Five Minutes of History: John Gorton

I mentioned last week that the sharks were circling Tony Abbott. As conjecture increases about a possible leadership spill next Tuesday, Tony Abbott’s position as Our Leader becomes more tenuous. It’s all a numbers game, increasingly so since the days of JFK’s election. Nonetheless dumping an existing Prime Minister used to be something that was quite rare and extreme; now it seems to be more commonplace: Rudd, Gillard, Abbott.

I am reminded, however, of the time that John Gorton, then Prime Minister, was challenged for the leadership.

The man:

Gorton was a cartoonist’s delight, with his misshapen face and distinctive appearance. Not everyone was aware of how he came to look like that.

John Grey Gorton was the son of Alice Sinn and an orchardist John Rose Gorton. John Snr had split from his wife and had commenced living with Alice, with John Jnr being born in 1911 outside marriage.

John Gorton with mother Alice Sinn

Alice died of tuberculosis when John Jnr was aged 9. Thereafter he was cared for by John Snr’s estranged wife and John Snr’s sister, attending Sydney Church of England Grammar School (where he was a classmate of Errol Flynn) and Geelong Grammar. He then studied in England and obtained his pilot qualification, marrying American Bettina Brown in 1935 (the only Prime Ministerial wife who has been a citizen of another country).  They settled in Australia, taking over his father’s orchard farm.

With the outbreak of WW2, Gorton enlisted in the RAAF and was posted to Malaya. 

John Gorton prior to leaving for war service in 1941

As a result of engine failure he was forced to make an emergency landing during which one of the wheels of the Hurricane he was piloting clipped an embankment, causing the plane to flip. Gorton was not properly restrained and went face first into the gun sight and windscreen, smashing both cheeks and mutilating his nose. He also sustained arm injuries. Gorton was so badly injured that his belongings were taken back to Singapore in the belief that he would not survive. The boat on which he was travelling to Batavia was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and he spent a day on a life raft with little water. Eventually returned to Australia, where he was able to get proper medical treatment, it was found that one of his arm wounds had turned septic.

Before his war service ended he was involved in two further plane crashes. In 1942, he was forced to land due to an incorrectly set fuel cock. Both Gorton and his aircraft were recovered several days later after spending time in the bush. In 1943 his Kittyhawk's engine failed on take off, causing the aircraft to flip at the end of the strip. Gorton was unhurt. He was discharged from service in 1944 and underwent further facial surgery but his facial features could not be fully repaired.

The Prime Minister:

Gorton was elected to the Senate as a Liberal in 1950. From 1958 onward he served in various positions under Prime Ministers Robert Menzies and Harold Holt, including Minister for the Navy from 1958–63, Minister for Works, Minister for the Interior and Minister for Education as well as Leader of the Government in the Senate. 

On 17 December 1967 Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared whilst swimming. His body was never found. The likely replacement was William McMahon but John McEwen, the leader of the National party (then known as the Country Party), which always formed a coalition with the Liberals, declared that he and his party would never serve under McMahon. A reason was never provided, although McEwen said on one occasion that he did not trust him.

John “Black Jack” McEwen

Championed by the Minister for the Army, Malcolm Fraser, Gorton became PM, the only Senator in Australia's history to be Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to have ever served in the Senate. In accordance with Westminster tradition that the PM should come from the Lower House, he resigned his Senate seat and contested the by-election for Holt’s seat, romping it in with 68% of the vote. He could not vote, being still enrolled in his original seat.

As PM, Gorton distanced Australia from traditional ties with Britain but continued Australia’s involvement in the war in Vietnam at a time when such involvement was becoming increasingly unpopular. 

Gorton with Australian troops in Nui Dat, Vietnam, 1968

Other factors also saw his popularity fall: 

• He was a poor media performer and public speaker. 
• The media portrayed him as a fool and incompetent. 
• The abilities of his opposite number, Gough Whitlam, highlighted his shoirtcomings. 
• Attention was focused by the media on his fondness for alcohol and women. 
• Resentment built up within the party on his reliance on his inner circle of advisers, particularly his association with his personal secretary Ainsley Gotto. She had become his PA at age 21. 

Ainsley Gotto and John Gorton

At a cricket match

(Gorton relied on Gotto for political advice. When Minister for the Air Dudley Erwin was omitted from the Ministry following a reshuffle in 1969, Erwin was asked the reason by media representatives. He famously replied “It wiggles, it's shapely and its name is Ainsley Gotto.”)

In the 1969 election, the 45 seat majority was cut to 7 as a result of a 7% swing against the Government.

The leadership challenge:

Gorton was challenged for the leadership by McMahon following the election but it was unsuccessful, the McEwen veto remaining in place. In January 1971 Black Jack retired. His successor, Doug Anthony, declared that the McEwen veto no longer applied.

As the Liberal Party slipped further behind in the polls, Gorton’s earlier supporter, Malcolm Fraser, resigned as Minister for Defence and declared in parliament that Gorton was "not fit to hold the great office of Prime Minister."

Gorton called a Liberal caucus meeting to settle the matter. A motion of confidence in his leadership was tied, 33/33. Under Liberal caucus rules of the time, a tied vote meant the motion was lost, and hence Gorton could have remained as party leader and Prime Minister. Declining to be the head of a party so divided, he cast his chairman’s casting vote against himself, stating “That is not a vote of confidence, so the party will have to elect a new leader."

McMahon was elected leader, and thereby Prime Minister, in the ballot which followed.

Australian television marked the end of Gorton's stormy premiership with a newsreel montage appropriately accompanied by Sinatra's anthem My Way.

In a surprise move, Gorton contested and won the position of Deputy Leader, forcing McMahon to make him Defence Minister. This farcical situation ended within five months when McMahon sacked him for disloyalty.

Afterwards:

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Gorton retained his seat in the 1972 "It's time" election that saw Whitlam swept to power.

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In 1973, Gorton moved a motion in Parliament calling for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults in Australia. The motion was successful following a conscience vote.

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William McMahon was booted in the 1972 election, his time in office being often eclipsed by the legs of his wife, Sonia. She was 32 when they wed, he was 57. 

International headlines resulted in 1971 when she wore a revealing dress to a White House reception:

(Btw, actor Julian McMahon is the son of William and Sonia)

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Malcolm Fraser, who was told in 1983 by Paul Keating that "You look like an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades", became PM when Kerr dismissed the Whitlam government.

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When Fraser became Liberal leader in 1975, Gorton resigned from the party, sat as an independent, and openly campaigned against Fraser, whom he detested. He denounced the dismissal of the Whitlam government by Sir John Kerr, and unsuccessfully stood for an Australian Capital Territory Senate seat at the 1975 election.

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Gorton retired to Canberra, where he kept out of the political limelight. However, in March 1983, he congratulated Bob Hawke "for rolling that bastard Fraser" at that year's election. 

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Bettina Gorton died aged about 67 on 2 October 1983, and in 1993 Gorton married Nancy Home. He quietly rejoined the Liberal Party in the 1990s. John Hewson credited himself with "returning Gorton to the fold."

In his old age Gorton was rehabilitated by the Liberals; his 90th birthday party was attended by Prime Minister John Howard. 

Gorton never forgave Fraser; as late as 2002 he told his biographer Ian Hancock that he still could not tolerate being in the same room as Fraser.

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John Gorton died at the age of 90 in Sydney in May 2002.

John and Bettina Gorton at The Lodge

Quote for the Day

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

- Albert Einstein

Sydney or the Bush, some old time pics

The expression ‘Sydney or the bush’ came up in conversation last week.

It started me thinking.

Sydney. . . Opera House lights from the Bridge, nights in a quiet Hyde Park . . . no, wait, those are lyrics from Tommy Leonetti’s My City of Sydney. Does anyone remember him? 

The bush . . . depending on the context, this could be rural areas, undeveloped areas, country areas . . you can even be out in the bush when there are no trees. "The Bush" also refers to any populated region outside of the major metropolitan areas, including mining and agricultural areas. 

Writers such as Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, and painters such as Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin saw the bush as a source of national ideals, in some cases romanticising it unrealistically .

The privations, hardships and loneliness of the bush, whatever and wherever ‘the bush’ is, have given rise to the expression “Sydney or the bush”, meaning success or failure, usually in connection with taking a chance. All or nothing, go for broke, Hollywood or bust.

It is in this context that Charles M Schulz used the expression in some of his Peanuts cartoons, much to the puzzlement of Charlie Brown:

Some pics of Sydney and the Bush . . .

with focus on 1870 and the 1870's

Sydney . . .

Temperance Hall, Newtown, 1870

Circular Quay from Pitt Street, 1870

Spring Street, Sydney, 1870’s

Pitt Street and Little George Street, 1870

Lassetter & Co., wholesale and retail ironmonger, 421 George Street, Sydney,1870

Congregational Church, Pitt Street, 1870

Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, 1870

Intercolonial Exhibition Building, Prince Alfred Park, September 1870

Sydney Infirmary, Macquarie Street, Sydney 1870

University of Sydney, Main Building and the Great hall from City Road entrance, 1870

The bush . . .

Miners cradling for gold at Box Ridge near Sofala - 46 km from Bathurst - circa 1870

Gold miners, c1870

Short Street in the gold mining town of Hill End, 1872

Wool bales 1890

Wheat off to the Sydney market, c1900

Paddle steamer Lancashire Lass pulling a barge with 1158 bales of wool at Wilcannia, NSW

Women on the farm

Flooding in Lismore, 1861

Church of England school, Gulgong, 1870's

How did that get in here??

Quote for the Day

"What's wrong with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?"

- Erma Bombeck 

(1927-1996)

American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers. From 1965 to 1996, Erma Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humour, chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife.

Funny Friday

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This week: reader contributions

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Some humour from Byter Vince:

Due to the current economic crisis, Greece is cancelling all production of humus and Taramasalata. 

It's a double dip recession.

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Jonathan Ross has been accused of shoplifting a kitchen utensil from Tesco. 

Ross says it was a whisk he was prepared to take.

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Police stop a Pakistani in his transit van on the motorway. Policeman says "Do you know the limit is 50?" 

The driver l

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Paddy & Mick stagger out of the zoo with blood pouring from them.. 

"Bollocks to that" said Paddy "That's the last time I go lion dancing"

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Paddy says to Mick, "Christmas is on Friday this year". 

Mick said, "Let's hope it's not the 13th then."

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I've been charged with murder for killing a man with sandpaper. 

To be honest I only intended to rough him up a bit.

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From Byter Leo:

When I was young I decided I wanted to be a doctor so took the entrance exam to go to Medical School . One of the questions asked us to rearrange the letters PNEIS into the name of an important human body part which is most useful when erect.

Those who answered spine are doctors today. 

The rest of us are sending jokes via email.

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Also from Leo:

When southern Florida resident Nathan Radlich's house was burglarised recently, thieves ignored his wide screen plasma TV, his VCR, and even left his Rolex watch. What they did take, however, was a white box filled with a grayish-white powder. (That's the way the police report described it.)

A spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale police said that it looked similar to high grade cocaine and they'd probably thought they'd hit the big time. Later, Nathan stood in front of numerous TV cameras and pleaded with the burglars: "Please return the cremated remains of my sister, Gertrude. She died three years ago."

The next morning, the bullet-riddled corpse of a local drug dealer known as Hoochie Pevens was found on Nathan's doorstep. The white box was there too; about half of Gertrude's ashes remained. 

Scotch taped to the box was this note which said: "Hoochie sold us the bogus blow, so we wasted Hoochie. Sorry we snorted your sister. No hard feelings. Have a nice day." 

Comments:

Snopes.com, the authoritative site for debunking claims and urban myth, says that the above is only partly true. See:

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/cannibal/cocaine.asp

In 1993 thieves did break into Radlich’s home in Florida and made off with a package wrapped in cellophane containing greyish white powder. It had been kept in a fishing tackle box at the head of Radlich’s bed. The thieves had ignored the TV, VCR, radio and watch that were nearby and taken only the package wrapped in cellophane. Detectives believed that the thieves had mistaken the package, which contained the ashes of Radlich’s sister, for cocaine. Snopes says that the matter rests there. It could have been thieves hitting the jackpot; it could also be a relative or friend wanting a better final resting place for Radlich’s sister than a fishing tackle box. The above embellishments to the story were added later.

Snopes provides other examples of thieves mistaking cremated ashes, known as cremains (cremated remains) being mistaken for cocaine and stolen/snorted. One of the best is when thieves broke into the home of Dee Blyth in Chadwell Heath, Essex in 2000. Dee had felt quite bereft when she lost her beloved Labrador dog, Charlie. She had him cremated and kept his cremains on the mantelpiece in a pot. On the pot was the word “Charlie”. Here is where it gets good. In the UK the term Charlie is also slang for cocaine. Police called to the scene were told that the thieves had made off with two TV’s, a VCR, a stereo and gems worth £2,000. During the investigation they also discovered that some of Charlie’s ashes had been laid out in cocaine-style lines. They surmised that the thieves had snorted before departing. Perhaps they left Charlie when they didn’t get the hit they were expecting.

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Also from Leo:

High Alert Causing Me Problems 

When I was at the checkout and ready to pay for my groceries the cashier said, 

“Strip down, facing me."

Making a mental note so I could complain to my local MP about this security rubbish,

I did just as she had instructed.

After the shrieking and hysterical remarks finally subsided, I found out that she was referring to how I should position my banking card.

Nonetheless, I've been asked to shop elsewhere in the future.

They need to make their instructions a little clearer for seniors.

I hate this getting older stuff. 

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Corn Corner:

From Vince:

A dwarf goes to a very good but very busy doctor and asks "I know you are busy but do you treat dwarves?"

The doctor replies "Yes, but you will have to be a little patient".

Quote for the Day: Erasmus

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

- Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536)

Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher and theologian.

The Wit and Wisdom of Tony Abbott

As the sharks begin circling Our Leader, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on his utterances . . .

“If you want to know who to vote for, I'm the guy with the not bad looking daughters.”

“If we’re honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband … you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he’s employing someone while he is in fact a boss.”

“I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak.”

"No one, however smart, however well educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom."

“There will always be some issues that are contentious, but the best way to deal with them is openly, candidly and behind closed doors.”

On Fiona Scott, MP for Lindsay, when asked about the commonalties with Ms Scott’s predecessor Jackie Kelly in the lead up to the 2013 election:

“They're young, feisty, I think I can probably say have a bit of sex appeal and they're just very connected with the local area. . .  [Fiona Scott] is not just a pretty face.”

“These people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers.”

“Now, I know that there are some Aboriginal people who aren’t happy with Australia Day. For them it remains Invasion Day. I think a better view is the view of Noel Pearson, who has said that Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country’s British Heritage.”

“We just can't stop people from being homeless if that's their choice.

“The argument [behind climate change] is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”

“Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that…”

During the lead up to the 20013 election:

"I am saying that I won't be doing deals with independents and minor parties. I'm not going to lead a minority government. And if there is a hung parliament, there won't be a Coalition government led by Tony Abbott."

“Jesus didn’t say yes to everyone. Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone's place to come to Australia.”

“I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.”

“I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [for cervical cancer], maybe that's because I'm a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard but, look, I won't be.”

On Julia Gillard:

“Gillard won’t lie down and die.”

“The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.”

“There may not be a great job for [aboriginal people] but whatever there is, they just have to do it... And if it's picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done.”

“While I think men and women are equal, they are also different and I think it's inevitable and I don't think it's a bad thing at all that we always have, say, more women doing things like physiotherapy and an enormous number of women simply doing housework.”

“I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... it [their virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.”

“What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every year…”

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Bonus pictorial . . .

Quote for the Day: Guy Kawasaki

"The hardest part about getting started is getting started."

- Guy Kawasaki (1954 - )

Chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google, and chief evangelist of Apple

Trivia

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Gulliver’s Travels, first edition

In Part 3 Chapter 3 (the "Voyage to Laputa") of Jonathan Swift's famous satire Gulliver's Travels, a fictional work written in 1726, the astronomers of Laputa are described as having discovered two satellites of Mars. This was considerably prior to the actual discovery of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, by Asaph Hall in 1877.

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221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

At the time the Holmes' stories were published, addresses in Baker Street did not go as high as 221. Baker Street was later extended, and in 1932 the Abbey National Building Society moved into premises at 219–229 Baker Street. For many years, Abbey National employed a full-time secretary to answer mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes. In 1990, a blue plaque signifying 221B Baker Street was installed at the Sherlock Holmes Museum, situated at 239 Baker Street. Westminster City Council renumbered No 239 to 221B, thereby causing a 15-year dispute between Abbey National and the Holmes Museum for the right to receive mail addressed to 221B Baker Street. Since the closure of Abbey House in 2005, ownership of the address by the Holmes Museum has not been challenged, despite 221B being between 237 and 241 Baker Street.

221B Baker Street, London

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Laser is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emissions of Radiation."

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Escalator is one of many words that were originally trademarks but have become ordinary words found in dictionaries. Some other words which were originally trademarks and have now passed into common use are aspirin, autoharp, band-aids, breathalyzer, cellophane, Coke (in some areas, at least), corn flakes, cube steak, ditto, dry ice, dumpster, formica, Frisbee, granola, gunk, jeep, kerosene, Kleenex, mace, nylon, ping-pong (also an onomatopoeia), popsicle, Q-tip, rollerblade, rolodex, Scotch tape, sheetrock, spandex, styrofoam, tabloid, thermos, trampoline, yo-yo, xerox, and zipper.

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The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum. It was scanned in 1974 in Troy, Ohio at the local Marsh supermarket. That packet of gum is now on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

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A Boeing 747's wingspan is longer than the Wright Brother's first flight. The first flight of the Wright Flyer was a total distance of 36.5 meters, a standard Boeing 747 has a 59.6 meter wing span.

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Quote for the Day: Pablo Picasso

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.” 

 - Pablo Picasso

Detail from Vincent Van Gogh's "The Sower"