122350

BR TO GEORGE CAIGER, 22 JUNE 1950
BRACERS 122350. TEL(X). Australian Inst. International Affairs
Edited by Kenneth Blackwell and Andrew Bone. Reviewed by Sheila Turcon

AIRCRAFT VHEAC HARRY HAWKER SYDNEY RADIO
3/PM 22ND^{1 , 2}

CAIGER³
369 GEORGE STREET
SYDNEY

ACCEPT GOVERNORS INVITATION⁴ THANKS

RUSSELL

Notes

• 1.

  [document] The telegram was edited from a photocopy of an Overseas Telegram Commission (Aust.) form, which shows a date-received stamp made by a Sydney office.

• 2.

  [address] This telegram was probably sent when BR was airborne, for the apparent transmission time (“3/PM 22ND”) was some hours before his QEA–BOAC flight from London to Sydney landed at Darwin to refuel for a final time. The aircraft in which BR flew, a VH-EAC Lockheed 749 Constellation, was known as the “Harry Hawker” — after the Australian aviation pioneer of that name.

• 3.

  [recipient] As general secretary of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, George Caiger was one of the chief organizers of BR’s lecture tour and accompanied the visiting speaker to Queensland (8–17 July 1950). A Japanese-language expert, Caiger served at the rank of Major during World War II on the military intelligence staff of General MacArthur, Allied Supreme Commander in the Far East. Before assuming his administrative duties at the AIIA in 1948, Caiger hosted ABC radio’s popular weekly discussion programme, Nation’s Forum of the Air, and after his three-year appointment at the think-tank ended in May 1951 he became a public relations officer for the University of New South Wales (see J.D. Legge, Australian Outlook: A History of the Australian Institute of International Affairs [St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999], pp. 104–5).

• 4.

  ACCEPT GOVERNORS INVITATION BR was probably agreeing to an audience with retired General Sir John Northcott (1890–1960), who had become the first Australian-born Governor of New South Wales after accepting this office (which he held for eleven years) in 1946. Northcott’s last military command was of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force of post-war Japan; he was also a patron of the state branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He would meet BR in Sydney on 26 June 1950.