ROBIN HAMILTON-COATES
author, educator, musician and former Australian diplomat
After wandering Australia and Asia as a professional musician in the 1980s, Robin joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 1993 and was posted as a diplomat in Manila, Jakarta, Vientiane, Bangkok and Accra. He arrived in Bangkok as First Secretary and Consul a few weeks before the Indian Ocean Tsunami on 26 December 2004, travelling to Phuket Island that same day as a first responder – an experience that changed his outlook on life.
Robin left DFAT in 2011, worked in Laos for around ten years in government relations and is now a teacher of history and politics in secondary schools. He remains on call as an emergency responder and continues to write about his experiences.
Awards & Recognition
Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal, 2005
ENDORSEMENTS
Some will read this; some will think they know everything about incidents; some will respond and never remember the families – those that matter the most.
Others like you [Robin] will care about the families, respond, give of themselves, never stop learning and remind us why we do the work.
Robert A. Jensen, former Chairman, Kenyon International Emergency Services
As First Secretary and Consul in the Australian Embassy in Bangkok, Mr Hamilton-Coates was first on the ground leading Australia’s response to the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand in 2004. His book The Diplomat provides valuable lessons on the actions of first responders supporting families during an unprecedented crisis.
Doug Foskett, former Australian High Commissioner, Director of Consular Operations, DFAT Canberra, during the Indian Ocean Tsunami
This is a story, a fictionalised account of the experience of the author, Robin Hamilton-Coates, as a consular official in Thailand, primarily focused on his first-hand role in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. For those with short memories, that massive wave killed around 230,000 people in the littoral countries of the Indian Ocean, particularly in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
The Diplomat is not always an easy read, but it is a bluntly honest one. There is no sense of artifice or the author needing to search for authenticity; that it is ‘true’ comes from every page. They say that death brings out the best and the worst in people. On that score, The Diplomat is something of a guide book on how to navigate the most awful of human circumstances.
Damien Kingsbury, Professor Emeritus, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne