Prime
Minister of Australia for “ forty days and forty nights”
from August to October 1941,
Country Party leader, Arthur “Artie”
Fadden (1894-1973), is the subject of this August 11,1994
first day of issue stamp and postcard
in a series covering PMs, see earlier post about Ben Chifley in this blog . His short period as PM
followed the turmoil within the
United Australia Party during the war which resulted in Robert Menzies forced to resign as PM .
Fadden , born in Ingham , North Queensland , an accountant , became town clerk in Mackay and moved to Townsville where he was involved in local government , helped form the North Queensland Rugby League and opened accountancy offices in Townsville and Brisbane. A founder member of the Country Party,he held various portfolios including Minister for Supply , Air and Treasury. In the second Menzies government Fadden was responsible for "horror budgets".
Fadden , born in Ingham , North Queensland , an accountant , became town clerk in Mackay and moved to Townsville where he was involved in local government , helped form the North Queensland Rugby League and opened accountancy offices in Townsville and Brisbane. A founder member of the Country Party,he held various portfolios including Minister for Supply , Air and Treasury. In the second Menzies government Fadden was responsible for "horror budgets".
Blunt and
direct , Fadden backed Menzies in opposition to Communists . He and Menzies
were mentioned in a slim collection of unattributable scurrilous poems by such poets as A.D.Hope, James McAuley , Harry Hooten, Oliver M.
Somerville and Harold Stewart in a
1944 Sydney libertarian publication with the title The First Boke of
Fowle Ayrers , followed by two more similar volumes printed on a small press owned by Oliver Somerville. McAuley and Stewart were later responsible for pulling the Ern Malley stunt on Max Harris which was dubbed the greatest literary hoax of the 20th century.
The reference to the tryst between Hamilton and (faint) Hess relates to Hitler's Deputy Leader, Rudolf Hess , who bailed out of a plane he flew to Scotland in May 1941, intent on having " peace talks " with the Duke of Hamilton . Taken prisoner, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg war trials in 1946 and lodged in Spandau Prison , where, aged 93, he died of apparent suicide in 1987. Spandau was then demolished to prevent it becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.. Just this week on the splendiferous Antiques Roadshow a brick salvaged from Spandau was brought along to be valued,100 pound.
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Rare Spandau brick as seen on BBC television .
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