Two years ago a new foreign mission was quietly opened in Canberra, but its softly spoken envoy has helped land recent diplomatic blows against his nation's major enemy: Russia.
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When the Georgian embassy opened in O'Malley, it sent ambassador Vladimer Konstantinidi into a city of diplomats with which he had few – if any – contacts.
"We were alone in the beginning," he said. There was few economic reasons for the two countries to interact.
Mr Konstantinidi, 41, conceded the exports and imports between the nations were negligible, but the south Canberra suburb would be the launching pad for a major charm offensive across much of the bottom half of the globe.
Australia requires few goods from Georgia. Australian-made items are often too expensive in his country. Australia has not even opened a Georgian embassy, prefering instead to deal with the nation of 5 million people from Australia's diplomatic base in Turkey.
Even Georgia's growing tourism industry – Georgia is known for its national parks, wine and hospitality – is more of an attraction for regional visitors than long-distance travellers.
Mr Konstantinidi's primary reason for living 10,000 kilometres away from his homeland is to lobby against Russia.
In particular, his job was and is to persuade Australia and nations throughout the Pacific – among them some of the least populous independent states in the world – not to recognise two Russian-occupied zones in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as being sovereign.
The ambassador has spent much of the past two years flying to Pacific nations and has helped Georgia persuade most of them not to recognise the Russian-occupied zones as being independent.
Three countries in the part of the world where his diplomatic influence reached, Nauru, Vanuatu and Tuvalu, had recognised the sovereignty of the occupied zones but, to the ambassador's delight, that number has now fallen to one.
Vanuatu withdrew support a year ago and now Tuvalu, a country Mr Konstantinidi has travelled to often, has pulled out its support.
"It would have been a mistake not to be here," he said.
"My region is big, it's half the world – not like Europe, where you can get a taxi from country to country."
Mr Konstantinidi described the $50 million in aid Russia gave to Nauru in 2009 as "chequebook diplomacy", although in previous reports Russia has denied it was a bribe.
