Het is tegenwoordig lastig om te onthouden wie de premier van Australië is; dat was lange tijd Howard maar sindsdien ...?
Bill Bryson verwoordt het in zijn boek "Down Under" treffend: "Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their Prime Minister is. I am forever doing this with the Australian PM - committing the name in memory, forgetting it (generally more or less instantly), then feeling terribly guilty. My thinking is that there ought to be one person outside Australia who knows. But then Australia is such a difficult country to keep track of. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me - first that Australia could just lose a PM (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me."Het bordje bij zijn gedenksteen luidt als volgt:
"On the 17th December 1967, Harold Holt, the then Prime Minister of Australia, went for a swim on this beach, dived beneath the waves and was never seen again. Others on the beach that day described the conditions as wild and turbulent. Mr Holt was a keen swimmer, snorkeller and spearfisherman and reportedly remarked, "I know this beach like the back of my hand" shortly before he entered the water.
His disappearance sparked one of Australia's most intense search and rescue operations, but Mr Holt's body was never recovered. Theories abounded as to the 59 year old's fate. Conspiracy, abduction, assassination, suicide - the media and the public were looking for answers. In 2005, a belated coronial inquest found that Harold Holt had accidentally drowned while swimming."