Advance Australia Fair

Leaving the offices of the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University for lunch today, I heard the most curious thing. At midday, the carillion bells were playing something that I could vaguely recognise. As I stood and listened, I realised that it was "Advance Australia Fair", the Australian national anthem.

Why "Advance Australia Fair" at U. Indiana today? My one theory on this is that the President of Indiana University, Michael McRobbie, is an Australian. Several people have pointed this out to me, ranging from the academics I have met here to the woman who cut my hair. As noted in his official biography on the University Web page:

A native of Australia, McRobbie came to IU from the Institute of Advanced Study at the Australian National University (ANU), where he was a professor of information technology and chief executive officer of the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Computational Systems. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Queensland and a doctoral degree from ANU.