I just wanna say that we cared very much about him! Here are some more facts:
he was overall a decent PM and not a terrible human being, which is especially impressive because he came from our conservative party
unfortunately he was super pro-Vietnam War and gave us the highly regrettable yet hilarious slogan "All The Way With LBJ"
at the time of his death, he was in danger of being sacked as PM (this is a thing we do, it's called a spill, it's basically a national hobby) because his fellow conservatives felt that he was too adept at compromising and finding common ground with progressives
he really did have a lot of affairs -- "not a terrible human being" doesn't mean he was a good husband (or had a good opinion on the Vietnam War)
his widow, Zara, was a socialite, and became a major fashion designer in the '70s -- her work was heavily muumuu based. My mother, who was a kid in the '60s, has this idea that Zara was "crazy", but it turns out she was just a woman with a lot of personality who didn't want to be defined by her philandering husband, and she wore a lot of muumuus
for many years conspiracy theories circulated about his death -- the big one was that he was killed by the Chinese/was a Chinese agent who swam out to a submarine and went 'home'
my friend's dad grew up in the area he vanished, and he and his brother were in the front yard, cleaning their little boat, when two guys in suits came running up to use their phone and commandeer the boat because the PM had disappeared
consensus in my friend's family is that he got tangled in the thick kelp that grew around there and drowned
have been tangled in the kelp nearby, can confirm it is terrifying
that's what it says on his memorial stone
because the sea killed him
every single time there is a political crisis in Australia, we hope Harold Holt comes back to fix it
our current PM has a regrettable habit of just disappearing whenever there's a crisis, and we really do wish the sea would return Holt
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