Speccie's history lesson

And so to the launch of the Spectator Australia. The Daily Mail reports that there was an inauspicious start to the affair when guests had to be evacuated due to a false fire alarm. This was followed by Andrew Neil employing a bit of anti-PR with a quip that the setting, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, was a "far cry from the world Sydneysiders occupied" when the Spectator first launched in 1828. That was the year of Australia's first-ever census, which showed that almost half the 36,598 official population were convicts.