I’m currently reading In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson. On the first page, I read this:
Australia is such a difficult country to keep track of. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the prime minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me — first that Australia could just lose a prime minister (I mean come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.
To begin with, it reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s quote in The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
But then I decided to find out a bit more about Harold Holt. It turns out that he was the 17th Prime Minister of Australia, taking office in 1966. In June of that year, he visited the United States and pledged Australia’s support for Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policy (a pledge that he evidently hadn’t cleared with anyone in his country). He agreed to send more troops and made the infamous quote, “And so, sir, in the lonelier and perhaps even more disheartening moments which come to any national leader, I hope there will be a corner of your mind and heart which takes cheer from the fact that you have an admiring friend, a staunch friend that will be all the way with LBJ.”
In December, 1967, after watching a yacht race, Holt and some friends drove to Cheviot Beach on the southeast coast of Australia. In spite of repeated warnings, Holt dove into the heavy surf and was never seen again. Two days later it was announced that he was presumed dead.
That’s almost enough about Harold Holt. Just one final bit of whimsy — Holt is most famously commemorated by the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre near Melbourne.