Sometimes thinking is too hard so here's a right royal parade of cartoons ...

(Above: naturally the pond is first to welcome Royalty to these shores, and provide a link to Prince Charles' blog here, exclusively previewed in The Guardian where you can also find that dreadful satirical cartoonist Steve Bell).

First things first, and by golly Royalty must come first.

But it seems only the lizard Oz leads with a nod to the Royals.

That wretched tabloid rag, the Daily Terror, leads its digital edition with the Melbourne Cup and Eddie Obeid and a slain Comanchero and the probing of a jockey (disturbing sight that), while the equally wretched Fairfax rag offers the same jockey probe, Sydney's 20 iconic dishes, smutty photos that never die, the private life of former French justice minister Rachida Dati (up to eight alleged lovers!), the woes of Nathan Tinkler and the seven brave lads of St John's - the Untouchables - who might one day follow in the footsteps of Tony Abbott and jolly Joe Hockey. (Fairfax has been on a roll with this one).

What about Regal jottings and notes being top of the page lads?

So much tastier than Vice-Regal. Show 'em how it's done, lizard Oz, with discretion, with style:

Oh jolly good, a rooful pun, and there'll always be an England, so long as we have The Australian, willing to put news of the Royal party behind the fickle reporting finger of the golden bar of fate. The Royals are so important we must be prepared to pay for them.

(A moment's silence please while we all mourn the death of the Royal:

Oh Bob, Bob, we did but see them passing by and yet we love them 'til we die)

And so with the tone set we can turn to that most vice-regal member of the commentariat, Gerard Henderson, for our daily earful of morose meandering unhappiness.

Oh dear sweet absent lord, no, say it ain't so.

Forget the Royals and Britain and gunboats and white shoes and pith helmets and all that jazz.

Apparently Australia has had a long history of engagement with Asia, and in a moment, this long and proud history will be swept away into obscurity by the introduction of a white paper, as you can read in White paper risks obscuring long history of engagement with Asia.

Apparently this means we might forget the Vietnam war, which was, as Henderson will remind anyone sitting in the armchair next to him, a spiffing success.

But first to the good news:

Australia's interaction with Asia goes back at least eight decades.

Yep, by the pond's reckoning, that gets Australia interacting with Asia since 1932! At least!

What's that you say? What about the Chinese who turned up in the goldfields from the 1850s on, producing the odd riot, the odd discriminatory tax, and eventually the White Australia policy? (start here for a look at an ancient Chinese opium box).

Yes, yes, that's all very well, but what Gerard Henderson wants to talk about is how wonderful Joe Lyons was, and especially Percy Spender, and most overwhelming of all, that wonderful Asian man Bob Menzies, who really did but see Asia passing by, but truly loved her till he died (after the Cinque ports, that is).

Note: Mr. Menzies rides a fire-breathing Asian dragon, not as you might have thought a Crusader pony.

Now it will help, for the sake of this discussion, if you develop a deeper strategic insight than the one that usually infests your colonial Anglo-centric mind. Here it is:

Everywhere you look Australia played a valiant part in helping shape Asia by getting up there and sinking in the slipper. There's nothing like Rule .303 to teach those Commie bastards a lesson or two.

And so Mr. Henderson celebrates Australia's potent warrior tradition, with the Korean war eventually turning China into the economic powerhouse it is today, and the Malayan emergency generating a tremendous love of Britain in Singapore and Malaysia today, and the British presence in Hong Kong the sole sign of civilisation in an otherwise barbaric region ruled by various Manchurian candidates.

But what about that most singular success, the Vietnam war? What can we say about that?

Australia's Vietnam commitment in the late 1960s and early 1970s was controversial. Today there is little support for it among academics or journalists. Yet support can be found among the South Vietnamese descendants living in suburban Sydney and Melbourne. Australia's Asian allies in Vietnam included South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. 

Yes, what would humbug academics or journalists know about the Vietnam war, compared to Gerard Henderson, reaching out from his armchair to the dry cleaners and bakers and restauranteurs of Australia living in suburban Sydney and Melbourne?

Sssh, let's quickly move on, remember not to ask the many many dead Vietnamese how they feel about the interaction, or the live ones still interacting with Agent Orange, because in Hendo's world, the Asian-Australian relationship has long been a triumphant roll call of clever Australian moves forward.

Why even the Labor party gets a mention here and there in Hendo's piece - well Gough did recognise the reign of the tyrant Mao - and before you know it, we're right there at the end, after a long cavalcade of proud Australian politicians reaching out to Asia, able to change their generally inscrutable Asiatic ways and showing them the virtuous path of right thinking. Drum roll please:

Talking up the white paper may have political benefits in Australia. But it would be helpful if world leaders assembled in Laos knew that Australia was deeply involved in the region decades before anyone had spoken of an ''Asian century''. 

Deeply involved!

The most singular achievement in this singular list of ongoing astonishing and amazing Australian successes in Asia, which sometimes a few ungrateful, churlish Asians fail to see as singular successes?

Why surely it must be that the only mention of the White Australia policy in prattling Polonius's column is the way Harold Holt began junking it in 1966, and never mind that it took the Whitlam and the Fraser governments to eradicate that policy in its entirety (yes, the wiki here is a better and surer guide than the thoughts of Gerard Henderson).

Anyhoo, with a leap and a bound, it seems that you can go from this:

To this:

So there's your history lesson for the day, as superficial as you can imagine, and perhaps requiring a white paper to recommend that Australians learn something about their history of interacting with Asia and Asians.

By golly let's hope those Asians are grateful for all that interacting Australia has done with them, though we did learn a few ideas from them, apart from sweet and sour sauce:

And even now you will find certain cartoons quoted fondly in certain Hansonite forums:

Oh and look, just to bring us full circle, there's a special message from the Prince of Wales. By golly, he's still reaching out his hand towards the colonies. Roll on the Asian century.