Author: IVAN BARKO
Explorations No 28 (Jun 2000): 10-23
https://doi.org/10.62586/RXVC1474
Twice within a hundred years the French Government, in 1900 and in 2000, closed down its Melbourne Consulate General, and transferred its functions to the Sydney Consulate General. In the years and months leading to the proclamation of the new Commonwealth of Australia in January 1901, the Consul General in Sydney, Georges Biard d’Aunet, recommended that French consular functions in the new Federation be centralised in Sydney, and that Melbourne be downgraded to vice-consulate status under his control. His recommendation was eventually approved by Paris. This article records Biard d’Aunet’s pyrrhic victory and his trials under the new arrangement when his work was undermined both in Melbourne and in Paris by his critics and enemies.
Keywords: Biard d’Aunet, Consul General Sydney, Consulate General Sydney, Consulate General Melbourne