Well, not really a province of anything! Leonard (not Rupert as I
accidentally typed previously) called himself a "prince" when he
declared independence, rather than a "king", specifically so that he
could  claim to be a loyal subject of the Queen, so that Australia
would not get all violent and attack his defenceless wheat farm.

His problem was that the Australian government arbitrarily decided
that through their "single desk" (government-monopolist) wheat
marketing company there would be production quotas in order to
maximise the wheat price for Australian producers as a whole.
Unfortunately they decided that Leonard's entire production was
surplus! Rendering him totally unable to sell his production!

After his declaration of independence he was notionally at war with
Australia, but without any intention of provoking hostilities. While
the Australian government did not officially recognise him, (thus, you
cannot officially use a Hutt River Province passport to enter
Australia), they did apparently leave him alone, although he, from
what I hear, makes "voluntary" financial payments in lieu of taxation
(in return for postal and other services) in order for Australia not
to consider his independence to be merely a tax dodge, and therefore
bring the power of the Australian Taxation Office down upon him, which
would be quite different than the threat of military action, which the
military well knows that he is merely an elderly man and his wife and
family, who is NOT going to hurt anyone, so it wouldn't be in the
terms of engagement of any Australian military force to attack a
clearly peaceful person like that.

It takes non-defence force personnel, as we have seen in "America", to
attack people for not making a military threat. Prince Leonard has
effectively mitigated this threat, and now, ironically, his major
economic activity is not wheat farming, but tourism! ;)

When my Dad was on his way around Australia a few years ago, on my
prompting, he called in there and spent some time with Prince Leonard
and his wife (Princess Shirley). I think there are also a number of
aborigines on the property, who are free to cross back and forth over
the HRP/Western Australia border, but he appears (appeared) unwilling
to test the (Commonwealth of) Australia government's patience by doing
anything provocative like allowing additional settlers or refugees or
anyone else to migrate to HRP, which would offend Australian
government immigration policies, which, obviously apply not only to
the nation of Australia, but to the entire continent (of Australia),
plus the claimed, surrounding islands and territories, whether or not
they are within the continental shelf. ... Effectively, Australia
exerts control over its territory PLUS the 200 mile (or whatever
distance it is) fishing control zone surrounding it.

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 1:37 PM, R.A. Hettinga <rah@...> wrote:
>
> On Jul 3, 2008, at 9:38 PM, Ian Green wrote:
>
>> Hutt River Province
>
> 
>
> Cheers,
> RAH
> Province of *what*, exactly... 
>