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Strict immigration curbs keep Australia rather empty, but safe for seven million inhabitants who prefer kangaroos to competition. Even when it came to picking the King's Governor General for the Dominion, the Australian Labor Party wanted no "foreigners" to succeed the Duke of Gloucester (whose chief of staff had been charged with an unfair labor practice after a row with his valet). So Prime Minister Joseph B. Chifley, an ex-locomotive engineer, produced from the Labor Party's own marsupial pouch the new Governor General, William John McKell, Prime Minister of New South Wales.

King George had gently suggested that his representative be someone less active in party politics than Billy McKell. When Chifley, who under the Statute of West minster has the last word, overruled the King, official London was quietly horrified. (An editor privately muttered: "If the King suggests, dammit, that should be enough.")

Billy McKell would not be the first home-grown Governor General; a distinguished lawyer. Sir Isaac Isaacs, had been that. But Billy would be the first who was an ex-boxer, ex-boilermaker, butcher's son.

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