There are times in life when everything appears to be just in place: nearing my 60th birthday in top physical shape, business achieving its targets, the family happy, surrounded by good loyal friends and a Masonic career at its most pleasurable.
    It was in this well-balanced state of mind that my wife Zmira and I embarked on our Australian and New Zealand lecture tour, on 21st July 2000. We were the guests of the combined Australian and New Zealand Lodges of Research (ANZMRC) with Johannesburg thrown in as a bonus!
    The visit to Johannesburg and the open meeting at the Lyceum Lodge of Research on the evening of our arrival may have been too brief to fully savour the warmth of our reception, but it gave us a wonderful sense of what was to come. Then it was on to Perth and a third continent in as many days.
    Freemasonry in Australia started under the overwhelming influence of the English, Scottish and Irish Provincial Grand Lodges in the early half of the 19th century. The six independent Grand Lodges that rule today began their authority, not without considerable hindrance, in the 1860s with Freemasonry prospering and growing until the relative decrease in the fraternity in recent decades.
    The enthusiasm of the Brethren was manifest in the lunchtime Master Class organised by David Wry, secretary of the Western Australian Lodge of Research, and the next day I delivered the Robin Hewitt Memorial Lecture. Then we made our way to Southern Australia, refreshed and excited.
    At Adelaide we were whisked off to the reception at the invitation of MW Bro Geoff Tucker, the newly elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of South Australia and Northern Territory Incorporated.
    Among the many distinguished Brethren and their ladies present, I was intrigued to meet W Bro Mike Dundas, the Grand Lecturer – not least because, to my obvious surprise, he was not a member of the Lodge of Research.
    South Australia has the distinction of being the first, in 1884, to create the office of Grand Lecturer. The next such appointment was not to take place for another 80 years, under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of Victoria in 1965, and it has been a subject of continued controversy in all Australian jurisdictions since. The problem is caused by an underlying tension between the Grand Lodge appointment and the various Research Lodges and Associations, whose membership is frequently ignored by the Masonic authorities.
    The presence of members of the Co-Masonic fraternity of Adelaide at the lecture made for livelier debate than I had anticipated. I gave in to the persistent request by some of the Ladies present to be addressed as brothers.
    It was a reflection of the much wider scope and broader view of Freemasonry that our Australian brethren enjoy, compared to England.
    Tasmania was next on the list. It was an honour to be hosted by Murray Yaxley, prominent Mason, Deputy Grand Master and Chairman of the ANZMRC. Modern technology – by way of the mobile telephone – allowed me to be interviewed on the local radio as we reached Northern Tasmania.
    Attendance at both the Hobart and the Launceston Lodges of Research was excellent, with a full contingent of the Grand Lodge of Tasmania present at the latter meeting.
    We were now on route to the only Royal Arch Lecture I was to give. The Golden Jubilee Chapter of Research in Melbourne officially hosted my Batham 2000 Lecture (see pages 27-29). Here I was able to bear hug the big bearded quintessential Australian Kent Henderson, who had effectively single-handed organised my whole Australasian Lecture Tour.
    Later I was proud to join the official delegation of the United Grand Lodge of Victoria to attend the Jewish Masonic Service at the Melbourne Synagogue as guests of Rabbi Ian Goodhardt. The MW Grand Master Carl Stewart and the full complement of his Officers headed us.
    At the Victorian Lodge of Research I met some of the luminaries of the Australian Masonic study circle. My host, the Reverend Neville Anderson, at whose museum-like vicarage we were staying, was in the chair and Bro Graeme Love, editor of the Transactions, and well known secretary of the Correspondence Circle, gave us a particular warm welcome.
    It was a short flight to Canberra. The poor attendance at the Canberra Lodge of Research and Instruction reflected the secondary standing of many of the research bodies in Australia. There had been earlier problems with the Sydney Lodge of Research, which brought about its demise in the 1960s, and the suspicion with which the hierarchy views Masonic research organisations is still prevalent throughout the Masonic jurisdictions in Australia.
    Then it was on to the National Library of Australia, where we saw the important discovery of Volume I of the Cayers Maçonique. This is the 18th century manuscript ritual which was the subject of Neil’s lecture (and the demonstration in which I participated) at the Brisbane conference, a few weeks later.
    Then we were the guests of the most charming Juan and Robin Alvarez in Canbewarra, not a hundred miles from Sydney. My unscheduled visit to Lodge Kiama under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales was memorable, if only for some of the most unusual tracing boards I have come across.
    It is the custom in Australian jurisdictions to have the tracing board either hanging on the wall or rotating on a free stand, the depictions hidden from view and each displayed according to the work in progress.
    Sydney was seething with energy as the build-up for the forthcoming Olympics was gaining momentum. The colossal Masonic Hall in the city centre in Castleragh Street was impressive in its content and organisation.
    Because my lecture, hosted by the Research Lodge of New South Wales, was part of the Quarterly Communication of the District, attendance at the Lodge was very high. We were also invited by the brethren of the military Lodges to a most enjoyable day visit and barbecue at the Victoria Barracks, and we spent romantic and relaxed evenings on Sydney’s brilliant harbours.
    Our arrival in Cairnes was almost a shock. We were still recovering from the near freezing temperatures of Hobart, to find ourselves unsuitably clothed for the tropical temperatures of Northern Queensland. The sun shone warm all day and the deafening bird songs woke us early every morning. Kevin and Rosemary Fitzroy, in whose delightful home we stayed, organised a barbecue on our first evening. We were to meet several of the brethren who attended the W H J Mayers Memorial Lodge of Research.
    Townsville was an extension of our visit to Cairnes. The warmth of Graham and Helen Stead and Misty charmed us. We had long conversations late into the night on our mutual collecting interests.
    The venue for my lecture was the W H Green Memorial Masonic Study Circle, and the majority of the brethren who attended joined together the next evening for a delicious dinner at the Sundowner Inn, before our departure for Brisbane.
    In Brisbane brethren from the jurisdictions I had already visited and some from the ones I was due to visit, namely New Zealand, converged on the City for the biennial 5th ANZMRC Conference 2000. It felt like a reunion.
    The Barron Barnett Lodge of Research hosted the three-day conference. It was a great honour for me to be the first non-Australian to be invited to address the Brethren gathered for the Kellerman Lectures. The conference was formally opened by MW Bro Emmanuel Anthony, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of Queensland, whose combined serious and well-humoured outlook on freemasonry epitomised the true spirit of the fraternity.
    This was a most successful event culminating with the dinner when we were presented with our certificates and the prestigious Kellerman lapel badges.
    The published transactions of this and previous conferences remain important sources of reference in Masonic literature. Our wonderful hosts in Brisbane, Michel and Vicky Fried, were old and good friends from their days in Belgium, before their immigration to Australia.
    We had an exceptional opportunity for a brief visit for me to address the Toowoomba Lodge of Instruction. Bro Peter Kemp drove us the 80 miles during which (and on our return) we had the most delightful exchange of stories, now part of the London repertoire of after dinner speeches!
    We were now ready for the last leg of our trip, the six lectures to be delivered in New Zealand before our return home from Auckland. When we arrived in Christchurch it felt as if we might have landed in England. Not just the wet weather, which remained rainy for the duration of our short stay, but the blatant signs of patriotism, the Union flag and portraits of the Queen, dispersed here and there, were reminiscent of England in the 1970s. Freemasonry was also on a more familiar footing than we had encountered in Australia.
    The whole Masonic framework in New Zealand is under reorganisation and the implications of the new divisions and Grand Lodge appointments was the subject of discussion and debate everywhere.
    Senior members of the Craft attended the Christchurch Masters’ and Past Masters’ Lodge, the first I addressed in New Zealand. They hold the Lodge in high estimation, as an important entity in Masonic research, unlike its equivalent bodies in the neighbouring jurisdictions of Australia.
    At each of the meetings of the Research Lodges – in Wellington, Hawkes Bay, Rotorua and Auckland – the membership consisted of several Grand Officers and a sizeable number of past and present Grand Lecturers. Under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of New Zealand all Grand Lecturers are selected from the membership of the Research and Past Masters’ Lodges.
    At Wellington, Keith Knox met us off the ferry. We ended in his home in Pilmerton for a warm and friendly evening with his wife Gill, a keen collector of Elsie Oxenham’s well known children’s books. We paid a brief visit to the Grand Lodge Headquarters and Museum, before the lecture to the Research Lodge of Wellington.
    Keith drove us in his inimitable style, on a scenic route, to a meeting point between Wellington and Hawkes Bay, where Ken Edney and his family took charge of us. My talk to the Hawkes Bay research Lodge was exceedingly well attended and included Tony Israel, who had driven down 200 miles in order to drive us back to Rotorua directly after the lecture.
    We arrived at Tony and Kathy’s farm in Whakaroa in the very early hours of Saturday morning and woke up some hours later to a stunning view of Lake Taupo and the volcanic mountains beyond.
    Tony and Kathy accompanied us to the open meeting at the Waikato Lodge of Research. There I gave the 13th Verrall Lecture, following on the footsteps of no less eminent colleagues of mine than Neville Barker Cryer and Wallace McLeod, whose names had been entered in gold on the display board in the Lodge room.
    The evening was one of the most enjoyable we were to have. Administrative changes in the District of Waikato instigated the District Grand Master, RW Bro Bill Ross and his wife Moira, to launch a wonderful and entertaining party at the Sheraton Hotel in Rotorua.
    We were sufficiently recovered the next morning for Tony to drive us the 300-odd miles to Auckland, our last stop and last lecture to the United Masters Lodge of Research.
    Appropriately, if only coincidentally, this was the best attended meeting of all the 18 addresses I had given on the tour. It was the home of the famed Norman Spencer, after whom the exceptional Library and Museum is named. Norman B Spencer was the only New Zealander to have been a full member of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research No 2076 of London, the Premier Lodge of Masonic Research.
    His name is still honoured by QC Lodge annually, when the Spencer award is bestowed on the winner of the best Masonic research paper submitted during the year.
    It was time to fly home. Weeks have already gone by and we know the vivid memories we have will never fade and the friendships we have made will be there forever.