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The Conversation
The Conversation
Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Grattan on Friday: November 11 1975 – watching history being made, from the best seats in the house

Opposition Leader Malcom Fraser, Lord Mayor of Melbourne Ron Walker and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in Melbourne on November 10, 1975. City of Melbourne, CC BY

In his just-released memoir, historian and former diplomat Lachlan Strahan recalls being picked up from his Melbourne primary school by a neighbour on November 11 1975, the day Gough Whitlam was sacked as prime minister. His politically active mother “was so upset she didn’t trust herself behind the wheel”.

Journalist Margo Kingston was a teenager and not political at the time. She remembers going to bed that night, pulling the covers over her head and listening on the radio. The next day, she organised a march around her Brisbane school.

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