‘Queensland is different’, overseas commentators would mutter sagely when the media ran yet another story on Joh Bjelke-Peterson, premier of that state from 1968 to 1987. Authoritarian without generosity, self-servingly ignorant of the decent checks and balances usual in the Westminster style of government, prejudiced and inarticulate, Joh was impossible. And yet Queenslanders went on voting for him. His provincialism evidently appealed to their provincialism. Eventually, like the big frog in the small puddle of Aesop’s fable, Joh puffed himself up into believing that, at the age of seventy-six, he could become Australia’s national leader. Like Aesop’s frog, his bubble burst and, before the year was over, he was out of office. During his later years as premier, he was the subject of three biographical studies, written by Derek Townsend, Hugh Lunn and Alan Metcalfe. Joh’s own memoirs followed in 1990. With the lapse of another decade, it was time for a reassessment, and Rae Wear has provided it.