Harold Holt got a pool, Curtin a pub. What does Morrison deserve for a memorial?

Everyone gets the joke about the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre in Malvern, a suburb of Melbourne.

Surely, we scoff, it’s poor taste to name a pool after the only prime minister thought to have drowned while in office, in tumultuous seas at Portsea.

But the Harold Holt Pool is part of a rich tradition in this country of remembering former prime ministers in inappropriate ways. We choose monuments that sit strangely at odds with the person they commemorate.

This country has a long tradition of naming things after prime ministers that are completely inappropriate.Credit: Matt Davidson

The John Curtin Hotel, for example, is named after an alcoholic. Deakin University is named after a man who conducted research by seances. Alfred Deakin was a journalist who got news from mediums. Chifley Road, from Lithgow to Bell, celebrates a train driver.

Robert Menzies was prime minister for longer than anybody else. He was a bastion of conservatism and a pillar of the empire. It is odd then that the Menzies Building at Monash University, which dominated the campus for generations, became the seedbed of left-wing politics. In the 1970s and ’80s, The Ming Wing was a seminary for all the things Menzies opposed. The walls were lathered in posters urging the overthrow of everything from the United States military to the management of the cafe. In the small western Victorian town of Jeparit, where the prime minister was born, you will find the Sir Robert Menzies Caravan Park. It is hard to imagine him hanging up his double-breasted suit in the cupboard of a caravan, but perhaps he did.

Harold Holt pool, renowned for its Brutalist architecture, received National Trust heritage listing in 2006. Credit: James Boddington

Malcolm Fraser represented the seat of Wannon in the Western District of Victoria, an area not known for progressive politics. But the electorate now named after him in the western suburbs of Melbourne is rather different. Labor holds it by a margin of more than 20 per cent. It makes more sense that a street in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, is named after Fraser. It is a long way from Wannon, but Fraser is highly regarded among African nations for his stand against apartheid and in favour of human rights. Malcolm Fraser Street runs at right angles to Mao Tse Tung Street and Vladimir Lenin Street, but parallel to Jimmy Carter Street.

Jim Scullin was prime minister for a couple of years during the Great Depression. He was only 12 when he left school to work in a grocer’s store. It is lamentable that there is no supermarket in the Canberra suburb of Scullin. Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, came from Sydney. Yet the Barton Highway begins the journey from Canberra to Melbourne. John Howard went to Sydney University, yet the John Howard Collection and Reading Room are at the University of NSW. For many years, the Howard family took their annual holiday at a place called Hawks Nest, which has nothing to do with Bob Hawke. There is, of course, a Bob Hawke brewery, although there is no evidence of him ever making beer, only drinking it. He was good at that.

Joseph Lyons had 12 children yet there is no school in the Canberra suburb of Lyons. There is, however, a bottle shop. There is also a civil celebrant called “licensed to wed”. Paul Keating Park in Sydney’s Bankstown is in the middle of a busy shopping area. Despite Keating’s penchant for well-tailored suits, the vicinity features clothing stores such as Kmart, Big W, Roni’s Variety Discounts and a barber called Dapper and Boss. There is a jewellery shop on the next corner, but it doesn’t sell any clocks made before 1900.

The Curtin Hotel, pictured in 1973, commemorates a prime minister who had a problem with compulsive drinking.

Gough Whitlam, it is said, kept a list of all the things in Australia that were named after him. It included The Whitlam Joint Replacement Centre at Fairfield Hospital, an honour that alludes to his health policies more than his drugs policies. A reporter once announced that there was a deep well in South Australia known as the Whitlam Bore, which is a little rough. Love or loathe him, Whitlam was always entertaining.

Indeed, it is not easy to think of a single thing named after a prime minister that suits their legacy.

This brings us to the issue of the moment. How should we honour more recent incumbents?

Those who have watched the series Nemesis recently might like to see the opening of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison centre for harmony and brotherly love. Or maybe a special cemetery for burying the hatchet.

It would be lovely to dine in a French restaurant named after Scott Morrison, one serving those wines from New England called White Submarine and Red Submarine. Or perhaps an athletics track could be named in honour of his famous advice that “It’s not a race”. Or a nursery after his claim that “I don’t hold a hose”. The problem with Morrison is that there are too many options.

This is before we even get to Albanese. Sadly for him, the first pizza place opened in Melbourne was called Toto’s. Albo’s dog was honoured before he was.

Michael McGirr’s most recent book is Ideas to Save Your Life (Text).

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