretse was allowed to go home in 1950 for the birth of his first child, after which he brought Ruth to England, where she reconciled with her father.

Living in exile in Croydon, Khama urged the British people to unseat the Labour government at the 1951 election. They did, but reinstalled Tory prime minister Winston Churchill reneged on his pre-election promise to let him go home. Not only did he uphold the ban, he made it permanent. Now in opposition, younger Labour MPs such as Tony Benn and Fenner Brockway supported Khama’s cause. There were popular campaigns to overturn the ban in England and Bechuanaland. After protest, Seretse and Tshekedi presented an agreement to the British government. Seretse would renounce the kgosi and would return as a private citizen. Tshekedi would also not claim the chieftainship for himself or his children. Britain agreed to this arrangement and in 1956, they ended Seretse’s banishment.

Back home Khama founded the Bechuanaland Democratic Party in 1961 and won the 1965 elections, the prelude to independence which Bechuanaland achieved in 1966 as the republic of Botswana. Khama was elected its first president. He had a daunting task. Botswana was the world’s third-poorest country, had minimal infrastructure and 12 kilometres of paved roads, and had only 22 university graduates and 100 secondary school graduates. Khama transformed Botswana into an export-based economy, built around beef, copper and diamonds, helped by the 1967 discovery of Orapa’s diamond deposits. He served four terms between 1966 and 1980 with Ruth a politically active first lady and mother of four children. Khama died in office in 1980 aged 59 after contracting cancer of the abdomen.

Ruth continued charitable works – running women’s clubs, president of the Botswana Red Cross, and involvement with the girl guides. She died in 2002 of throat cancer aged 78. Their son Ian Khama followed in his father’s footsteps serving as the fourth president of the Republic of Botswana from 2008 to 2018. Botswana remains a rare example of a successful African democracy with good quality of life, something Seretse and Ruth can claim much credit for.

When Malcolm Turnbull stopped at nothing

A photo of Malcolm Turnbull eating a camel pie in Birdsville in 2015 noting he became prime minister a few weeks later.

Annabel Crabb’s short biography of Malcolm Turnbull “Stop at Nothing” was published around the 2016 election but before the result was announced. There was an assumption that Turnbull would win that election in reasonable comfort and rule another 10 years or so in John Howard-style. But like Howard in his second election in 1998, Turnbull stumbled over the line. Unlike Howard who had a clear run in his own party-room, Turnbull remained hostage to the climate wars that dogged the Liberals since his first sacking in 2009. Another journalist, Nikki Sava told the story of how Morrison eventually unseated Turnbull in 2018. Turnbull’s resignation made Crabb’s book less relevant to day-to-day politics but she has an enjoyable wry style and Turnbull has led a wildly interesting life so it was enjoyable read.

Crabb starts with the shocking moment Turnbull lost his father Bruce, which also featured in the SBS Who Do You Think You Are episode about Turnbull’s ancestors. Bruce Turnbull raised Malcolm alone since his mother Coral Landsbury walked out on the family. In the SBS show Turnbull said her absence “crept up on me like a slow chill of the heart”. Bruce died aged 56 in a single-engine New South Wales air crash in 1982. Malcolm was 28 and had just become a father himself. It “smashed him up” as Crabb said. The book and SBS show recount the story when Malcolm was a boy and Bruce saved his life when he got in trouble in the Bondi surf. Bruce taught Malcolm to forgive his mother for leaving them when he was just eight, something Turnbull noted with approval in Who Do You Think You Are when a similar story of forgiveness for a mother’s infidelity was unearthed about his bygone relatives.

Crabb says Turnbull’s life was driven by ambition which changed abruptly when he finally became prime minister in 2015. It has been a colourful life, full of “hinterland” as George Brandis called it. Turnbull loved being prime minister, unlike his predecessor Tony Abbott who was a better opposition leader. Turnbull’s “crowning misadventure” as opposition leader was the grand bargain he wanted on a carbon price with the Rudd government in 2009. But Turnbull was driven on by extraordinary expectations and his determination to meet them. After considering retiring, he stayed on to become Australia’s 29th prime minister six years later.

Turnbull was famous long before he entered politics. He first came to public attention in the 1970s as a University of Sydney student working for the Nation Review, radio station 2SM and Channel Nine. He flogged jingles to ad man John Singleton who introduced him to Kerry Packer. He became Packer’s “Boy Friday”, then spectacularly won the Spycatcher case, before leading the Republic campaign to defeat in 1999.

Crabb tells the strange story of “The Cat”. In 1977 Turnbull was dating Fiona Watson, stepdaughter of Labor senator “Diamond” Jim McClelland. It was a turbulent relationship which Watson decided to end. Turnbull wrote letters to Watson’s cat, exhorting its owner to take him back. One day Watson found the cat dead outside her home. There is no evidence Turnbull killed the cat, but rumours spread. Those rumours which spread into print were quickly met with Turnbull writs. “No cat died at my hands,” Turnbull told Crabb, but the story remains Sydney folklore.

Turnbull joined Packer’s organisation after Bruce’s death in 1982. Shortly after starting at Consolidated Press he became embroiled in the Costigan Royal Commission investigating dodgy union dealings. The Commission heard secret evidence that a well-known Australian businessman was involved in drug-running, pornography and murder. The National Times published extracts from the hearings calling the businessman “The Goanna”. Sydney graffiti identified Packer as the Goanna. Turnbull persuaded Packer to counter-attack, believing the Commission was leaking the information. Packer publicly identified himself as the Goanna, refuted the allegations and blasted the Commission. Turnbull went on the air defending his boss, raising the ire of fellow barristers for his unorthodox behaviour.

In private practice in 1986 he received a brief from barrister Geoffrey Robertson to fight for former British Intelligence Officer Peter Wright to publish his memoir Spycatcher in Australia, which the British government wanted to ban. Turnbull was told the case was unwinnable and he was probably bugged but chose to continue. He indulged in fake conversations and hoax faxes to put the opposition off. He even contacted British Labour opposition leader Neil Kinnock to get him to (reluctantly) attack Attorney-General Michael Havers for lying about secret letters that incriminated aristocrat Victor Rothschild in leaking Wright’s intelligence secrets. Kinnock was criticised for accepting the call with one MP saying it was if he had spoken to General Galtieri for a chat about tactics during the Falklands War. Turnbull won the case making Spycatcher a best seller, and him a household name on two continents.

As a lawyer Turnbull later worked against Packer, acting for American junk bond holders owed money by Fairfax in 1991. Turnbull litigated against Fairfax and its bankers for misleading conduct saying the company had overly optimistic projections when touting for loan funds. He called off the threat when Fairfax finally took the holders as serious a creditor as its banks. It got them a seat at the bargaining table when a group called Tourang including Packer and Conrad Black looked to take over the company. When leaked papers showed Packer’s intentions to be more interventionist than he publicly stated, some wondered if Packer’s ex-lawyer was doing the leaking. Turnbull denied it but admitted he was feuding with Packer. When the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal threatened an investigation, Packer withdrew from the syndicate, leaving the Fairfax empire in Black’s hands.

While Turnbull had no overarching political philosophy, Crabb said he was driven into politics in 2004 by a mixture of aptitude and ambition, a sense of public service, and the “gravitational pull of fate”. A sleight of hand involving branch stacking also helped to unseat MP Peter King in Wentworth, the wealthiest electorate in Australia. Turnbull thought he was the obvious choice to replace John Howard as leader in 2007 when Peter Costello stood aside but an ABC interview where he slammed WorkChoices cost him the vote against Brendan Nelson. Nelson was hapless and quickly replaced by Turnbull. Paul Keating told a worried Kevin Rudd that Turnbull was brilliant and utterly fearless but had an Achilles Heel: he lacked judgement. That cost him dear in 2009 when he went too hard on the Godwin Grech affair.

Grech was Turnbull’s Treasury mole, keeping him one step ahead of the government’s response to the GFC. When Grech supplied details of a car financial assistance scheme with a supposed email from a Queensland dealer wanting special treatment, Turnbull demanded the resignations of PM Rudd and his treasurer Wayne Swan. It was revealed Grech had faked the email and Turnbull crashed, eventually falling on his sword over the carbon pricing deal when Andrew Robb reneged his support. After a “bleak period” of introspection, Turnbull stayed on as a “loyal” Abbott frontbencher and then government minister from 2013.

Crabb pinpoints the time when Turnbull realised his boss was not suitable for the job. In May 2015 under advice from Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, Abbott wanted to strip suspected terrorists of Australian citizenship, which would have breached Australia’s UN obligation to prevent statelessness. Turnbull railed against Abbott’s pointless war on “death cults” and delivered a powerful speech to the Sydney Institute on the rule of law and civil liberties. When he was finally elevated to the top job, he wanted to be more consultative than Abbott who relied exclusively on his chief-of-staff Peta Credlin (Abbott cabinet meetings without her in the room were much shorter because ministers knew they needed her approval for their ideas).

Turnbull was done in by the same numbers that did in Abbott. Treasurer Scott Morrison thought Turnbull supported him on his idea to raise the GST and use the funds for tax cuts. Backbenchers were furious at having to sell the hike for only moderate economic gain and Turnbull backed off leaving Morrison high and dry. After 30 successive Newspolls Turnbull’s numbers were still behind Labor, and his time was up by his own method of indication. When conservatives led by Peter Dutton eventually came for him, Morrison squeaked in the back door and won the 2019 election Turnbull believed was his for the taking.

Now Turnbull has time for kayaking on his beloved Sydney Harbour and seeing resemblances to his own life in his family tree. Crabb, speaking to Turnbull before his fall, gets one final quote. “I’m either ahead of my time or behind it. I don’t know which.” Turnbull is an extraordinary and brilliant man, but the times have moved on without him. Turnbull points to Same Sex Marriage as an important legacy but that was poisoned by the long-winded way it had to be done. The tragedy of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministerial reign was his failure to reshape Australia in his own forward-looking image.