Shipping Reporter makes startling find in Townsville
In his relentless search for nautical memorabilia and other oddities, our waterfront roundsman found Harold Holt in the form of a very weathered silver plated giftware teaspoon, together with another one for Sir Winston Churchill (1874-l965) .
While Churchill had been instantly identifiable , the Shipping Reporter thought the other person might be another British PM- perhaps Neville Chamberlain, famous for waving the Munich October 1 1938 accord signed by Hitler , said to guarantee peace in our time .
However , examination with a magnifying glass revealed it was a battered and scratched , yet smiling Harold Holt , sporting a stiff dickey shirt front with a white tie for evening wear . He mysteriously disappeared on December 17 , l967, while swimming off Cheviot Beach,Portsea, Victoria .
Three times Walkley Award winner and former Northern Territory News reporter Keith Willey covered the disappearance for the Sydney Sun newspaper.
Holt was officially declared dead, many world leaders attended his funeral . Over the years there were wild conspiracy theories about his disappearance which included suicide and that the US CIA knocked him off because he was about to withdraw Australian troops from Vietnam .
It was even claimed that Holt had been a longtime Chinese spy !!!!!!!and that Chinese frogmen bundled him into a submarine and spirited him away. His wife, Zara, rejected this suggestion as ridiculous , saying he did not like Chinese food .
Harold Holt was commemorated in various ways - the American navy named a ship after him and his name was bestowed upon an Australian swimming pool .
