One of the paradoxes of 20th century Australia was that the man who stirred greater public hatred and abuse than any other should also have been one who embodied its supposed core values: independent-mindedness, multiculturalism (long before the word became familiar), pragmatism, love of argument and of food, and a preference always for the common man and the underdog against authority.

Born into a family of dissenting, cosmopolitan farmers and laborers, Wilfred Burchett grew up in an atmosphere of deep respect for learning and self-improvement. Before he became reporter and foreign correspondent, he was a cow cocky (dairy farmer), carpenter, cane cutter and vacuum cleaner salesman. He educated himself, learned languages, and travelled widely, keeping his eyes and mind open. He mixed easily and in later life earned the gratitude and respect of people from Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh and Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk to American General William Dean (when Dean was a prisoner in Korea), and Henry Kissinger (who sought his advice and help in negotiating an end to the war in Vietnam). But in Australia he was Public Enemy Number One, for much of his life subject to the unique sanction of exclusion from his own country.

His was a peculiar kind of Australian bush socialism, not informed by any formal ideology or membership of any party but grounded in a moral sense of the dignity of the common man and of the righteousness of struggle against oppression.