A Bit of a Nudge
Cartoon by John Frith
The Herald, November 1967
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia
Following the 1966 election Prime Minister Harold Holt found himself faced with a hostile Senate. Holt’s term of office as Prime Minister was shortlived: a keen spear fisherman, he disappeared on December 17, 1967, while swimming at a favourite spot off the coast at Portsea, Victoria.
Holt’s body was never recovered. Unknown to Frith at the time, this was to be one of the last cartoons in which Holt would feature before his tragic death. The cartoon thus has a certain eerie prescience.
This website is based on the exhibition, A Brush With Politics, shown at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in 2001.
More information is available on the exhibitions page.