With its manicured beachfront and sparkling, yacht-speckled view out across the water to the harbour heads, The Bathers Pavilion at Balmoral Beach on Sydney’s lower north shore is hard to beat as a dining venue, and as I stood on the newly-renovated rooftop bar drinking in the view recently, it occurred to me that for those of us whose careers or relationships have required us to spend chunks of our lives on foreign soil, the memories of such vistas argue the case for coming home more eloquently than any Qantas ad. And if that’s true for Aussies making their mark in cities like London and New York, I thought, how much truer must it be for those whose globe-trotting is curtailed by incarceration in a country which doesn’t share our values.

I don’t know what kind of view Jock Palfreemen had from the cell which was his home for the last 11 years, but I can’t imagine a Bulgarian prisoner’s life is as pleasant as that of even the lowliest boarder at St Ignatius Riverview, the Sydney private school Palfreeman attended. I doubt Riverview boys are beaten for representing the interests of their fellow students, for example, or feel the need to go on hunger strikes. So you’d think that in the press briefing Palfreeman gave after being unexpectedly sprung by a Bulgarian appeals court, he would have expressed a desire to jump on the first Australia-bound flight – and perhaps even how much he was looking forward to celebrating his homecoming with lunch at a restaurant like The Bathers Pavilion.

Instead of which he said, in what seemed like an outburst of chronic Stockholm syndrome, ‘If I had a choice I would prefer to live here’. He went on to explain, presumably in response to the astonishment of the assembled news crews, that ‘many people think I have had protection from Australia for the last 12 years, but the truth is that people who have helped me are Bulgarians.’ I doubt this was meant as a slight to the friends and family who’ve campaigned on his behalf. I suspect it was intended more as a rebuke to Canberra, whose requests to have Palfreeman transferred to an Australian prison to complete his sentence have been less than unrelenting.

Our diplomatic hands have been tied, of course, by deference to the Bulgarian legal system which found Palfreeman guilty of murder eleven years ago. Julian Assange, by contrast, had been convicted of no crime when he took refuge in London’s Ecuadorean embassy. And the only thing he’s been found guilty of since getting kicked out of that embassy is skipping bail. So having watched with folded arms while Mr Assange broke the world sleepover record, you’d think Canberra would now be working hard to stop him becoming a pommy propitiation to the superpower whose alleged war crimes his website exposed. Given Amnesty International’s belief that Assange wouldn’t get a fair trial in the US, and given our Prime Minister’s recent statements about press freedoms, surely Julian Assange will now get the consular assistance which is his birthright?

One especially wretched expatriate detainee who can expect no help from either Amnesty International or her own government is Meghan Windsor (neé Markle). Like many people, I foolishly supposed that marrying the man you love and giving birth to healthy children while being flown around the world on private jets and showered with wealth and attention would probably make any young woman quite cheerful.

But as she made clear in the interview she gave at the conclusion of her recent African jolly, her home life is unbearable. So if she and His Royal Ranganess do decide to escape the attentions of British tabloids by moving overseas, as has been rumoured, it would vindicate what seemed an uncharitable Australian summation of her character at the time it was given, just after the announcement of their engagement. When Germaine Greer warned us that Meghan is ‘a bolter’ she didn’t necessarily mean Meghan would bolt alone.