Jeremy Hearder

Jeremy Victor Roblin Hearder (born 1936) is an Australian author and historian, and former diplomat and public servant.

He held several international postings for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, including Laos, Tanzania, Thailand, Kenya, Belgium, Zimbabwe, Fiji, the United States and New Zealand. He was Australia's first High Commissioner to Zimbabwe (1980–84) and is the author of the biography Jim Plim: Ambassador Extraordinary (2015). He also served as the Department's Chief of Protocol.

Life and career Born in 1936 in Peshawar, India (later Pakistan), Hearder was the son of one of three founders of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, former British army officer Roblin Hearder. The younger Hearder joined the Department of External Affairs in January 1959.

In 1980, Hearder was appointed the first High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, shortly after Zimbabwe's independence. Retaining his High Commissioner position, in 1981 Hearder was accredited High Commissioner to Botswana, and in 1982 he was accredited also as Australia's first Ambassador to Mozambique. In 1984, after his posting in Harare came to an end, Hearder moved to Suva, Fiji, to take up a second High Commissioner posting.

In 2015, Hearder launched his book, Jim Plim: Ambassador Extraordinary, a biography of diplomat James Plimsoll whom Hearder had worked with in the late 1970s in Brussels. Reviewing the book, Philip Flood wrote that Hearder had done justice to Plimsoll's career as a great Australian ambassador.

Works