Down to the Sea

In his leisure hours, summer or winter, Australia's Prime Minister Harold Holt was never far from the sea. Twenty-three months ago, when he first took office, newspapers all over the world ran pictures of the hardy, silver-haired Prime Minister wearing a rubber wet suit and carrying a spear gun. Holt fished from the rocks, body-surfed in the great Pacific waves that pound southern Australia's Mornington Peninsula, and spent hours with his wife, Zara, exploring rock pools, collecting shells and spearing fish. His greatest delight was snorkeling. "From the moment I put my head under the water," he said, "I was caught. And I've been captured ever since." Last week Harold Holt, 59, was captured for good by the sea that he loved so much.

Gone Like a Leaf. Taking a weekend off after the strain of a Senate election campaign and the devaluation of the British pound, Holt jumped into his red 1967 Pontiac and drove 59 miles from Melbourne to a small, white hilltop beach home he had built in the southern seaside town of Portsea on Port Phillip Bay. Though his doctors had warned him against swimming because of a slight muscular complaint, Holt felt that the sea air and the relaxation would do him good. So early on an overcast Sunday morning, he picked up four friends--Portsea Neighbors Alan Stewart and Mrs. Marjorie Gillespie, Mrs. Gillespie's daughter Vyner, and Vyner's boy friend, Martin Simpson--and all went looking for a place to swim and sunbathe. "I know," Holt suggested. "Let's go to Cheviot Beach" --a lonely, rocky stretch 21 miles from Holt's beach home, and one of the most dangerous beaches in the Portsea area. When the five arrived, the tide was at crest, and ugly chunks of wood and flotsam bobbed about on the sur face. "I had never seen it like that before," Mrs. Gillespie says. But Holt decided to go in anyway. "I know this beach like the back of my hand," he insisted. After all, he had been swimming there since 1926, when as an unmarried law student he began visiting Cheviot with Zara and her family. And, as a strong swimmer, he had often plunged into rougher waters.

"The Prime Minister must be a lot fitter than we are," Stewart quipped to the others. "There he goes, striding along like Marco Polo." Holt strolled down the beach and dived into the chill waters. "If Mr. Holt can take it," Stewart said, "I'd better go in too." He went for a dip but, discouraged by the condition of the water, quickly returned to the others. By now, the tide had turned and was rushing out. As he swam, his head bobbing above the waves, Holt was carried farther and farther out into a broad stretch of swirling water. "Suddenly," Mrs. Gillespie recalls, "I had the most terrible feeling and yelled: 'Come back, come back!' " "Does he often stay in this long?" Stewart asked nervously. As the four watched the distant head, the waves suddenly seemed to boil up around Holt. The Prime Minister of Australia dis appeared from sight beneath the waters about 500 yards offshore. "I knew then that there was nothing anyone could do, even if we had lifesavers," says Mrs. Gillespie. "He was like a leaf being carried out. It was so quick and final."

Delayed Impact. Stewart dashed down the beach, searching for some sign of Holt, then scrambled up on a rock for a better look. Seeing nothing, he ran to Holt's car and drove two miles to a nearby army barracks, where he telephoned for help. Helicopters, light planes, boats and launches soon spiderwebbed the area in the greatest search in Australia's history. Skindivers plunged deep below the surface. Flying in from Canberra, Zara Holt walked for hours along the beach, keeping her own lonely vigil and suggesting a few places where searchers might look for the body. "Try the Pope's Eye and the Chinaman's Hat," she suggested. "They are two bad pockets of rocks right in the middle of the current." But there was nothing. Though the police vowed to search indefinitely, Holt's body--likely carried away by strong riptides--may never be found.

The news hit Australia and the world like the slam of a bullet. At first, there was disbelief. Such things just did not happen in affable, easy-going Australia, and certainly not to its Prime Minister. What astonished many was that the ruler of so large a nation should go about so casually and unguarded. Holt had neither wanted nor received any secret-service protection--an individualistic privilege that no other Prime Minister is likely to enjoy. Not until long hours after Holt's disappearance did the numbing awareness of truth finally set in. The full impact arrived only when television cameras mounted on windy cliff tops in Portsea brought the disaster into every living room and into the heart of s every Australian family.

No one escaped the deep, DEG paralyzing sense of loss for the plucky little Aussie who i! had made good. The son of a theatrical promoter, Holt lost his mother at 16, studied law before drifting into politics, then began a 30-year political apprenticeship under autocratic Liberal Party Leader Sir Robert Menzies. Coming up through the ranks, Holt was named minister without portfolio at 32, privy councillor at 45, deputy leader of the party at 48. Then, at 57, when Menzies retired, Holt became party leader and Prime Minister.

A Staunch Ally. Drawing new attention to Australia's role as an Asian and Pacific nation, Holt traveled widely throughout Asia, strengthened ties with the U.S. and became one of Washington's staunchest Viet Nam allies. He raised Australia's military commitment in Viet Nam from 1,500 men to more than 8,000 and offered Australia as a rest-and-relaxation center for war-weary G.I.s. During two visits to Washington, Holt became close friends with President Johnson, once winking that he went "All the way with L.B.J." "He was steady, he was courageous," said President Johnson last week after his ar rival in Melbourne for the memorial service (see THE NATION). "He was there when he said he would be there."

Back home in Australia, Holt was just as steady. He pushed industrial and natural-resource development programs that are now raising the country's gross national product by 9% a year; he also made Australia a major world supplier of iron ore, bauxite and alumina, as well as stepping up production of the copper, lead, zinc and coal that it has long produced. By the early 1970s, the government expects to be exporting $1 billion worth of minerals alone (v. $430 million last year).

An Angry Feud. Holt's biggest single achievement, however, was holding together the tenuous government coalition organized 23 years ago between his own Liberal Party, which controls 81 of Parliament's 184 seats, and the Country Party, which holds 28 seats. Lacking Menzies' charisma, Holt often had to resort to face-losing compromises that made him look weak. Still, that was better, he felt, than the Menzies-style one-man rule. Holt believed in a "leadership that can lead but at the same time be close enough to the team to be part of it and be on the basis of friendly cooperation."

After Holt's death last week, the friendly cooperation disappeared, and the differences that Holt had smoothed over suddenly threatened to wreck the coalition. On one side is Country Party Leader John McEwen, Holt's Minister of Trade and Deputy Prime Minister, who automatically succeeded to the prime ministership until new Liberal Party elections can be held Jan. 9. On the other side is the Liberal Party's William McMahon, Holt's Treasurer, the party's second-in-command and Holt's heir apparent. Over the years, small policy disagreements between the two have sharpened into such an angry personal feud that McEwen last week threat ened to pull his party out of the coalition if the Liberals pick McMahon as their leader. To underline his point, McEwen refused to invite any of the government's nine Liberal Cabinet ministers to his swearing-in.

Off & Moving. Since anyone but McMahon might be able to hold together a coalition, several party members began quietly lobbying for the top Liberal job. Among the chief candidates: Immigration Minister Billy M. Sneddin, 42, Deputy Defense Minister Allen Fair-hall, 58, External Affairs Minister Paul Hasluck, 62, Labor and National Service Minister Leslie H. Bury, 54, and Education Minister John G. Gorton, 56. In the end, it was a tribute to Australia--and to Holt--that overall government policy itself will probably shift little, either under McEwen or his Lib eral successor. Above all, McEwen promised last week that he would stand behind Holt's commitment to Viet Nam.

Australia is off and moving, and neither the Liberals nor the Country Party seems much inclined to tamper with a winning formula.

Harold Holt had left Australia a strong new sense of purpose and identity. In his life Holt was the sort of man all Australians like to think they are, and they found it easy to identify with him. He was the all-round "ruddy good bloke" who preferred first names to last names or fancy titles and liked to call up his friends and suggest that they drop by for a pint. Like most Australians, he was also a rugged individualist who loved nature; he could hunker down on the beach and chat for hours with kids or professional fishermen on where the grunters were biting. Even Holt's death had a peculiarly Australian cast to it. "For an Australian, what a way to die!" said Australian Author Donald (The Lucky Country) Home. "If you sat upon the ground and talked about the death of heads of government--anywhere, any time--you would find no parallel to such a death."

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