Talk:Principality of Marlborough

Marlborough, Queensland
Does the naming of this Micronation ahve anything to do with this town... was it closer to Marlborough than Rocky, mayhap?--ZayZayEM 01:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * All the media reports I've seen refer to Rockhampton, but it's quite possible that they do so because that's the nearest town most people would be familiar with. --Gene_poole 03:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Speaking from a close association with the event, there was a great deal of support for the event, including large quantities of mail from other countries for many years following the event. The entire time of the siege, the phone rang off the hook with people supporting what the Muirheads did. Hutton Gibson wrote a book about it, which I'm attempting to find and verify the name of.

Many of the things said in previous versions of this article are clearly false, but they are sourced from newspapers, so that is to be expected. The newspapers have been notified of their error, but they are fully aware that it is impossible to prove many of the events that they purport to be factual. Errors or omissions include: - The Muirheads used the Aboriginal Flag, the UN flag and a number of other flags. Any look back at news reports from the time can verify this. - The story was headline media locally for 10 days during the siege, and quite a while after. It also received a great deal of coverage world wide. - The siege maintained for 10 days (making it legally a principality under UN law), and there were initially 30 supporters on the property, which grew to around 50 by the end. The previous edits of the entry make it appear as though George and Stephanie did it all by themselves. - An armed militia group offered 300 troupes for the cause, but they were rejected. - They did the siege under the advice of a Constitutional lawyer named "Renton", not the shonky lawyer "Cameron" who offered his services to drop documents into the courts, not give advice. Accepting Cameron's help is something they now greatly regret. - The Muirheads were released from jail after 2 weeks with no charges laid. - The Property was not called "Marlborough", it was 2 properties called "Kierawonga" & "Indicus", which is easily verifiable, but commonly misrepresented. Proving yet again that the media is not an accurate enough source of information to be used as a reference, and is no better than hearsay. - The Property was nearest to the town of "Marlborugh". The Property is located 200km North of Rockhampton on the Old Bruce Highway. - The Muirheads ceased payments on their loan, after a legal dispute with the Commonwealth bank about fraudulent bills of exchange. Their reasoning was, that allowing people to profit from fraud (as the bank was reportedly doing) would make them party to the crime. - There were 2 cases that the Muirheads were involved in before the trial. 1 being the right to trial, which was given no credence by the bank's lawyers, however turned out to be more than a 2 hour trial, which ended up being a victory. This was also verified by a JP who wrote an affidavit to that effect. It was ignored. The second case was a walk over. The previous hearing was ignored, and the judge from the previous case "went on holiday". The Muirheads were unable to admit their previous evidence, but and were required to prove the case without the use of the evidence, including a verified photocopy of the fraudulent bill of exchange.

on a side note: - A banking enquiry after this event, forced bills of exchange to become on balance sheet items, preventing further exploitation of this loop hole by the banks. (Preventing them from creating money out of thin air and charging up to 29% interest on it)

Cleanup and POV
The current rewrite by User:Jumanous although expanding much of teh previous articles does require Cleanup and NPOVing.

Jumanous has admitted above a Conflict of Interest (he was personally involved in the matter) and appears to ahve painted a "matyr" and "aussie battler" picture of the Muirheads. While this may be a valid viewpoint, it is not Neutral in accordance with wikipedia policies, and effort should be made to clean it up.

An article about a contraversial subject as this definitely needs in text citations to prevent ambiguity and edit disputes flaring up.

Please do not remove the tags placed on the article until these issues have been sufficiently addressed--ZayZayEM 02:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

While I agree my edits to the article seem one sided, it is difficult to report it any other way. I have attempted to be as detached as possible with the article, however in order to remain factual, I am unable to use the sources quoted, as those articles written, and the current one in the Financial Review are blatantly inaccurate. Unfortunately, after discussing this matter with the Muirheads, I have discovered they have no leg to stand on as far as suing the newspaper goes, so at least people can read the actual story here.

Any suggestions for revisions or additions I would gladly accept, if more accurate information is available. Otherwise, I am more than fine to remove this article entirely.


 * Sorry, but that's not the way things work around here. The Marlborough "secession" is historically documented in multiple media sources. Whether they agree with the Muirheads' POV or not is beside the point, and we certainly will not be deleting this or any other article because people don't like what the media write about them. --Gene_poole 23:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * This is not from the Muirhead's perspective. It is from eye witness accounts gathered in a far more thorough way than those pathetically inaccurate news paper articles are.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jumanous (talk • contribs) 21:17, 30 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Unless these "eyewitness accounts" have been documented in reliable, publicly accessible third party sources somewhere, they cannot be included in WP. --Gene_poole 23:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'll play by your dubious rules. I have changed the article removing your slant, and only using information from those newspaper articles you mentioned. The "racist" bit was beyond a joke... it certainly wasn't in any of those articles.


 * Thanks for that. Just bear in mind that WP does not have "dubious rules". It has rules. Editors can comply with them and contribute, or disagree with them and not contribute. There's no option for disagreeing with the rules and contributing. Most of the key rules are explained at WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:OR. --Gene_poole 23:10, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Factual Changes
I have clarified a few factual problems with the article, and removed the colored/ biased language used by Poole. - Flags - The flags can be seen on many news reports, and articles, including the cover of 1 of the news paper articles sited, and the news report sited. - The location and names of the properties, are a matter of public record, and are listed, and have been changed according to those records. The GPS reference comes from Google Earth, and references from the lands office. - The mention of world wide support, comes from colleges of mine from UK and France, mentioning the story and the date the story was aired on BBC news, along with the large number of letters I have personally seen from the event from France and England. - The number of days is easily determined by public media reports. I haven't written all of them, but they are of public record and can be aquired from media monitors or similar orginization. It was headline news for over 10 days, so any time around those dates will produce some headline from this case. - There are still a number of changes that need to be made, but I am searching for documents to back up the claims as I have seen a number of attempted changes to "factualize" this document stifiled by the clearly biased Poole. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.191.11.129 (talk) 23:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Please ensure that your contributions to WP comply with WP:CIVIL. Nobody here has attempted to "stifle" anything. If your contributions are supported by cited reliable third party reference sources that's great, and they're very welcome. --Gene_poole 23:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Australian Aboriginal Flag.svg
The image File:Australian Aboriginal Flag.svg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --14:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Scottish flag
The article tells us that the Muirhead's adopted a number of flags for their alleged micronation including the 'Scottish' flag. That may be true but the flag represented in the pictures alongside is not the Scottish flag but rather the personal standard of the King or Queen of Scotland. The Royal Standard is not a national flag; the flag of Scotland is the white diagonal cross on the blue background known as the Saltire or the Cross of St Andrew. Which is it that the Muirheads are supposed to have adopted.Moonraker55 (talk) 18:46, 9 October 2013 (UTC)