The Sovereign State of Aeterna Lucina (referred to in some court transcripts as the Sovereign Humanitarian Mission State of Aeterna Lucina) was an Australian micronation that existed between the late 1970s until the death of its founder in the 1990s.
The founder and "Supreme Lord" of Aeterna Lucina was one Paul Baron Neuman (originally Paul Robert Neuman until he changed it by deed poll), a German-born pensioner from the northern Sydney beachside suburb of Curl Curl who claimed to have received the title "Baron Neuman of Kara Bagh" from the exiled former King Hassan III of Afghanistan. He also claimed to have been awarded over 850 other honours, including Professorships, Doctorates of Philosophy and Divinity, and dozens of chivalric honours.
Aeterna Lucina (apparently named for the Roman goddess of childbirth) was founded in 1978, and initially occupied a property owned by Neuman near Byron Bay. At some point during the 1980s the "state" moved temporarily to Neuman's Curl Curl residence, before its relocation to a 14 km² rural property near the Snowy Mountains town of Cooma, in southern New South Wales. According to a 1989 television report the Curl Curl residence - known as Vitama - was considered to be the micronation's capital. The state was finally relocated to an undisclosed location in rural Victoria of 16km².
The state of Aeterna Lucina came to public attention in 1990 when several people associated with it, including a leading Sydney businessman, faced fraud charges relating to visa and land sale offences in the New South Wales court system.
Famous quotes containing the words sovereign and/or state:
“O Sovereign of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell!”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)