I DIDN'T meet Gough Whitlam until I was an adult, but as a primary school child I knew a lot about him.
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I lived in Canberra and my father was the minister of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church.
Gough's father, Fred Whitlam, was an elder at the church, which meant he was a member of the session, the lay governing body of the Presbyterian Church.
Mr Whitlam was solicitor-general and when he went overseas he asked Dad if my sister or I could live at his home while he was away as Mrs Whitlam was profoundly deaf.
We used to answer the phone and the front door and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there as Mrs Whitlam was a cordon bleu cook.
She loved talking about her son and I learnt a lot about him.
Although I made up my mind to be a Labor Party supporter when I was 12 (my father told Sir Robert Menzies, who said “She'll grow out of it”), I didn't become a party member until years later when I returned to Australia after eight years overseas.
It was the Albury Labor Party I joined and I was the only woman member and the mainly railway workers' union members regarded me as an oddity.
Gough, although leader of the Labor Party, was also regarded as different, and when he was coming to Albury for a branch dinner, the executive asked me to hostess the event.
That was when I met him for the first time and of course we swapped family stories, and he told me he had a nickname for my father, “the Bishop”, which was very apt.
I didn't see him again until a few weeks before the 1972 election.
I had gone to Queanbeyan to attend a meeting at which he was speaking, and what a meeting that was!
The hall where it was held was packed to overflowing – you couldn’t squeeze another person in.
“It's Time” was played and Gough and Margaret strode down the centre aisle to tremendous cheering.
It was the most exhilarating, exciting and emotional meeting I've ever been to.
Of course Gough gave a brilliant speech, and I dined with him and Margaret and some others after the meeting.
In 1974, I was president of the Tathra Wharf Action Movement and Gough, then Prime Minister, came down to help us save the wharf and my main memory of him then was him standing by Daisy Bearlin, the real force behind TWAM.
She was petite with white hair, and there she was looking up at the very tall Gough with tears in her eyes as she told him about the wharf.
My husband David and I both took advantage of the free university education, doing distance education courses, and I was at Littleton House doing an examination for my University of New England course when Gough was dismissed.
David came to pick me up and told me the news.
I was devastated.
The next time I met Gough was at one of the rallies he held before the election.
It was again at Queanbeyan and was at either a showground or a racetrack.
Once again it was packed and Gough was so charismatic that people actually leaned forward to touch him.
I had just a brief meeting with him and introduced him to my twin daughters, something they've remembered on Facebook.
My father died in 1978 and his funeral was organised by the ACT authorities, so everybody was represented from the Governor-General down - a kind of state funeral except that it was a territory.
Anyhow, Gough had no reason to come as he wasn't Prime Minister, but he did, and you could hear the whisper through the church - “Gough is here”.
The last time I saw him was when he and Margaret were guests of honour at Four Winds Festival in 1995.
I had just written and had published a memoir of his mother and he thanked me for it.
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