HAROLD HOLT

Opening

At about 12:20 p.m. on Sunday 17 December 1967, Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia for less than two years, walked into the surf at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria, despite rough water and a strong rip. He swam out, the water around him seemed to boil, and within minutes he was gone. One of the largest searches in Australian history found nothing. Holt was 59, a keen spearfisherman who knew the beach well. His body has never been found, and the gap has filled with theories ever since, from suicide to a Chinese submarine.

Timeline

20 May 1967Holt nearly drowns at the same beach while diving. He is pulled ashore purple and vomiting seawater, and blames a leaking snorkel.

16 December 1967The Australian runs the headline "PM advised to swim less", reporting his doctor's advice about his shoulder.

17 December, morningHolt drives to Portsea with his friend Marjorie Gillespie, her daughter Vyner, Vyner's boyfriend Martin Simpson, and family friend Alan Stewart. They first watch the yachtsman Alec Rose sail in.

About 12:20 p.mHolt goes into the water at Cheviot Beach. Stewart follows but stays near the shore, feeling a strong undertow even in shallow water. Holt swims out, the water churns, and he disappears.

1:30 p.mThe search begins. Over the following days more than 340 police, navy divers, soldiers and volunteers take part.

19 DecemberThe government announces Holt is presumed dead.

22 DecemberA memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, is attended by US President Lyndon Johnson, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Prince Charles.

5 January 1968A joint Commonwealth and Victoria Police report finds no indication of anything but an accident.

1983British journalist Anthony Grey's book The Prime Minister Was a Spy claims Holt was a Chinese agent picked up by submarine.

2005Victoria's state coroner, Graeme Johnstone, holds an inquest and finds that Holt took an unnecessary risk and drowned.

Key figures

Harold Holt was Prime Minister from January 1966. Alan Stewart was the only other person in the water and the closest witness. Marjorie Gillespie was Holt's close friend. Zara Holt, his wife, later Dame Zara Bate after remarrying, dismissed the spy theory with one of the most famous lines in Australian politics.

Physical and documentary trail

The sources: the witnesses' statements, the 1968 police report, records of the search, and the 2005 coronial finding.

Still missing: his body.

I was out of my depth and I could feel this terrific undertow.

Things you might not know

• "He didn't even like Chinese food." That was Zara Holt's answer to the submarine theory.
• He has a swimming pool. The Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern, in his old electorate, opened in 1969 and was named after him. Australians have been pointing out the irony ever since.
• "Doing a Harold Holt" means leaving fast. It's rhyming slang for "doing a bolt".
• There's a plaque under the sea. On the first anniversary, a memorial plaque was bolted to the reef off Cheviot Beach, about 15 metres down.
• He'd salvaged the wreck the beach is named after. The beach takes its name from the SS Cheviot, wrecked there in 1887, and Holt had recovered a porthole from it.
• The beach was military land. Cheviot Beach lay inside the Officer Cadet School at Portsea and was closed to the public, which is why Holt could swim there privately.

Competing explanations

Accidental drowning. The finding of both the police and the coroner: a strong swimmer, overconfident in dangerous surf at a beach where he had nearly drowned seven months earlier.

Suicide. Some writers point to political pressure and personal strain. His family and close colleagues rejected this.

A Chinese submarine, or the CIA. Grey's spy claim and a 1968 rumour of a CIA killing. Neither has any supporting evidence, and reviewers found many factual errors in Grey's book.

Later life of the case

Holt's disappearance is part of Australian folklore, more often joked about than investigated. The 2005 inquest closed the official question.

Finding

The evidence points to Harold Holt drowning in rough surf he had underestimated before. Witnesses saw him swept away, the conditions were dangerous, and no evidence has ever supported the more exotic theories.

What still will not resolve: where the sea took him. Without a body, there will always be room for another theory.