In his unfinished autobio­ graphy Don Whitington looks back wryly and unsentiment- ally on his family, his youth, and his profession. Born in Victoria of incom­ patible parents, who separ­ ated, he grew up in some hardship, in Tasmania. Poverty —and lack of application — cut his education short and he qualified as a woolclasser in time to lose his job in the Strive to be Fair be to Strive Depression. He worked then asa jackaroo, travelling exten­ sively in outback Australia — and finally, with £5 in his pocket, he decided to become a journalist, thus unwittingly following in the footsteps of three generations of Whitingtons. The story of his youth is told with a lively humour that laughs at himself and laughs with others. Whitington brought to his profession a sense of justice and compassion, a keen sense of humour and an eye for the ridiculous. One of the longest serving members of the Can­ berra Press Gallery, he met and mixed with people from all walks of life, with poli­ ticians and journalists of all persuasions and abilities. His comments on some of the events and personalities of his times are candid, and pointed. This book is a lively, racy, informed and enjoyable story of a man who graced his profession. In his unfinished autobio­ graphy Don Whitington looks back wryly and unsentiment- ally on his family, his youth, and his profession. Born in Victoria of incom­ patible parents, who separ­ ated, he grew up in some hardship, in Tasmania. Poverty —and lack of application — cut his education short and he qualified as a woolclasser in time to lose his job in the Strive to be Fair be to Strive Depression. He worked then asa jackaroo, travelling exten­ sively in outback Australia — and finally, with £5 in his pocket, he decided to become a journalist, thus unwittingly following in the footsteps of three generations of Whitingtons. The story of his youth is told with a lively humour that laughs at himself and laughs with others. Whitington brought to his profession a sense of justice and compassion, a keen sense of humour and an eye for the ridiculous. One of the longest serving members of the Can­ berra Press Gallery, he met and mixed with people from all walks of life, with poli­ ticians and journalists of all persuasions and abilities. His comments on some of the events and personalities of his times are candid, and pointed. This book is a lively, racy, informed and enjoyable story of a man who graced his profession. This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991. This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press. This project aims to make past scholarly works published by The Australian National University available to a global audience under its open-access policy. STRIVE TO BE FAIR Don Whitington STRIVE TO BE FAIR An unfinished autobiography Australian National University Press Canberra 1977 First published in Australia 1978 Printed in Australia for the Australian National University Press, Canberra © Acteon Pty Ltd 1977 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Whitington, Don, 1911-1977. Strive to be fair. Index. ISBN 0 7081 0828 8. 1. Whitington, Don, 1911-1977. 2. Journalists—Biography. I. Title. 070’.924 Southeast Asia: Angus & Robertson (S.E. Asia) Pty Ltd, Singapore Japan: United Publishers Services Ltd, Tokyo Printed in 10/11 Times at Griffin Press Limited Netley, Sth Aust. CONTENTS 1 Forebears 1 2 Turbulent Beginnings 12 3 Working Outback 26 4 Learning to be a journalist 47 5 Inside Canberra 68 6 The Journalists Rebel 96 7 My Own Man 106 8 Politics and Politicians 118 9 The Dividers and the Rulers 131 10 Changing Times 149 Epilogue 162 Index 167 v PLATES Frontispiece 1 Mrs Hilda Whitington Facing page 10 2 Don Whitington with his mother Facing page 10 3 Grandfather Peter with Stirling and Mardi Facing page 11 4 Don Whitington with his sisters and brother Facing page 11 5 Don Whitington aged 19 Facing page 74 6 Whito relaxes Facing page 75 7 A wartime mission Facing page 90 8 Among the down-and-outs Facing page 91 9 After J. G. Gorton’s resignation Facing page 130 10 John Curtin, P.M., with some of his ‘Circus’ Between pages 130 and 131 11 To Whom It May Concern’ Facing page 131 vi FOREBEARS ONE My father always insisted that he had saved my life when I was three months old by plying me with brandy in a teaspoon. He was deadly serious about this and angrily rebutted any suggestions that his treatment was either injudicious or ineffective. My mother’s explanation of my survival from a complicated attack of pneumonia was that when the doctors had surrendered she went out and searched Ballarat for a faith healer who mumbled some incantation over my emaciated frame. Allegedly, I rallied almost immediately. Whatever the real explanation, I recovered. The matter is men­ tioned only to illustrate the complete difference in the characters and personalities of my parents, differences that probably existed to a greater or lesser degree between many unhappy married couples in the years of Victoria and Edward, differences that probably influenced the development of Australians from a bold and ven­ turesome people to a bourgeois middle class mixed up society. They should never have married. Perhaps it would never have happened if William III had not invaded Ireland and triumphed at the Battle of the Boyne or if the Earl of Onslow had not been so generous to his gamekeepers. On my mother’s side, the Young family of Dublin claimed that its forebear, Thomas Jung, was one of William’s principal aides at the Boyne although this cannot now be authenticated. Jung, whatever his standing with William, settled in Northern Ireland. His descen­ dants moved to Dublin in 1722 where, by 1840, Thomas Young headed the family’s prosperous and respected legal firm. Thomas was a bit of a broth of a wild Irish lad, a free spender, generous in guaranteeing the financial ventures of friends and clients and widely known as the uncrowned king of Sackville Street. Impetuously, or irresponsibly, he fell in love with Ellen Ball, the reputedly beautiful daughter of a well known and respected Dublin family. It was irresponsible because the Balls were staunch, even rabid, Roman Catholics. The Youngs were equally rabid Protestants, so Ellen Ball entered a convent of the Loretto order, which had been established in Ireland by Teresa Ball, probably her aunt, in 1822. (The Loretto order in Dublin has no record of their relationship.) Thomas married a Protestant who bore him an unknown number of children and then faded into obscurity. Family records contain no evidence of who she was or what became of her What they do disclose is that the irrepressible Thomas set sail for Australia in 1857 with his six youngest daughters, aged between 2 and 14 years, established 1 Strive to be Fair himself in a law practice at Beechworth in Victoria and proceeded to bring them up as best he could. Beechworth was the heart of the boisterous northern Victorian goldfields in the late 1850s. Henry Power was making his venture­ some raids from his famous look-out high above the King River. Down in the Benalla district the Kellys and the Quinns and the Sherretts were pursuing their nefarious ways and young Ned was serving the apprenticeship that enabled him to become one of Power’s accomplices at the age of 12 or 13. Thomas Young was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1857 and died on 23 November 1875. The Australian Handbook of 1884 records that Beechworth was the site of courts of assize and general and petty sessions. It had a public library and museum regarded as the best outside Melbourne. Population of the town and shire was about 8000 including more than 1500 Chinese diggers. By some means unknown to anyone today, Young managed to bring up his daughters with most of the characteristics of the upper classes of the Victorian era—impeccable manners, class conscious­ ness, education, prudery and religious intolerance. Where the girls went to school, and to what level they were educated, is not clear, but they were well read, with a genuine appreciation of music and the theatre. Young must have had private means or a lucrative practice or both, despite his willingness to guarantee other people’s debts—‘If you have a scratch of Thomas Young’s pen you are right’ was a saying in Dublin—because only two of his daughters in Australia ever married. His favourite, Ellen Ball Young, who probably had a big influence on the upbringing of her younger sisters, and who had been named after his first love, married, when only 16, the local clerk of Petty Sessions, William Walden. By 1863, when she was 20, she was widowed, with two children, the elder only 3 years old. One daughter, Lottie Walden, married John Ross of Geelong, and their daughter, Dorothy Ross, eventually became the principal of Mel­ bourne Church of England Girls’ Grammar School and one of Australia’s best known educationists. Thomas Young’s youngest daughter, Harriette, married Henry Hennah Carkeet at Malmsbury, near Kyneton, in 1878, when she was 23 and he was, according to the marriage certificate, 29, though according to Victorian Railway Department records he would have been only 27.