Following Cyclone Tracy (Australia 1974) Major General Stretton 'ran' the devastated city of Darwin with executive powers that - as one observer put it - hadn't been matched in this country since Governor Phillip in 1788. That the powers had no basis in law was an interesting complication. Stretton's almost unreadable prose has the virtue of being quite honest, even if a little deranged as he relates his encounters with every obstacle except sleep over the six days he ruled. On the seventh day after the cyclone he laid down his informal commission and departed from the scene. Some say the he left before he was about to be sacked, consequent upon a series of bruising encounters with politicians and the institutions of civil society. A man of greater discretion might have made less enemies (in Canberra even more than in Darwin), but I think that Northern Territory history remembered him with greater regard as time went by, and as his successors proved themselves as arrogant, but many times less competent. But it's a great argument that people taking command need to get their sleep. ( )