A little known fact about Australia is that it’s the second smallest country in Australia, the smallest being the Hutt River Province!

Hutt River Province seceded from Australia on the 21^st April 1970 with Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley at the helm. We were greeted by Princess Shirley as we crossed the border and entered the administrative offices of the Province to have our visa issued. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have passports and we could just both go on the same visa if we liked to save some money!

Hutt River Province, or HRP to the locals, became a sovereign state after the Australian Government imposed wheat export limits which Prince Leonard believed to be unfair. With the pen being mightier than the sword Prince Leonard claimed that Stirling had only ever proclaimed the Swan River Settlement and had never proclaimed Western Australia as a state and as such, he was claiming the land as his own…he was in fact right and successfully seceded from Australia. Funnily enough, the sword did then become mightier than the pen as HRP declared war against Australia at which the Parliament laughed. Prince Leonard however was laughing 3 days later when he undeclared war and in doing so became an undefeated nation which gave him additional international rights and protection!

We continued our tour and viewed the local church, the post office where we bought some HRP stamps to post postcards in the HRP mail system and also traded in the local currency. The tour was complete with a viewing of the royal cars (with WA number plates!) and of the National Museum.

We left HRP after turning our around Australia trip into an international holiday!