Mr.A.Cross of sleepy little Datchett, Berks., is suspected of having blue blood in his veins. A self-styled ‘Royal Family’ in Australia, says so. And wants Mr.Cross, in the High-st., to pay Stg.10 pounds to become The Honourable A.Cross.
My audience yesterday with His Royal Highness, Kevin, Prince Regent, of Hutt River Province, reveals that scores of Britons thought to have traces of nobility in their family trees, are being sought to have ‘honours’ bestowed on them by a tiny, Australian outback cult that seceded from Australia 26 years ago - printed their own currency, stamps and passports - and got away with it.
Should Mr.Cross pursue the matter, I understand, a possible Earldom, or a Grand Dukedom is not entirely out of the question.
I discovered HRH Prince Kevin, 72, casually dressed in a golf shirt hanging outside his slacks, working on a stack of UK airmail letters when I arrived at his office in an industrial estate of car wreckers and pie factories on the Queensland Gold Coast. The mail contained answers from people who had been made offers of Citizenship to the breakaway Hutt River Province in the centre of Western Australia.
The Province’s heralds, I was told, are going through the population of England to come up with a list of people with traces of nobility in their ancestry. Lord Peter Regensburg had, on HRH’s behalf, sent off Official Documentations of Recognition informing recipients that for the small sum of Stg.10, they would receive a Royal Award Certificate enabling them to be known henceforth as The Honourable.
They would - if they accepted - be numbered among 20,000 Citizens of Hutt River Province scattered around the world. Or possibly one of 500 Knights, if they passed the rigid tests requiring recommendation from another Knight, and a review by committee of their peers who must have known them and their good works for more than 10 years.
How much, I wondered, should I have to give HRH Kevin to become a Knight? Prince Kevin (one of Hutt River’s six Princes, and who insists on the use of his title when you meet him) seemed put out by the vulgarity of the request. ‘You do not pay to become a Knight. You pay for the regalia, which costs between $600 and $1,500, depending upon the order bestowed on you.’ His is gold-plated and cost $1,500.
Hutt River Province is 18,000 acres of pasture 500 km north of Perth, where, in 1969, farmer Leonard Casley had a rich crop of wheat ready to harvest. He had invested $500,000 in property development and stock and he looked forward to a bumper wheat cheque which would be needed to re-imburse him. To his dismay, the government’s Wheat Quota Commission gave him notice that only a limited amount of his wheat could be sold, not enough to even pay his hire-purchase. Casley angrily gave notice that he would withdraw his land from the jurisdiction of the State of Western Australia and the Commonwealth of Australia, but would continue to show allegiance to the Queen. He had gone through old encyclopaedias and discovered that in Magna Carta, a reference to British law proclaimed a monarch to be in tort (in the wrong) if he or she allowed any injustice to be done to a subject. Casley believed what was happening to him was an injustice and despite his sworn allegiance, sent off a $52m. territorial compensation claim to Her Majesty through the West Australian Governor. There had also been talk of his land being resumed.
To the astonishment of top constitutional lawyers the "stubborn little Aussie battler" successfully maintained his stance that international conventions allowed him to form a "self-preservation government" if his land’s economy had been destroyed. He dispatched secession notices to the State and Commonwealth and proclaimed his farm as "The Principality of Hutt". He had stamps, currency and passports printed, and today tourist buses make their way to see the self-styled Prince Leonard, now 71 and still farming, and his Princess Shirley making scones.
Royal Highness Kevin (aka Kevin Dale, ex-cooking equipment salesman), in charge of the Province outpost for the last 20 years, told me: ‘I have had three heart attacks with the strain of it all. I have been under tremendous pressure, handling the ridicule, taking the back-stabbing. I’m about to give it all up. Retire. We had television crews from Paris, the US and Australia at our 26th. anniversary dinner and that was stress in itself.
‘People have tried to expose us, but there is nothing to expose. We raise funds for charity and every cent of those funds raised is published on the front page of our newsletter and goes straight to the cause it was raised for. We have two $25,000 humidicribs about to be flown to the Solomons. They were paid for by two American Knights.’
Why do people from 15 different countries want to become Knights, Dukes, Earls or ask to be awarded useless titles like The Serene Order of Leonard?
‘They enjoy dressing up; wearing the chains, the decorations and the regalia. Americans are the most interested in titles; then Germans run a close second followed by The Old Dart and Japan. They also enjoy raising money for worthy causes and having fun.’
What began as a belly-laugh script imitating the Peter Sellers movie "Passport to Pimlico", has become a small industry; five full-time workers run Prince Kevin’s office and there are 20 volunteers sending out stamps and passports. When a metropolitan daily published the New Year Honours, Hutt River minders managed to get its own list into the page: a pharmacist was created Knight of the Royal Order and a property man the Illustrious Order of Merit.
‘Whenever people laugh at us,’ says Prince Kevin, ‘I just say to Prince Leonard: "Stuff ‘em.’"
