Join us at Paperchain to hear Lex Bartlem, author of A Diplomatic Odyssey, in conversation with Bill Farmer.

Places of danger and world-changing events: Lex Bartlem was hands-on in the middle of many during his career as a diplomat.

In 2000, amid war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, he joined an urgent charter flight to Asmara to collect stranded Australians. He was sent to Bali immediately after the bombings, in 2003 receiving an OAM for his assistance to victims and their families. That same year found Lex Bartlem in Baghdad, tasked with establishing an Australian Representative Office when Saddam Hussein was on the run. In Beirut, early in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, he was part of a team managing the evacuation of Australian citizens.

In 2010, Lex Bartlem OAM was appointed Ambassador to Lebanon, a country close to his heart, serving in that formidable role until he retired in 2014.

'The work our consular service does overseas is largely unknown to most people', Lex Bartlem writes. A Diplomatic Odyssey gives us rare insight into DFAT's important work, while telling the sometimes deeply personal story of a high-achieving diplomat whose extraordinary professional journey was shaped as much by resilience and adaptability as by formal training.

Lex Bartlem’s diplomatic career with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade took him to overseas postings including Caracas, Ankara, Madrid, Bonn, Cairo, Paris and twice to Beirut. In 2003 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services through the provision of assistance to victims and to their families following the bombings that occurred in Bali on 12 October 2002. In 2010 he was appointed Australia’s Ambassador to Lebanon. Now based in Melbourne, Lex travels regularly and volunteers as an English teacher with the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), helping newly arrived migrants improve their English and settle into life in Australia.

Few departmental staff can have had the variety of experiences recounted here by Lex Bartlem, in words that frequently belie the gravity of the situations he describes.

– Frances Adamson AC, Secretary DFAT, 2016–2021,
36th Governor of South Australia

Bill Farmer AO is a distinguished former Australian diplomat and senior public servant who joined the Australian Foreign Service in 1969. His overseas career included postings in Cairo, London, Fiji and at the United Nations in New York, and appointments as Ambassador to Mexico, High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea and Malaysia, and Ambassador to Indonesia from 2005 to 2010. He also served as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and, from 1998 to 2005, served as Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and its successor the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Indigenous Affairs. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2005.

This event is free but as space is limited please book to secure your place.

Contact the host of Lex Bartlem at Paperchain Bookstore

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