Melbourne, until then, had worked very hard at becoming a sleepy, out of the way place, staid in its habits, fixed in its ways. Once it had been, briefly, the richest and most exciting city in the world as it absorbed the fabulous wealth of the gold rush and in 1880 it was home to the World’s Fair. All the greatest celebrities in the world came there. It was at the forefront of everything, far outshining its older sister Sydney and poised to become the capital and nerve centre of the most rapidly advancing nation on earth. It invented its own brand of football, the world’s greatest opera star borrowed its name, they invented the weekend and the best beer in creation.

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And while we’re on the subject, equally overlooked is the excellent drama Guns at Batasi, in which a bunch of disparate British colonials are pinned inside an African outpost during a local revolution. Surrounded by thousands of rampaging, drunken, power-crazed blacks, they have nothing much to defend themselves with but their stiff upper-lips. But the stiffest upper-lip is that of RSM Richard Attenborough whose rigid discipline holds the line as the pressure causes the rest to fall apart. All that silly parade ground nonsense is put to great effect when the real thing comes along, and his unbending defiance proves more than a match for the rebels. Flora Robson, Jack Hawkins and John Leyton helped out, along with an eye-catching skinny lass called Mia Farrow.