50 years since Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared off Cheviot Beach in Portsea
CHANNEL 7 journalist David Johnston was the first reporter on the scene when Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared thanks to a bout of seasickness.
South East
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AT A recent function to celebrate 60 years since Channel 7 first went to air in Melbourne, it was a pleasure to catch up with my former newsreading colleague, the now-retired David Johnston.
Our conversation turned to his involvement in the biggest news story ever to happen on the Mornington Peninsula.
By a simple quirk of fate, David just happened to be the first reporter on the scene after the disappearance of our nation’s leader, Harold Holt.
On December 17 later this year, it will be 50 years to the day when Australia lost a serving Prime Minister.
A keen swimmer and experienced snorkeller, the 59-year-old entered the ocean at Cheviot Beach at Portsea and was never seen again.
It is impossible to underestimate the scale of the panic and chaos that swept through newsrooms around the country.
It is also very easy to imagine the feeling on a lazy, quiet pre-Christmas Sunday afternoon on the Mornington Peninsula in 1967.
The lead story that day was going to be the afternoon arrival at Williamstown of British yachtsman Alec Rose, on his single-handed circumnavigation of the globe in his 36-foot cutter, Lively Lady.
Rose, coincidentally the same age as Harold Holt, chose Melbourne as a stopover on his way home to Portsmouth, because it was his son’s place of residence.
But David Johnston wasn’t interested in waiting patiently with other members of the media at Williamstown.
He thought he and his camera crew could charter a fishing boat further down the bay and obtain exclusive footage of the Lively Lady as she came through Port Phillip Heads.
And yet the same winds that had whipped up the boiling surf at Cheviot Beach conspired to ruin Johnston’s big scoop.
He and the crew felt so ill on board the fishing boat, that they were forced to abort their mission.
That’s when the news filtered through that Australia’s leader was missing.
Alec Rose was suddenly of no consequence.
All hell broke loose.
At South Melbourne, HSV7’s newsroom had the advantage of its combined resources with the Herald Sun organisation.
Senior presenter Geoff Raymond and support presenter Brian Naylor were called in, and their reporter was on the scene.
Communications though, were a nightmare.
All news crews relied on two-way radio systems between their cars and the newsroom. Garbled messages were lost in this black spot area.
Reporters also discovered that a public telephone or any precious landline nearby, were few and far between.
For Johnston, it was a frustrating story.
Despite one of the largest land, air and sea search operations in Australia’s history, everyone knew what had happened.
Two days later Holt was presumed dead and John McEwen was sworn in as caretaker Prime Minister.
The one thing that still stands out for Johnston, was the faux pas from his late colleague Geoff Raymond, who accidentally announced on air that the search had been called off for the night, “after coming to a dead halt.”
@Peter_Mitchell7