The first thing you’d hear about it would be only his name.
Why is “Harold Holt” trending, you’d lazily wonder as you clicked on the link. What’s the dumb b**tard done now?
The last time the PM was plastered over social media like this was a couple of months earlier when he declared Australia was “All the way with LBJ” and boy, didn’t that cause a s***storm.
GetUp! had immediately started a change.org petition calling for an end to Australia’s involvement in Vietnam. The Greens demanded he resign.
Now the words “Harold Holt” were once more rocketing up the ranks of trending topics in Australia until they were just under “Sgt Pepper Special Edition” — although that was a promoted tweet, so it didn’t count.
Soon they were trending globally, which was pretty weird for a PM who had already taken off for his summer holidays and hadn’t really done much in the two years before that either.
And it was certainly pretty weird for a sleepy Sunday afternoon in mid-December.
And as you scroll through the feed that keeps refreshing faster than you can read it you suddenly realise why: “Harold Holt MISSING!!!!” one reads. “OMG!!!! Holt is DEAD!!!!” says another. “Good!” comes a reply from @troopsoutnow66.
Soon journos are tweeting frantically. “BREAKING: Police sources say search underway for PM off Cheviot Beach. More to come @Radio3DB.”
Calls are made to Holt’s office but go unanswered. Then a brief statement is posted via @PMOfficial: “Reports PM is dead are FAKE NEWS!” it reads. “PM is enjoying well-deserved break with friends. Happy holidays to all! — PMO Team.”
This only adds fuel to the fire.
“Holt on hols already? Who’s paying his salary?” replies one angry taxpayer.
Besides, who are these “friends”? Wasn’t he holidaying at Portsea with the mysterious Marjorie Gillespie while his wife Zara was stuck back at the Lodge?
“Looks like the pants man got caught with his pants down LOL,” tweets @Studmuffin75.
Then @OneNation chimes in: “What do the Chinese know about Holt’s disappearance? #HanoiHarold #draintheswamp.”
Luckily, however, WikiLeaks then dumps redacted US State Department documents that prove he was abducted by the North Vietnamese as payback for American imperialist incursions into South-East Asia.
Then, just over an hour after Harold Holt swims out to sea and is never seen again, it hits the mainstream news. Every television and radio network instantly throws the switch to live rolling coverage, the internet explodes with conspiracy theories and political leaders express their deepest sympathies before trying to seize power.
That is how the complete disappearance of a sitting prime minister would have likely played out today, but surely things were different on December 17, 1967 when Harold Holt went for a swim in the rough seas off Cheviot and disappeared amid the waves?
The first thing to know about Holt is that his disappearance was almost certainly the most interesting thing about him.
This is not to be unkind. He was a fine upstanding middle-class man who did just about everything a fine upstanding middle-class man ought to do, including becoming a fine upstanding upper-middle-class man.
The son of a teacher-turned-publican, Harold went to a private school in Sydney then boarded at Wesley College in Melbourne, going on to study law at Melbourne University. He joined the United Australia Party and after a couple of failed tilts at Labor seats he won a by-election in Melbourne’s well-heeled eastern suburbs in 1935 at the ripe old age of 27.
In short, he was a conservative politician straight out of central casting, at least the way conservatives would like to see it. He was ambitious and capable as well as handsome, sporty and strapping.
He also had an admirable sense of patriotic duty, joining the Army Reserves prior to World War II — while he was a minister — and then after the outbreak of war enlisting in the regular army, apparently declining an offer to be an RAAF officer in favour of being a humble gunner.
Still, as a politician he wasn’t much of a heavy hitter. He seemed to be a generally affable guy who tried to keep everybody happy but wasn’t exactly driven by passion.
Indeed, his primary passions appeared to be women and the water, both of which combined to cause his death.
It is widely speculated that the reason he went swimming out so far in those treacherous waves off Cheviot Beach 50 years ago was to impress his mistress Marjorie Gillespie.
Holt had left Canberra — and his wife Zara — for Melbourne on the Friday on an RAAF VIP plane. Then he drove himself to Portsea in his maroon Pontiac, spending the next day playing tennis. Gillespie was apparently staying at the house next door.
The following morning he took her and some friends who were travelling in another car to witness a round-the-world sailor come in to Port Phillip Bay. Then he insisted they stop off at the secluded Cheviot beach for a swim, even though other safer beaches were closed due to rough conditions.
While another male companion paddled close to the shore, Holt ploughed in and kept going, not once raising an arm for help even as he dipped forever out of sight.
He was supposed to have said: “I know this beach like the back of my hand.”
Gillespie, who was watching from the rocks, said afterwards: “It was like a leaf being taken out. It was so quick and so final.”
There is little reason to doubt such a sparsely mournful account, especially since Holt’s wife later confirmed that he was indeed having an affair with Gillespie. In fact Zara’s primary complaint seemed to be that Gillespie failed to realise she was one of many. Her husband was, after all, “charming”.
Even so, the conspiracy theories flourished, most famously the suggestion that Holt was somehow taken captive by a Chinese submarine. How exactly the People’s Republic had co-ordinated such a precise military operation with the whims of a toey Tory on the Mornington Peninsula has never been entirely explained.
One thing Holt’s disappearance did do, with or without the help of the Chinese, was herald the arrival of the “Swinging Sixties” into Australia. The only catch was they didn’t arrive until the ’70s.
After nearly two decades of conservative rule, the abrupt departure of Holt — who had in fact won his only election in a landslide that put all of Menzies’ victories to shame — was the beginning of the end for the Menzies era of enviable stability and excruciating boredom.
Two days after Holt disappeared, following frantic talks between the Liberals and their Coalition partner, he was succeeded by the legendary John “Black Jack” McEwen, the leader of the Country Party who held office for 23 days until the Liberal Party got around to holding a leadership ballot on January 9, 1968. Thereupon John Gorton won but, being a senator, had to transfer to the House of Representatives to take up the office of prime minister in accordance with a completely uncodified convention.
Then, as a token of respect for his service, Black Jack was made Deputy Prime Minister — the first time that office was formally created in Australia.
Labor, under its charismatic new leader Gough Whitlam, then smashed the Coalition in the 1969 election, with a seven per cent swing and garnering over 50 per cent of the vote. The only catch was they couldn’t snare a majority of seats.
And so, beset by falling polls and party infighting, Gorton gave way to Billy McMahon, whom everyone had thought was Holt’s successor in the first place before Black Jack came along and refused to work with him.
At any rate, McMahon lost the election in 1972 with yet a further swing to Labor and the Sixties finally came to Australia a mere decade after they’d arrived everywhere else.
Then of course there was a rush of blood to the head and after a few short years in government Labor had thrown it all away and given it back to the Libs again.
Sound familiar?
This is Harold Holt’s true legacy: That because of one dumb decision on a beach he set in train in a series of political crises which, after two decades of growth and stability led by just three prime ministers, burned through five prime ministers in a single decade.
Thank God we haven’t made that mistake again. These days when we wake up and our prime minister has disappeared we’re dumb enough to have done it ourselves.
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