Our Founders

Leonard Casley, often referred to as Prince Leonard, was the visionary behind the Principality of Hutt River. Born in 1925, Casley was a farmer who, in response to a wheat production quota dispute, declared his property independent from Australia.

His leadership and tenacity turned Hutt River into a symbol of personal sovereignty and resilience, attracting global media attention and visitors from around the world. Casley’s efforts in establishing and maintaining the principality until his abdication in 2017 left a lasting impact on the concept of sovereign states.

In Memorium

Prince Leonard was born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia on 27th August 1925 and passed away on 13th February 2019.

However, in between those 93 plus years he lived many lifetimes.

One of his earliest memories was in the outback of South Australia at Quorn where he went to school for a short time. His father George William Casley was working for the Continental Railways and would travel the Nullarbor. One anecdote Prince Leonard often recalled was one day going to school he saw a hurt Love Bird Parrot that had been in a fight with another. Prince Leonard picked it up and took it to school. His teacher gave him a shoe box to place it in. Come recess time the other children wanted to see it. So the young innocent boy took the lid off the box and yes it flew away.

Another story was of the large Perenties that raced the trains until they tired of that and outpaced train as they disappeared into the bush. He learned the ways and customs of the Aboriginal Peoples as he lived with these people in their environment.

Prince Leonard’s young years were influenced by living out amongst the vastness of the Nullabor Plain. His young hungry inquiring mind was being filled with the wonders of nature and its people. He would often ride the camels when the Afghan people passed through town or wonder why the blowholes sometimes blew water and at other times sucked air in. This he worked out was, that they were connected to the Southern Ocean hundreds of kilometres away.

Leonard’s knowledge of the native dingo and other forms of wildlife came as a result of his intensely inquiring mind and observations of facts of nature which he was always surrounded by.

His inquiring mind never ceased to be fed from new fields of information and knowledge. Often, to avoid the boredom of sitting on the tractor during the 12-hour shifts of ploughing, seeding or harvesting he would mentally multiply numbers of eight or more digits until he had the answer. Then when time would permit, he would set to with pen and paper and verify his answer. Amongst his many pursuits, not just agriculture or his copper mines he made time to indulge in the extensive research into gravity, pure physics of motion, and astronomy.

His scientific research had involved correspondence with some of the world’s top mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, universities and departments of various organisations engaged in related fields of research. All of Leonard’s papers were typed by hand on the typewriter by his loving wife, Shirley (later to become Princess Shirley).

These scientific endeavours continued throughout Prince Leonard’s life right up to the week of his passing.

Around nine years of age the family moved to Fremantle. It was there at this young age that he had his first taste of commercial venture. He would sell the passengers on the cruise ships wildflowers that he would pick, until an official asked, “if he had a permit for that?” He didn’t and that was the end of that enterprise.

He left school at 14 and was employed as a shipping clerk at James Kiernan Ltd., Fremantle Harbour. Then at 18 years entered the Royal Australian Air Force, where he served in Australia and islands in and around Borneo. After the war he returned to civilian life and started a fruit and vegetable export business to Singapore. This was very successful however he went on to bigger things.

During his time in the Air Force he met Shirley Joy at a dance in Fremantle. After the war ended they married and went on to be life partners and over the next eleven years had seven children.

He bought a wheat and sheep farm at Westonia which he ran successfully and built up to 28,500 acres over many years, he sold up and moved to Perth, where he built a block of sixty flats. Some years later with his sons leaving school and wanting to go farming he travelled the state and found the farms at Hutt River.

In 1969 with the introduction of Wheat Quotas was the start of his battle with the Government to save the farm. The only solution he could find was to secede his farming lands, to be a fully independent nation.

This he did. One man against the West Australian, Australian and British Governments, quite an achievement as they had their Army, Navy and Air Force Departments, Lawyers and  Barristers to try to combat this from happening. But he saved the farm and ruled the PHR for over 47 years.