Even before Tony Abbott announced that about 600 air and military personnel would prepare to join the fight against "the death cult that exalts in evil", this was going to be a week like no other for national governance.
In promising to run the country from a remote indigenous community for a full week, Mr Abbott was committing himself to do what no prime minister before him had attempted.
Well before the nation's terrorist threat level was increased from medium to high, arrangements were made for the seat of government to move temporarily from Canberra to Gulkula, a ceremonial place to the Yolngu people and the site of the annual Garma festival.
An army tent was erected to accommodate the Prime Minister, and the Gulkula Knowledge Centre was converted to an administrative hub, where the nation's top public servant, Ian Watt, and many others will be based.
Now, the unprecedented has become the unimaginable: a prime minister making decisions on when deployment turns into military engagement and reacting to an unfolding international crisis in a surreal setting.
Mr Abbott made it plain on Sunday that his being in north-east Arnhem Land would not prevent him picking up the phone to Barack Obama and other world leaders as required.
"It is my intention to be in Arnhem Land for the week that I promised," he said in Darwin, en route to Nhulunbuy, at the northern tip of Arnhem Land. "But I will be in regular contact with Canberra. There are secure communications available to me in Arnhem Land that are, in fact, being provided by the Australian Defence Force."
Mr Abbott received a warm welcome to country on Sunday evening from the Yolngu people and one of the country's pre-eminent indigenous leaders, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who has done as much as anyone to put the issue of constitutional recognition on the agenda.
Discussions on that subject began over dinner with a group representing the 13 clans of the Yolngu people at the knowledge centre, catered for by the army. They will continue on Wednesday when Noel Pearson and the PM's entire indigenous advisory council, chaired by Warren Mundine, fly in.
Sources predict that a broad agreement of the scope of the recognition question and the timing of a referendum could emerge from the meeting.
Mr Abbott made a habit of volunteering in indigenous communities each year well before he became opposition leader, and once was confronted by an angry girl with a knife when he arrived late one morning at her home as a volunteer truancy officer in Aurukun on Cape York.
That was in 2009, and Mr Abbott has witnessed the steady improvement in Cape York communities as they embraced the Pearson model of reform, responsibility and engagement.
On Wednesday, he will join school attendance officers as they do their morning rounds at Nhulunbuy.
Before the decision to deploy to Iraq was made, a full itinerary was designed to immerse Mr Abbott in indigenous issues and the way in which the Yolngu have tackled them. But the promise of his "undivided attention for seven days" has been tempered by the reality of war.
It was Pearson who once joked that Gulkula was the indigenous equivalent of Camp David, the place that allows the American president to reflect on war and engage foreign leaders.
But even Pearson, so long described by Mr Abbott as a prophet and a visionary, could not have imagined what beckons this week.
