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Wednesday, October 22, 2014

We don't mourn Gough Whitlam, we mourn ourselves

Gough Whitlam dies at age 98 Guardian (EmilianoZ)
We don't mourn Gough Whitlam, we mourn ourselves
The tributes for Gough Whitlam flooding mainstream and social media ...

Stories from AFR today by Mark Latham who liked to invade with Gough the risque level six of the NSW Parliamentary Library:

 As a university student, Gough’s chosen sport was rowing – an activity he later described as the perfect preparation for politics: “You can face one way while moving in the opposite direction”.


I worked for Gough during his time as Australia’s Ambassador to UNESCO in the 1980s. Paris was his sort of city, with its imposing vistas, uniform streetscapes and ornate legacy from the Bourbon and Napoleonic eras. He loved telling me (a young man with his hormones racing) about the legend of Louis XVI. One day, when asked by his doctor if he needed any form of aphrodisiac, the King replied,

“A different woman every night is my aphrodisiac.”