Thursday, 7 May 2026
Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of New South Wales

Bujari gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. 

Speaker of the Legislative Assembly,^[1] long-term Consuls, the 9 newly appointed Consuls – good evening all. 

Being in the diplomatic service always sounds so romantic. Where else, might we ask, can a profession place you at the centre of high matters of State; intelligence; security? Indeed, responsible for a new word in the English lexicon – a securocrat; perhaps a little James Bond espionage, once described as that ‘beguiling, seductive and normally misunderstood aspect of statecraft;’^[2] endless cocktail parties and dinners overlooking Sydney Harbour.

The reality, as you know only too well, is less romantic and more grounded – focused on relationships, and it follows people and community. As Tom Fletcher, former British diplomat and author of the book The Naked Diplomat says: “Behind the protocol, diplomacy is not a mysterious cult [at all].  Rather, he says, “at its essence it is about promoting co-existence.” 

At the less serious, but potentially more shrewd level, the early 20th century Italian diplomat Daniele Varè described diplomacy as “the art of letting other people have your way.”^[3] 

Back to the serious, this time to the wartime diplomat Harold Nicolson, who, in 1914 as a junior diplomat, was reputedly dispatched to the German embassy after it was discovered the British had given German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, the wrong declaration of war. Nicolson hastily replaced it with the correct one.^[4] Later, he aptly described the key qualities of the diplomat as “truthfulness, precision, calmness and modesty.”^[5] 

Diplomacy of course is an ancient art. In its Western emanation it is usually traced back to the ancient Greeks. Indeed, as you know, the word itself comes from the two Greek words ‘diplo’ meaning folded in two and the suffix ‘ma’ meaning object or document – often used in ancient Greece as a permit to travel.^[6] 

Diplomacy is also situational, requiring a knowledge and understanding of the country to which the diplomat is posted. And so this evening, without turning this elegant occasion into a diplomatic Trivial Pursuit, I thought I would expose you briefly to some of the great Australian inventions which not only changed the Australian landscape, but often the world’s.  

It is appropriate to commence this with the deep knowledge the Australian Aboriginal peoples had of their landscape. You will of course be familiar with their hunting instruments: the boomerang, the first aerodynamic instrument ever; and the woomera, a wooden spear-throwing device that’s thought to have four times the kinetic energy of an arrow launched from a compound bow.^[7]

Much less well known, if at all, is the Nobel Prize that they should have won. I won’t say it was a case of daylight robbery, and of course, timing is everything, in science as in life, but let me explain. 

There are some 200 Aboriginal nations within the Australian continental land mass and some 700 clans within those nations. It follows that sovereignty, diplomacy and trade were integral to their co-existence. They travelled, spoke multiple languages and had well-understood conventions on entering each other’s nation. 

I speak of course of a time commencing some 60,000 years ago, when Australia’s First Nations people, without a car, a plane, or even a bike, without a written language, as we know it, let alone a compass – which was not invented until the 4th century BC by our good friends the Chinese – traversed the continent using a sophisticated memory system based on the stars, the landscape, and the seasons, and passed their knowledge down the generations, often by song. 

The ancient Greek ‘Memory Palace’ system for memorising information was not dissimilar. That, however, was not created until the mid 5th century BC. We are of course grateful to our Greek friends for that, and I should add that it was written about by the Romans, especially Cicero, and the Renaissance litterati were captivated by it, embedding it in the scholarship of the day. We thank our Italian friends for making this Greek gift available more widely. 

However, it is important to note that that a recent study at Monash University found that the Indigenous Australian memory system was superior to the ancient Greek ‘Memory Palace’ as a learning tool for their medical students – and the students found that learning was more enjoyable.^[8]

But here is the rub: in 2014, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for neuroscientific research by a British-American and two Norwegian scientists into how memory and spatial awareness are intertwined in the hippocampus^[9] – in effect they explained the scientific basis for the ancient Greek Memory Palace system of learning and the Indigenous memory system used to trek across thousands of kilometres.

Given the sophistication of the superior Indigenous system as I have explained, it has occurred to me that the 2014 Nobel Prize belongs here with Indigenous Australians, which would have been Australia’s 16th Nobel Prize. Of the 15 that Australians have won, nine have been in medicine, including Howard Florey, who transformed penicillin from a laboratory curiosity into a life-saving drug in 1941, saving untold lives in World War II and since, although as we know the bugs are now fighting back. Australians have also been awarded three Noble Prizes in physics, two in chemistry, and one in literature. 

But what of all our other amazing inventions? – some quintessentially Australian, nearly all of international renown, and most of which have had significant health and other impacts globally. 

1950s: the black box

Take, for example, the black box flight recorder, which is actually coloured orange, invented by Australian scientist Dr David Warren, who lost his own father to an aircraft tragedy in 1934. A black box is now installed on every commercial plane around the world, but it was in Australia that they were first made compulsory for all commercial flights.

1970s: the Cochlear implant

At Melbourne University in the 1970s Professor Graeme Clark invented the first bionic ear – internationally known as the Cochlear implant – implanted into the head to electronically stimulate the auditory nerve. Professor Clark’s motivation to advance hearing-loss technology was spawned from his own father’s inadequate hearing. So far, the Cochlear implant has changed the lives of over 300,000 people around the world, with more than half of those children.^[10]

1992: Wi-Fi

In 1992 John O’ Sullivan and the CSIRO developed Wi-Fi technology, used by more than a billion people around the world today. The core parts of the technology came out of research in the mid-1970s in the field of radio astronomy, when John and his colleagues at the CSIRO were originally looking for the faint echoes of black holes. 

1999: Spray-on skin

In 1999, Perth-based plastic surgeon Professor Fiona Wood patented her spray-on skin technique, which involves taking a small patch of the victim’s healthy skin and using it to grow new skin cells in a laboratory. The new skin cells are then sprayed on the victim’s damaged skin. Fiona and her spray-on skin technique played a key role in treating burns victims from the 2002 Bali bombings. Fiona and her team are credited with saving the lives of 28 people.

1990s: Gardisal 

The Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine was created by University of Queensland researchers Professor Ian Frazer and the late Dr Jian Zhou in the 1990s. In 2006, the TGA approved Gardasil, and a year later, Australia became the first country to roll out a national HPV vaccination program. Since its commercial release, the vaccine has significantly lowered the risk of human papilloma virus-related cancers for thousands of people around the world, and is distributed in 130 countries.

2000s: Google Maps

The platform for Google Maps was developed here in Sydney in the early 2000s, after which its Danish creators, with two Australians, established the small startup Where 2 Technologies – which was acquired by Google in 2004. 

There are so many more:

• The electronic pacemaker
• The first self-regulating artificial heart – created by an Australian engineer whose father, incidentally, had heart failure which was the impetus for Daniel Timms to find a solution. 
• The ultrasound scanner
• Extended-wear contact lenses
• Plastic spectacle lenses
• Stainless steel dental braces 
• Zinc cream
• Plastic banknotes
• The electric drill
• Inflatable aircraft escape slides and rafts
• Dual flush toilets
• The Victa lawnmower
• The Hills Hoist, a rotating clothesline that could be raised and lowered
• Permaculture
• The winged keel yacht
• Permanent-crease clothing.

Australian cuisine

Turning to an entirely different area of invention, the interwar period saw Australian cuisine lift to internationally renowned level with those quintessentially Aussie creations: vegemite and Aeroplane Jelly, which coincidentally also spawned a musical genre – the advertising jingle – that was as popular as the product. 

Vegemite came onto Australian shelves in 1923, created by Chemist CP Callister as a competitor for the British product Marmite. Not an instant hit, the product was endorsed a decade later by the British Medical Association and has never looked back. It was rationed in World War II so as to keep up the supply to Australia’s armed forces. In 1981, Vegemite’s iconic status was cemented when it featured in the song Down Under by Aussie pop icons Men at Work. It has Halal certification so everyone here can be ‘happy little Vegemites’ to use a very familiar local phrase.  

Aeroplane Jelly is a story of what can happen when ingenuity and generosity join hands. In the early 1930s, local tram driver Bert Appleroth began making jelly crystals in his bathtub, which he handed out to tired evening commuters on his Sydney tram route. His jellies are immortalised in the Aeroplane Jelly jingle, which is still used in today’s advertising. More than twenty million packets of Aeroplane Jelly are sold into homes across Australia annually. Aeroplane Jelly also has a range of halal-suitable jellies – blackberry, creaming soda, lemon, lime and mango amongst others. 

1938: Aerogard

Although not a food, but an essential at every Aussie BBQ – Aerogard. In 1938, CSIRO scientist Doug Waterhouse was working on a repellent to tackle the sheep blowfly, but with the arrival of World War II, he turned his attention to protecting allied troops from mosquitoes. By 1943, his repellent (referred to by the troops as 'Mary'), had been widely deployed across the Pacific. But it wasn’t until 1963 that the life-saving formula became a household name, when Queen Elizabeth II used the spray before a game of golf, and enjoyed a swat-free game. Australian insecticide company Mortein asked CSIRO for the formula, and soon Mortein’s Aerogard became, as I have said the must-have item at every Australian BBQ.

Coincidentally, another item you might see at an Aussie BBQ is the wine cask – or, wine-in-a-box – which yes, is another ingenious local invention.

In conclusion, as once again tonight we celebrate you, the consular Corps in Sydney, I toast all our new and not-so-new Consular Corps members to the tune of Happy Little Vegemites. And remember – Vegemite is good for you. [Happy Little Vegemites song played over microphone].