“What odds that a privileged young British woman named Florence Nightingale who through sheer determination, courage and caring invented the profession of nursing?” asks “The Gadfly” columnist ROBERT MACKLIN as he muses about some of history’s great coincidences. 

COINCIDENCE is a wonderful mystery. It happens at the beginning of every new non-fiction book, especially a biography. 

Other author friends report the same phenomenon – suddenly a distant relative opens a whole unexpected chapter of the story; an obscure but vital book leaps from a second hand bookshelf; an email arrives from the blue that introduces the perfect publisher…

It’s been happening again recently, and it set me thinking about the larger issue of the great coincidences of the past – the sudden unexpected arrival of the perfect persons to change the course of history just when it was most needed. 

We could start with the great thinker Socrates blessed coincidentally by an equally profound author in Plato to raise all the questions of ethics and morality that we’re still puzzling today. Or the great social and engineering visionary Caesar Augustus who brought order and connectivity to the vast continent of Europe.

What odds that a privileged young British woman named Florence Nightingale who through sheer determination, courage and caring invented the profession of nursing? And what wondrous coincidence joined the brilliant Polish-born Marie Curie with her Parisian husband to overwhelm physics with the powers hidden in the element of uranium.

By what coincidental magic did the German/Swiss Albert Einstein find himself in a Munich school that taught by rote, so he was forced to teach himself algebra and geometry; that he just happened upon Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and by combining mathematics and philosophy navigated an entirely new concept of the universe that utterly changed our perceptions of the world around us. 

The political experience is redolent with coincidence – the wealthy, elitist Franklin Delano Roosevelt who defied his background and laid the foundations for American democracy’s social justice system. 

The “has been” Winston Churchill returned to 10 Downing Street just when he was needed to hold the line against the Nazi ravages of all things decent.

Mahatma Gandhi transformed himself from a Durban lawyer to a powerful symbol of anti-colonial rebellion to bring India freedom from centuries of British oppression at exactly the right time

Think of the four disparate lads from Liverpool who combined to produce a thrilling revolution that changed popular music forever. More recently, another youngster, Sweden’s Greta Thunberg arrived to galvanise a generation to fight the apathy that threatens the world with climate chaos.

Unless you think I’m finding a Pollyanna pattern in the mystery there is, of course, the other side of the coin – the fateful coincidences that produced the Hitlers, Stalins and Putins who have ravaged without conscience; the assassins who collided in America with John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and John Lennon; and the Trumpian creatures who threaten the future today.

But it is deeply gratifying to see the mad Mullahs of Iran getting their just deserts because a single courageous woman, Mahsa Amini, slain by the “morality police”, has become a symbol of hope for political freedom. And for us, the convoluted political career of Anthony Albanese coincidentally became the perfect foil for the bulldozing antics of his gross predecessor. 

So, the question arises – as the campaign for an Aboriginal Voice in the Constitution gathers pace, who will arise from among the ranks to symbolise and secure this act of national decency? 

Come on coincidence – it’s time once more to do your stuff.

robert@robertmacklin.com