Heart of the Nation: Principality of Hutt River

IT'S been a tough few months for His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I of Hutt.

Hutt River

IT'S been a tough few months for His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I of Hutt.

The 88-year-old ruler of the Principality of Hutt River, a micronation 600km north of Perth, lost his wife, Princess Shirley, in July. "It's been a struggle," he says. "I miss her. In 66 years of marriage we never had a bad word." Only now is the heavy pall of grief lifting a little, he adds. The closeness of his family - he has seven children, 20 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren - is a huge comfort.

Also, duty calls: he has a country to run. The place has come a long way since 1970, when Leonard Casley, as he was then, seceded his wheat farm from Australia in a row over production quotas that would have put him out of business. His 75sqk m realm has all the trappings of statehood. It issues its own currency, stamps and passports (13,000 are held by dual citizens living overseas; only about 30 people live in Hutt River). It has its own tax system, and laws issued by a government of five ministers. What it lacks, though, is recognition: apart from consular relations with the Ivory Coast and Benin in west Africa, no other countries have acknowledged its sovereign status. And relations with Canberra remain "strained", the prince says; but then, he did declare war on Australia briefly in 1977.

Born in Kalgoorlie, the son of a Commonwealth Railways engine stoker, Casley left school at 14 to work as a clerk in a Fremantle shipping firm, where in quiet moments he would read Acts of Parliament "for the fun of it". His self-taught legal nous has served him well in the battles with state and federal governments that followed secession - battles that, he admits ruefully, "have cost me half my life". He would much rather have spent his time researching subatomic physics, a passion of his. So why did he pick the fight? "I don't like to be pushed around."

Woe betide anyone who imagines it's all an elaborate joke; he inhabits the role of sovereign ruler completely. He is baffled when asked his thoughts on the federal election. "We don't comment publicly on other countries' politics," is all he'll say.