George Cruickshank is not your average emperor. His royal residence lacks electricity or running water, his kingdom has more kangaroos than humans, and though he enjoys leaderly luxuries like afternoon champagne, he prefers it cheap and pink.
I traveled five hours southwest of Sydney in early October to visit Cruickshank here at the Empire of Atlantium, a patch of mud-green pastoral land that’s twice the size of the Vatican, half the size of Monaco and the “smallest country in Australia.” The two closest towns with a supermarket are each an hour or more away in opposite directions and hold claims to fame such as a 50-foot (15-meter) merino ram and Australia’s highest-security prison. For Cruickshank, however, this slice of rural paradise has become not only his home but his model utopian empire.
“My parents recognized my interest in politics at a young age and suggested that if I didn’t like the way the world was, I should do something about it,” Cruickshank recalled. “I think what they meant was for me to go off and join a political party, but instead, my cousins and I started our own country in the backyard.”
That was in October 1981, the year Cruickshank drew a dotted line in the corner of his yard in suburban Sydney and named it the capital of the Empire of Atlantium. Not long after, his cousins elected him Emperor George II for life, and by the late 1990s, the Empire had its “global administrative capital, ceremonial focal point, and spiritual homeland” in “Aurora,” New South Wales.
Thirty-two years later, Emperor George was instructing me where to stand within an eclectic crowd of visitors (some in fatigues, some in kimonos) so he could capture on video the unveiling of a new monument for the 32nd anniversary of Atlantium’s foundation. It will likely be up on Facebook in a matter of days and beamed off to the micronation’s 2,000-odd “citizens,” who hail from as far away as Tanzania and Turkey (where Atlantium has an exceptional follower base).
To be clear, Emperor George may get about one new citizenship application each day and hold an annual Foundation Day ceremony, but none of these citizens, nor the holiday, will be recognized by Australia, the U.N., or any global government. The emperor of Atlantium still pays taxes to the Australian government “like any foreign national working in another country,” and Atlantium isn’t even attempting to be fully independent of its host country. Think of it more like an embassy, I’m told, that exists because the surrounding country allows it to exist.
“There’s an element of devilishness in all of this,” the emperor explained with a wink over a glass of cotton candy-colored bubbly in honor of the holiday. He likes to think of Atlantium as an imperial commonwealth, with a lot of lingo in its edicts borrowed from late republican Rome and the Cromwellian period in England. The broad liberal agenda of issues ranging from climate change to assisted suicide, the right to abortion, the fundamental equality of all self-aware beings, and decimal calendar reform.
At one level, it’s a political theory, while at another it’s an aspirational utopia. Perhaps more than anything else, it’s a sustained piece of performance art. Whatever you want to call it, Atlantium does have a flag, insignia, post office, stamps, and a currency called imperial solidus that’s pegged to the U.S. dollar.
“These little ideas I formulated when I was 15 have somehow struck a chord with people around the world such that they actually want to be a part of it,” Emperor George said, surprised in a way. “They want to call themselves citizens of Atlantium — and that’s really powerful.
“It’s also terribly frightening.”
