The Disappearing Prime Minister - Australian Mystery

What happened to Harold Holt?

On a Sunday in December 1967, the Prime Minister of Australia went for a swim off a beach near Portsea and never came out. More than three hundred people searched the water for him, and no trace of his body was ever found.

Fifty-eight years later, depending on who you ask, Harold Holt drowned, was killed by the CIA, ran off with his lover, or was dragged under by Chinese frogmen and carried away to Beijing in a submarine.

In this episode of Strewth we work through the theories, from the frankly ridiculous to the one a coroner finally signed off on in 2005, and ask why a man who had nearly drowned off that same beach seven months earlier swam straight back out past the breakers.

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Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• National Archives of Australia. Harold Holt's disappearance, Fact sheet 144. https://www.naa.gov.au/help-your-research/fact-sheets/harold-holts-disappearance

• Victoria Police and Commonwealth Police. Joint report into the disappearance of Harold Holt, January 1968, including witness statements. National Archives of Australia, A1209, 1968/8063. https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4982285

• Johnstone, Graeme (State Coroner of Victoria). Finding into the death of Harold Edward Holt, 2 September 2005. Coroners Court of Victoria. (Quoted via ABC reporting below.)

• Frame, Tom. The Life and Death of Harold Holt. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005. https://archive.org/details/lifedeathharoldh00fram

• Grey, Anthony. The Prime Minister Was a Spy. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1983.

• Grey, Anthony. Hostage in Peking. Michael Joseph, London, 1970.

• ABC News. "Inside the disappearance of Harold Holt", 1 November 2020. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-01/disappearance-harold-holt-inside-search-operation-australia/12817236

• ABC News. "Harold Holt: 50 years since Australia's first 20th century PM disappeared", 17 December 2017. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-17/harold-holt-50-years-since-prime-minister-disappeared/9259680

• ABC News. "Coroner rules Holt conspiracy theories fanciful", 2 September 2005. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-09-02/coroner-rules-holt-conspiracy-theories-fanciful/2094682

• Griffiths, Tom. "How Harold Holt was lost". Inside Story. https://insidestory.org.au/how-harold-holt-was-lost/

• National Film and Sound Archive. "Allegations and conspiracy theories". https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/98238-allegations-and-conspiracy-theories

• Australian Screen Online. Curator's notes, The Harold Holt Mystery (1985). https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/the-harold-holt-mystery/notes/

• Archives Hub. Anthony Grey Archive, University of East Anglia, including the papers of Ronald Titcombe (embargoed). https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/b33f32ee-49ca-3a61-a1b9-29cc2f69a4b7

• Who Killed Harold Holt? Presented by Ray Martin. Nine Network, 20 November 2007.

• The Prime Minister is Missing. Directed by Peter Butt. ABC Television, 2008.