Harold Holt is a meme today, but when the prime minister went missing in December 1967, it was no laughing matter

At some point, Australians stopped grieving Harold Holt’s death and many started to laugh about it instead. The sudden disappearance of a prime minister at a Victorian beach in December 1967 has furnished many wisecracks and memes. Former Cronulla Sharks coach Jack Gibson famously said that waiting for the team to win was like “leaving a porch light on for Harold Holt”.

The Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Pool in Malvern, commemorated in his honour in 1969, attracts its fair share of mirth. So do the conspiracy theories, deeply unserious as they are, of “double agent” Holt’s abduction by a Chinese submarine. A few years ago, Holt’s grandson pointed out that Cheviot beach was “too shallow for such a vessel”, and the late prime minister “wasn’t a fan of Chinese cuisine” anyway.

For all its comic potential today, Harold Holt’s disappearance was no joke at the time.

Rough waters

Holt had not enjoyed 1967. The war in Vietnam – effectively his war – was increasingly divisive. Old questions about the HMAS Voyager disaster in 1964 had caused political mayhem for him in parliament. Another scandal, this one about the misuse of VIP flights, had damaged his standing and that of his government.

In the final weeks of Holt’s life, he had faced off against his deputy prime minister, Country Party leader John McEwen, over Australia’s decision not to devalue the dollar in line with Britain’s devaluation of sterling. The exchange rate affected primary and secondary producers and was politically controversial enough to almost split the Liberal-Country Party Coalition.

There were personal challenges, too. Holt’s brother Cliff died in March, and by December the prime minister was suffering with shoulder and back pains. On Saturday December 16, the front page of The Australian reported that Holt’s doctor had advised him to “swim less”.

The prime minister was a man who thrived on physical risk and loved the water, so he ignored the advice. On Sunday morning he and a few companions, including lover Marjorie Gillespie and friend Alan Stewart, went to Portsea to catch a glimpse of the world-famous sailor Alec Rose’s yacht.

They then went to Cheviot beach, where an overheating and reckless Holt insisted on swimming. As the press reported the next morning, there were “strong currents and a heavy surf”. Holt looked to be caught in a rip. He dived and never resurfaced.

Everywhere and nowhere

Stewart and Gillespie quickly raised the alarm. What followed, according to Holt’s biographer Tom Frame, was “one of the largest search operations in Australian history”. The Victorian Police, the Royal Australian Air Force and Navy Search and Rescue were all involved, providing several teams of professional divers, though the surf was too dangerous for them to work in that night. Airlines TAA and Ansett both contributed an aircraft each to the search mission.

News of the “missing VIP” quickly spread, and media outlets began breaking the story in the later afternoon. The prime minister’s wife Zara and press secretary Tony Eggleton were quickly flown from Canberra to Melbourne.

After several hours of dangerous operations, the search was suspended for the night, to be resumed at 4.54am the following morning. At dawn, there were 50 divers on hand and 340 people involved throughout the day.

Large headlines such as “PRIME MINISTER MISSING” and “MR HOLT BELIEVED DEAD” dominated the newspapers on Monday morning. Topographical pictures and maps with arrows and labels (“Mr Holt Disappeared Here”) were printed in most of the metropolitan broadsheets.

There was a constant stream of radio and television interviews with rescue personnel, and no fewer than nine press conferences at Portsea in the hours and days after the disappearance. Even Marjorie was prevailed upon to speak on camera. The journalists wanted to know whether Holt had been doing an “overarm stroke” or “the breaststroke” before he vanished.

Given the circumstances, the media were mostly well behaved. Reporters kept a respectful distance from Zara as she landed in Melbourne, and they “were fantastic” in their treatment of Eggleton, who had to repeatedly put on a brave face for the cameras despite his obvious grief.

The hunt for Holt’s body ran through to early January 1968. Nearby sharks were captured and dissected in case they had secrets to reveal. Several weeks later, another biographer notes, fisherman picked up “a thigh bone” and additional “leg bone”, but these were never identified. The live reporting on the search was grim and macabre, the lack of a body morbidly fascinating. Holt’s body was everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Saying goodbye

A blanket of respect fell where only recently there had been passionate criticism. The obituaries described the lost PM as “essentially a ‘nice bloke’”. The Courier-Mail said Holt was “the most courteous, personable, likeable and accessible Prime Minister this country has ever had”. There were tender tributes from former colleagues like Sir Robert Menzies and opponents including the new Labor leader Gough Whitlam. International tributes came thick and fast.

Holt’s memorial service, just days before Christmas, led to “the largest influx of overseas heads of state in Australian history”. There were several influential Asian leaders present. A tearful US President Lyndon Johnson flew in to mourn the loss of his “cherished friend” and commiserate with Zara before breaking off for urgent discussions about Vietnam.

Dignitaries, journalists and a handful of ticketed members of the public attended St Paul’s cathedral in Melbourne and a further 20,000 mourners lined the streets outside. Four television cameras were on hand to capture the occasion, which was broadcast live across Australia’s TV and radio networks.

For most, it was a solemn occasion. Brisbane’s Archbishop Philip Strong eulogised that Holt’s loss would be “impossible to calculate”. But according to Don Chipp, a low-ranking Liberal minister, the minds of federal politicians were elsewhere.

‘I want to be prime minister’

Australia’s Constitution offers no advice about what to do when the prime minister goes swimming and doesn’t come back. In fact, it says nothing about the job of prime minister whatsoever. Holt’s death, therefore, was followed by an unseemly power struggle.

The first problem was one for Governor-General Lord Casey: when should an acting prime minister be appointed? After two leaderless days, Casey called on McEwen as deputy prime minister to lead an interim government. McEwen accepted, promising to resign as soon as the Liberal Party chose its new leader.

The Liberal deputy leader and treasurer, Billy McMahon, was unimpressed with this. He and McEwen had been at constant loggerheads in recent times and they deeply detested one another. It only got worse from there. In a tense meeting, McEwen vetoed McMahon’s candidacy entirely. He explained to the press afterwards:

I have told Mr McMahon that neither I nor my Country Party colleagues would be prepared to serve under him as Prime Minister.

It was no empty threat, and the Liberal Party quickly moved on (though McMahon didn’t). Some Liberal operatives thought it best to keep McEwen in charge, whereas others began mobilising to elevate someone from a group of ministers who, The Bulletin thought, had been “reinforcing each other in their triviality” of late.

In the end, there were four candidates. Labour and National Service minister Leslie Bury was an early favourite. Immigration minister Billy Snedden threw his hat in the ring and was eliminated early, though he would be a future contender. Allen Fairhall, the much-liked defence minister, was thought a chance but chose not to stand. The Bulletin said his health wasn’t up to it, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a politician anyway.

The two strongest contenders were the external affairs minister, the respected Paul Hasluck, and the government’s senate leader, the gregarious John Gorton. The latter had run a highly visible campaign, and the eminent journalist Alan Reid later wrote that he was different from the late Holt: Gorton “had the air of being prepared to be rough, tough and nasty if he had to be”.

On January 9, decision day for the Liberals, The Sydney Morning Herald claimed Gorton’s backers had “lost a little of their strong confidence”. He needn’t have worried. After a motion of condolence from Holt, a dignified speech from McMahon and two ballots, Gorton became prime minister.

Gorton quickly assumed the prime ministership and won a by-election to represent Holt’s electorate in the House of Representatives.

In a matter of weeks, our politics had been completely transformed. Some said it was a characteristically Australian thing to lose our prime minister in the surf. For us today, it is national folklore. At the time, it seemed an embarrassingly trivial way to let our leader go.