Post by rod222 on Jan 11, 2014 0:16:44 GMT
1981
Province of Bumbunga, South Australia.
Prince Andrew, looking a little like Tom Cruise.
Province of Bumbunga
The Province of Bumbunga comprises a three hectare strawberry farm located at Bumbunga, some eight kilometres from Lochiel and 137 kilometres north east of
Adelaide in South Australia.
The Province was proclaimed on January 1, 1979 by the owner of the property Mr. Alex Brackstone, a former circus monkey trainer who migrated from England after
World War II and who settled at Bumbunga after unsuccessfully mineral prospecting in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Mr. Brackstone's motives for taking this step were quite unlike those of Mr. Leonard Casley and Mr. Thomas Barnes who proclaimed their states (of Hutt River Province
and the Independent State of Rainbow Creek) as a result of fierce disputes with their respective governments.
The Bumbunga Province came into being for purely patriotic reasons as Mr. Brackstone was alarmed at the erosion of Royalist sentiment in Australia and what he
detected as the drift to Republicanism — particularly after the then Governor General Sir John Kerr dismissed the Whitlam Labour Government in 1975. In setting up the
Province of Bumbunga and proclaiming himself the Governor, Mr. Brackstone hoped to reverse this trend.
One of his chief weapons in this campaign against creeping Republicanism is his pride and joy, a 92,000 square foot strawberry patch which is shaped as a map of the United
Kingdom. It stretches 600 feet from the Isle of Wight to John O'Groats in Scotland and 350 feet from Land's End to Kent.
Governor Brackstone offered to perform marriage ceremonies in the Province for brides of noble British birth and he planned to import earth from the place of the
lady's birth in England and sprinkle it on the appropriate place amongst the 50,000 strawberry plants in his map. However, he encountered certain problems with this
plan as quarantine authorities confiscated Shipments of earth from the U.K.
