11th November 1975, a pivotal moment for Australian politics and me

I was 14 in 1975 when the Whitlam government was dismissed, it was the first momentous political event for which I have a clear and vivid memory, I have very fuzzy child memories of other events, I have lived around politics for my whole life.

My father was a journalist firstly for the afternoon newspaper The Sun, and later for The Sydney Morning Herald where he worked for most of his career. Sunday 17^thDecember 1967 we were at a Christmas party hosted by Sun editor Jack Tier. I was six and was carefree and running around being six. Suddenly all the journalist abruptly left the party,  it was the disappearance of Harold Holt at Cheviot Beach that had called them into work and away from Christmas drinking. I knew it was a big political event, however, my young brain didn’t quite understand.

By November 1975 I was in my early teens and more aware of the world around me. It awakened in me an interest in politics, Dad was at this time political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. I can remember him clearly in the lead-up saying, “every day mate, every day big fucking yarns” He could be shockingly straightforward and abrupt if you were not used to Peter Bowers approach to life.

I thought I had a fairly normal childhood it was only much later I came to realise it was anything but normal.

It was of course all hard phone lines in those days, we had this dirty green handset with a rotary dial on the front. Today I struggle to remember any phone numbers, they are all in my mobile, I can however remember the number of that muddy green phone like it’s tattooed on my brain: 95 86 10.  We had a replacement phone line snaking across the garden for years, you had to mow around it. It was telecom trying and solve a clicking and echo on the line, dad thought the phone was bugged – but that’s another story.

Being 14, I would always get to the phone first. My sister would occupy the line for hours talking to her friends, but I was King of the Answering.

Quite often it would be a frontbench politician ringing to speak to my dad, sometimes the conversations were quite heated. I answered one afternoon on a weekend and it was Gough, he had a distinctive voice and would always open straight up with a question without any introductions or phone etiquette like, “Hello, this is the Prime Minister”

He opened this conversation with “Ah, young Bowers.” He would always call me “Young Bowers” even when I was no longer young.

“Tell me young Bowers, do Bowers live in a Bowery?”

I had no idea what a Bowery was, however, having just returned from dad’s posting to The Sydney Morning Herald bureau in London, I knew what a bovver boy was (much in the news, troublesome skinhead gangs).

“I’m more a Bovver Boy than a Bowery Boy, Prime Minister”

“Ha,” he exhaled it as much as spoke, “you see, young Bowers, you are smarter than your old man. I better speak with him please.”

I felt like I knew the Prime Minister, ridiculous I know I really didn’t, but he called me ‘young Bowers’

I stopped telling my friends at school that I knew the Prime minister, they used to give me too much grief.

I was at the time a student at Telopea Park High School, the nearest school to Old Parliament House,  a school Gough had attended at some stage in his youth, at least that’s what we were told.

I guess I was magnetically drawn into politics after I became a photojournalist. One of the more journalistic tasks that can seem cold and unfeeling from the outside is the preparation of obituaries before the death of public figures,  the reason is so you produce a thorough and well thought out tribute to their lives, this is how I found myself poking around the archives held by the Whitlam Institute for Guardian Australia before Gough’s death.

A couple of things struck me from my time in researching that wonderful archive.

Contained in his personal photo albums was material from his wartime service as a Navigator-Bomb Aimer in the RAAF 13^th Squadron, the photos I felt lifted the veil beyond the public images used during his political career.

His albums were full of pictures from his time in Northern Australia with page after page of photographs of the Indigenous people in the area, their lives and customs, there was a warmth in what he pointed his camera at and recorded.

I felt visually it was not so far from those images to that most famous dirt pouring photograph with Vincent Lingiari. Interestingly, the photographer Merv Bishop told me that Gough had already poured the dirt into Vincent’s hand inside the little shelter that can be seen in the background, he pulled them outside into the light to re-enact the symbolic gesture, its indeed the vibrant blue of the sky and the redness of the dirt that makes this photograph so very memorable.

Some years later, a function at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House pulled together journalists who had worked in the building they used to call “The Wedding Cake” to mark the reopening of the press gallery, renovations had modified the rabbit warren it had become and reverted back to its original layout.

My Dad spoke, as did Gough Whitlam. I have a prized family photograph of Dad, Gough and myself looking out one of the press gallery windows. At that same event I took a photograph of the respected political writer Niki Savva with Gough. As they were posing themselves, Gough asked Niki, “May I put my arm on your shoulder?” I pressed the button and Niki is laughing hysterically, afterwards she told me after he had placed his hand on her shoulder, he had said “Hang on a second while I adjust my left nut.”

His wicked sense of humor and his empathy are my enduring memories of the man at the centre of the events of November 11 1975, the event that turned me on to Australian politics.

Mike Bowers is a photojournalist with over 37 years’ experience. He currently hosts the Talking Pictures segment on ABC TV’s Insiders. He has covered 13 federal election campaigns, and photographed conflicts in Cambodia, Kosovo, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East.

His father, the acclaimed political journalist Peter Bowers, covered national affairs for 46 years.