Dear Anne (Twomey),
I am writing to you in response to this video of yours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFyCGoxnR4&t=909s
sent to me by my Melbourne political friend Lorraine Pratley, whose acquaintance I made years after having left Australia permanently to live in Greece. I am a graduate of the University of Sydney but have not lived in Sydney since 1970, apart from one year in 1979.
I have ordered the book on Western Australian secession that you mention in your interview. I was attracted to the subject through my affectionate admiration for Gigi Foster, with whom I have had two-way verbal communication only through one video, which she unfortunately did not want to have aired very publicly. Perhaps one day she will change her mind. I have not yet seen what she has to say on the subject of Western Australian secession but am very curious to see what she has to say. . .
Yesterday I attended the opening of an exhibition on my home island of Aegina that was devoted to the life and times of Greece’s assassinated first governor Ioannis Capodistrias.
Everyone who spoke at the inauguration was oriented towards the date 26th January 2028, which is the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the modern Greek state in Aegina and 240th anniversary of the raising of the Union Jack at Port Jackson in New South Wales. Aeginetans have for many years tried to secure recognition of the date 26th January 1828 as the date on which the modern Greek state was founded, but nationally and internationally this is not recognized.
This is what Wikipedia says: In 1827, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was chosen by the Third National Assembly at Troezen as the first governor of the First Hellenic Republic. Kapodistrias established state, economic and military institutions. Tensions appeared between him and local interests and, following his assassination in 1831 and the London Conference of 1832, Britain, France and Russia installed Bavarian Prince Otto von Wittelsbach as monarch.[104] Otto’s reign was despotic, and in its first 11 years of independence Greece was ruled by a Bavarian oligarchy led by Josef Ludwig von Armansperg and, later, by Otto himself, as King and Premier.[104]
Following years of lobbying by Aeginetans, in 2014 (I think), the ceremony held annually in Aegina on 26th January was recognized in a Greek presidential decree as “a national festival of local significance”. This was welcomed in Aegina but by many is not recognized as going “far enough”.
Speaking personally, but not entirely as an individual, I see similarities between the constitutional problems of the Hellenic Republic and those of the Commonwealth of Australia. In Australia they came very much to light in the discussion around “the Voice” referendum The young Greek-Australian Kanellos Patsios
https://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=1313
says “Greece is experiencing an identity crisis and must go back to the origins of the Greek state”. The Voice referendum in my view was (and IS) symptomatic of a similar identity crisis of Australians who have tried to discover who they are by examining the origins of human habitation on the Australian continent tens of thousands of years ago. Australia’s political origins in fact are to be traced to the establishment of the New South Wales Legislative Council
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5kT5XdEKE&t=1s
in 1823, following the defeat of Napoleon and shortly before the establishment of the modern Greek state in Aegina on 26th January 1828.
This was the starting point in Australia for the process that led to Federation and everything that follows.
In 2026 the president of the New South Wales Legislative Council is Mr. Benjamin Franklin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E3GwaVA5fI
Mr. Franklin’s name is so serendipitous that even if in 2028 he is no longer president of the New South Wales Legislative Council he should be invited by the Aegina Municipal Council to participate in the ceremonies in Aegina celebrating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the modern Greek state.
https://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=1349
Do you agree?
With very best wishes,
Wayne Hall
Aegina, Greece