We who have a colonial past may not remember, nor want to remember, that our forebears had an attitude towards the French something akin to the attitude currently being shown towards them by those thugs in the White House and the US fast-food chains who have declared that they will stop adding to global obesity with ‘french fries’ and do it instead with ‘freedom fries’.

Our French past – our brilliant French past – has been sadly neglected. Possibly because, as one of our first people sharply observed, ‘Too many Captain Cooks’, but also be-cause old political hatreds dig deep and last long. We owe much to a small band of scholars – notably Edward Duyker – who have virtually grabbed us by the back of the neck and said: ‘Look at these people. They are your history. You will see their names all over the continent. You can’t go far into the bush without seeing a plant, a tree or an animal that these Frenchmen have put on the Tree of Knowledge.’ Duyker might add: ‘Look at the floral emblems of Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and the emblem for the Centenary of Federation, you will see Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière’s name imprinted in some way on them.’