My father, who had a newsagency around the corner, was on Gus’ side. According to my pro-small-business father, Gus had survived a Nazi labour camp during the war, so understood exactly what he was dealing with when it came to the federal government’s Department of the Interior.
Richard Glover and Gough Whitlam in 2005.
Later, following extensive debate in the local paper, the chairs were returned, on the provision that Gus indemnify the government should anyone bump into his furniture. Now, of course, that part of Canberra is a sea of outdoor tables and chairs, people sipping cappuccinos with hardly a murmur from the local constabulary.
Back in 1975 we were hungry for action. I’d like to claim that on November 11 we were worried about our democracy, or outraged about the use of royal powers, but really we were sticking around in the hope that – for once – something might happen in our town.
In the event, of course, it was a fizzer. The national strike never happened. The civil war failed to start. Whitlam lost the election that followed.
Thirty years later, on the 2005 anniversary of the Dismissal, I had the chance, on my ABC radio show, of a face-to-face interview with Gough Whitlam. As a fond father himself, he’d been a fan of my Herald columns about Batboy and The Space Cadet, which, he said, was why he’d agreed. He turned up with a copy of his book, signed for Batboy.
Whitlam described Kerr and his social-climbing wife, calling her “Fancy Nancy”. He explained how Kerr had manufactured a trip to the UK so Fancy Nancy could meet the Queen. He was 89 but funny, sharp and still deliciously bitter about the Kerrs.
Sir John Kerr and wife Lady Anne Kerr at Sydney Airport in 1978.Credit: Fairfax Media
He moved on to November 11 and I prodded him to repeat those famous words – the ones I’d missed first time around.
“So you said … ?” I prompted.
Whitlam laughed, knowing what I was after. Finally he complied. “You’ll remember there was a squeaky voice” – this a reference to the GG’s secretary – “followed by my voice, which, at that time, was very good.” He then recalled the famous phrase in full, before repeating the last bit: “Nothing will save the governor-general – and it didn’t! Because, you’ll remember, he went into exile with Fancy Nancy” – another delicious pause – “and what could be worse?”
Such sweet revenge, served so perfectly cold.
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Back on the steps of parliament, 50 years before, we schoolfriends waited and waited. Like the listless aristocrats of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, we just wanted something to happen. Finally, late into night, the great Labor wit Fred Daly wandered out, entertained us with a passionate, funny, off-the-cuff speech, and then told us all to go home.
Obedient Canberra school students as we were, we did what we were told. The affable Fred Daly had told us we were dismissed, and that was good enough for us.
