The fine ABC documentary about the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt at Cheviot Beach in December 1967 contained a puzzling link to Darwin. In the trailer advertising the doco and the film itself there was a shot of cameramen crowding in. Without a doubt , one of those was Walkley Award winning journalist, the late Keith Willey , who worked at the Northern Territory News under the editorship of Jim Bowditch.
Willey covered Holt’s disappearance for the Sydney Sun and discussed the assignment with this Little Britain member . How he came to be posing as a photographer with a speed graphic is puzzling . One suggestion is that the search was spread over a wide area , the large media party dashing from one place to another, and that a photographer gave him a camera just in case something dramatic happened and there was no regular cameraman on hand.
Willey covered Holt’s disappearance for the Sydney Sun and discussed the assignment with this Little Britain member . How he came to be posing as a photographer with a speed graphic is puzzling . One suggestion is that the search was spread over a wide area , the large media party dashing from one place to another, and that a photographer gave him a camera just in case something dramatic happened and there was no regular cameraman on hand.
It being the time of the Vietnam war, Willey had gone on patrol with Australian soldiers, was caught in a mortar barrage, resulting in loss of hearing, and died from cancer, which his wife thought could have been caused by drinking water contaminated by Agent Orange.
