Vale Peter Henderson

In his witty and eminently readable memoir, Privilege and Pleasure (1986), Peter Henderson opens with a reflection that Commonwealth and Northbourne Avenues, two of our national capital’s grandest boulevards, somehow formed a permanent backdrop to the important events in his life. He drove along there in 1951 with his mother for his final interview for entry as a cadet to the Department of External Affairs. A few weeks later, following a successful interview, he was driven along Northbourne Avenue to “Gungahlin”, a former homestead just out of town which housed the budding diplomats.

Four years later, he and his new bride, Heather Menzies, were driven along Commonwealth Avenue to their wedding reception at University House. And, finally, in 1985, thirty-four years after that first journey, he and Heather left via Commonwealth Avenue en route to Melbourne after he was involuntarily retired as Secretary of Foreign Affairs by his minister, Bill Hayden. Although significant episodes in his career were spent abroad, Canberra was the city that defined his life.

Born in Sydney, Peter Graham Faithfull Henderson, the eldest of three sons of Lieutenant (Edwin) Graham Straton Henderson and (Constance) Valerie née Faithfull, grew up in Goulburn, only an hour’s drive away from Canberra. Peter’s father was a Scot who came out to Goulburn from St Andrews to see his Australian family in the early 1920s; his elder brother, Yorke, having married their cousin, Hazel Faithfull, Valerie’s eldest sister.

The Faithfulls were one of the oldest settler families in the country. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography William Faithfull arrived in New South Wales in 1792 as a private in Captain Joseph Foveaux’s company. In 1804, William married Susannah Pitt, a relation of the great Lord Nelson, who recommended a grant of land. By 1827, their son William Pitt Faithfull had established “Springfield” station on the Goulburn Plains. The homestead was built in the early 1840s; one of the colony’s first stone woolsheds was constructed later in the decade and by 1858 the property was famous for its English garden. In 1864, according to the ADB, four of the Faithfull boys (Valerie’s uncles) held off the bushrangers Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John Dunn at “Springfield”, for which they received a gold medal from the colonial government. By 1926, William Pitt’s youngest son, Lucian, held “Springfield” and it was there that his daughter, Valerie, and her second cousin, Graham, fell in love.

On her marriage, Valerie had been given “Trentham”, 3000 acres carved out of “Springfield”, and so the Scottish soldier and his gregarious, fun-loving wife built a house there and settled into the life of prosperous between-the-wars pastoralists surrounded by kith and kin.

Young Peter’s promise was soon evident and his parents chose his education carefully. He was particularly lucky with his prep and secondary schools. Tudor House, Moss Vale, where Peter boarded from 1939 to 1941, had been transformed by John (later Sir John) Medley, a pupil of Gilbert Murray and a brilliant educationalist and public figure. From Moss Vale, Peter proceeded, in 1942, to Geelong Grammar School, during the reign of Sir James Darling, arguably Australia’s greatest headmaster.

As the school’s historian, Michael Collins Persse, has written:

Peter, who became a house captain and school prefect, was one of many whom Darling influenced permanently, including a large proportion of Australia’s pioneer diplomats. He rowed in the school’s first eight and matriculated with first-class honours in Latin and French and seconds in all the History and English subjects. The senior English master, Peter Westcott, told me much later that the boy Henderson had seemed to him like a young Greek god.

As Peter put it:

Dr Darling had made it very clear to us that, in his opinion, those of us who had been lucky enough to be born into comfortably-off families and to have had the kind of education we had enjoyed should at least consider doing something for the community by way of public service rather than go into what he called the counting houses of Melbourne or Sydney.

Geelong Grammar was rather broad church—Peter recalled seeing a young, fair-haired Rupert Murdoch in Cuthbertson House absorbed in a copy of Das Kapital.

Dr Darling considered a career as a schoolmaster for Peter and suggested Oxford as a suitable preliminary. While Peter had no hesitation is agreeing to Oxford he later regretted the lost opportunity to make friends and personal contacts with many Australians his own age. He was accepted into Merton College, sailing for London in July 1947.

He arrived knowing no one and was discomforted to be told by an Australian visitor that if he “could get an Englishman to say good morning to me in less than ten days, I could count myself a resounding social success”. He took up rowing and, despite the bitter winters, made some warm and lasting friends. He also made the college eight but a bad back hindered a chance to row at the Helsinki Olympics. As he modestly put it, “my success in worldly terms was limited to being elected to Leander Rowing Club”.

Before returning home he decided that he would serve the Australian public as a diplomat, rather than a teacher. At his first interview, one especially convened at Australia House for applicants living or studying abroad, he heard himself say that as an Australian he wanted to work for an Australian enterprise. “Tempered,” one of the panel observed, “by a wish to travel and live outside Australia and to see something of the rest of the world at the government’s expense.” On the final interview panel, back in Canberra in January 1951, he found his old school teacher, Manning Clark (of whom he “had always been nervous of his searching questions”). But of course he succeeded and commenced his career on January 25, 1951.

After a year’s thorough training and some high-spirited fun at “Gungahlin”, Peter was delighted to be posted as Third Secretary to the Australian embassy in Washington but would also include meetings of the UN General Assembly in New York. The trip took a week but being armed with the red diplomatic passport made the journey easier. Our Ambassador to the United States was Sir Percy Spender, son of a locksmith, whose brilliance, energy and ambition propelled him to be the youngest KC in the Commonwealth, an MP, government minister, ambassador and, earlier that year, a Knight of the British Empire. His wife, Jean, was the author of racy crime fiction (with the hero a lightly disguised Percy). They were a diminutive yet forbidding pair whom Peter treats gently in his memoirs. He treasured the look on Lady Spender’s face when, on the arrival of the Prime Minister and his wife at Washington’s Union Station, Peter, having been ordered to deal with the Menzies’ luggage, was greeted with a kiss by Dame Pattie.

Peter had met Heather Menzies through mutual family friends who were sure they would be good together. Of course that put them off, but as they came to know each other—the cadets from “Gungahlin” were regular guests at The Lodge—it became a perfect match. Heather, the Menzies’ beloved only daughter, has the charm, the acuity and intuition of each of her parents—and the strength of both of them. Peter and Heather were, in a quieter way, as much the Great Double Act that her parents were. They married in May 1955 in St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. Peter’s response to the enthusiastic crowd (“the largest in Canberra since the Royal Tour,” noted the Canberra Times) that lined Commonwealth Avenue was typically modest:

this was probably the first and last times in our lives that people would line a road to wave to us. I wasn’t at all sure how to respond. To wave back seemed rather presumptuous … So I smiled weakly and fitfully and thought of the imminent horror of my speech.

At the beginning of the year, Peter had been moved to Jakarta as Third Secretary and the newlyweds moved into a small, semi-detached bungalow in a new suburb on the outskirts of Jakarta. The electricity came on for six hours, then off for six; a kerosene stove; no air-conditioning and no running water. Heather’s father later observed, “It must have been love that kept them going.” Despite their connections, they did not seek to be favoured. One of the Public Service Board inspectors measured a Jakarta colleague’s sitting room (between a filthy canal and a railway line) and professed how lucky the Second Secretary was to have a larger space than the inspector’s own lounge room in Canberra. Another inspector said on leaving for home that he would never allow his own wife and family to live there.

In July 1956, Peter returned to Canberra to see his eldest daughter Edwina for the first time; and to join the political division of the South-East Asian branch, which he made the most of and where he learnt much. In early 1960 the family, enhanced by the arrival of Penny in January 1959, moved to Geneva where Peter was Second Secretary. Given its UN connections, the office provided some eclectic experiences, and while there Peter was elevated to First Secretary. Advising Australia’s representative at a Status of Women meeting, Peter recalled his father’s story about Lady Willingdon, wife of the viceroy, taking an ADC into a harem, reassuring the women that he was a eunuch. A family of five-and-a-half returned to Canberra in March 1963, Catriona (Trini) having been born in Switzerland in 1961. Elizabeth (Sibby), born in 1963, would soon complete the family.

Assigned to the personnel branch as diplomatic staff officer, Peter submerged himself in administration and came to appreciate the importance of dealing with individuals in a big organisation. Four years later, he was appointed Counsellor at the High Commission in London. Having considered some seventy-two houses and flats, the family finally settled on a slightly rundown flat at Palace Gate, which happened to be close to the High Commissioner’s residence, Stoke Lodge. So close, in fact, that—as Peter recorded in Privilege and Pleasure—Heather and Mary Downer, the redoubtable wife of the High Commissioner, could converse from their respective windows. Lady Downer once called out to Heather (who knows what their W8 neighbours must have thought!) that she was so sick of always having to be nice to people whether she liked them or not, that when she went on her holiday to Europe she would positively relish being rude to people for two whole weeks if she felt like it.

While in London, Peter managed to persuade the management to allow an Australian woman, rather than a Briton, to assist him in dealing with particularly sensitive material from Whitehall’s Joint Intelligence Committee. Later other senior positions were Australianised too.

In August 1970 Peter returned to Canberra to head the political division of the South-East Asian branch of the department. This proved a helpful introduction to Peter’s first ambassadorial appointment—to Manila in May 1973. It is much to Prime Minister Whitlam’s credit that he allowed the appointment—on merit—of Sir Robert Menzies’s son-in-law. The Whitlams’ arrival in 1974 also confirmed their considerate, unfussy approach to official visits. A seminal moment in Australian history occurred during the visit when the Prime Minister announced (in a speech drafted by the embassy and polished by Graham Freudenberg) the death of the White Australia policy (if in fact it was not already dead), allowing Filipinos to be assessed, not in racial terms but on their technical skills and capacity. The other test of Peter’s time in the Philippines was the determination of the First Lady, Imelda Marcos, to be invited to attend the opening of the Sydney Opera House—something she felt could be achieved through the Australian ambassador. (It was.) His memoir records his alarm at a dinner at which Mrs Marcos had sung a Filipino love song and then turned to Peter asking (in effect, ordering) him to sing “Waltzing Matilda”.

Peter’s ambassadorship was cut short in January 1975 so he could run the Administrative and Personnel Division of the department. For the next decade he was successively First Assistant Secretary of Management Services for a year; Deputy Secretary for two and a half years; Acting Secretary for two periods totalling nine months; and finally, Secretary for five years. In 1978, he also benefited from a six-month secondment to CRA, when he and Heather lived in Melbourne with the recently widowed Dame Pattie. Sir Robert may have died but there was still a feeling in sections of the Labor Party that Menzies’s son-in-law could not be favoured; while the Liberal Party, which took power in November 1975, felt that Menzies’s son-in-law should not be favoured. In 1976, Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock told Peter he was 99 per cent certain to be appointed Secretary. In fact, the government appointed his friend Nicholas Parkinson, whom Peter (typically, generously) observed was the best choice.

When he succeeded his friend as Secretary in 1979, Peter attracted attacks from the press and in Parliament. One egregious example was a sustained, obsessive and unhinged assault—abusing the cloak of parliamentary privilege—by a former dairy farmer and left-wing Victorian Labor Senator, Cyril Primmer. A Senate inquiry confirmed that not one of Primmer’s personal accusations, some of them criminal, had been established.

Peter’s role afforded him close encounters with world leaders and other figures. At a Buckingham Palace reception during a CHOGM meeting Peter helpfully introduced an Australian he knew to the Queen’s uncle.

“Have you ever been to Australia?” ventured the clueless Aussie.

“Oh, yes,” snorted the Duke of Gloucester.

“What did you do there?”

“I was Governor-General,” said the Duke, as Peter made an exit.

Peter had also sat in on a meeting between his father-in-law and Anthony Eden (by then the Earl of Avon and retired to Wiltshire) which, in the light of the recent vote for Brexit, sounds prophetic. Lord Avon believed that the British electorate was deeply suspicious of going into Europe. The advantages of doing so had never been explained to them. Avon thought that Europe plus Britain was too small an entity. The grouping should include the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand as well. “There was,” Lord Avon said, “no democracy in Europe.” A nice moment occurred in Paris when Peter and Heather called on her friend Mary Soames, Churchill’s cherished daughter, and her husband, Sir Christopher Soames, the British ambassador, who greeted him, “Welcome to the son-in-laws’ club.”

As Secretary, Peter also witnessed Margaret Thatcher in full flight—attacking her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington: “Good heavens, Peter, you are being almost resolute for once.”

Peter saw his role as Secretary like the conductor of an orchestra playing for his minister’s benefit. “I could not reasonably be expected to play every individual instrument with the skill of a professional player but I was responsible for the orchestra playing together and in tune.”

He considered five years as conductor sufficient and, at fifty-five, hoped for one further ambassadorial post, an opportunity presented to his predecessors. He was shocked, in May 1984, by Foreign Minister Bill Hayden’s decision to replace him, citing four or five submissions (not by the Secretary) that he considered below the standard he expected. Each week at least fifty such submissions were presented to the minister.

Hayden proffered two postings, which Peter declined—one because he considered it, quite reasonably, unsuitable; the other because he did not want to displace a colleague. In short, neither of these offers was genuine. Peter was then “involuntarily retired” from the Public Service with a payout of $50,000, after thirty-four years (to the day) of distinguished service. Bill Hayden will be remembered for playing a distinguished role in the political life of the country but this is an enduring blight on his legacy.

Peter’s last day in office was January 25, 1985, and at midnight it was announced that he had been awarded the highest honour the country could bestow—an AC, Companion of the Order of Australia. Of course one columnist saw this as a golden handshake, ignorant (or dismissive) of the lengthy process that took place under the aegis of the Governor-General. In fact, Peter believed in an Australian honours system and had quietly declined a knighthood that he, like a number of his peers, had been offered under the imperial system.

In “retirement”, Peter brought his intelligence and experience to a number of directorships and as Chancellor of St John Ambulance, Australia, but the remaining three decades, lived in Melbourne and Canberra, were with Heather, whose success with two well-received filial tributes—Letters to My Daughter (2011) and A Smile for My Parents (2013)—he delighted in. In May 2016, they and their four daughters, eleven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren marked sixty-one years of marriage. As he wrote at the very end of his memoir, after his involuntary retirement, driving out of the capital along Northbourne Avenue in February 1985, “Looking at Heather … I began to feel almost light-hearted. I knew then that whatever doubts I might have about the value of some of life’s prizes, I had no doubts about that one.”

Peter Henderson was an extraordinary Aust­ralian.