His Mum a teacher, his Dad a teacher, Lindsay Thompson had little choice but to enter the blackboard jungle. Until his early 30s when the man relinquished his chalk for a calling in politics, winning a seat in State Parliament in 1955.
Tenacious, loyal, Thompson stuck to the Spring Street ruckus for 27 years, winning the leadership role for ten eventful months in the early 1980s.
Some 20 years on, back in 2004, The Age commissioned me to interview the State’s [then] four surviving ex-leaders. While each had their charms - including the narky master of phone-hockey Jeffrey Gibb Kennett AC - I’ll always retain the pleasure of meeting Lindsay in his Glen Iris home.
(Perched by a gas-fire we touched on kidnappings, poisoned chalices, car accidents, mistaken identities - always with a dose of charm and grace.)
Alas, for various reasons, an editorial change primarily, the combined profiles failed to run. Such is the journalism racket. I pocketed a modest kill fee for my pains, and let the piece doze on my hard drive. Until this week, hearing the sad news of Lindsay Thompson’s death from pneumonia at 84, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/17/2306311.htm, prompting a salvage job in his memory.
Rereading the profile, steeped in its moment, has helped revive the bon vivant. Trust the snapshot has an equivalent effect on you. Vale LT, and thoughts with Joan and the whole Thompson tree:
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THE WOODEN-HEADED ONE
Back in 1984, Lindsay Thompson, the former Premier of Victoria, was walking down the Strand in London, when he felt a tap on the shoulder.
‘I turned around,’ he recalls, ‘and this woman said, Your John Cain [another ex-Premier]. I said, No. She said, Yes you are, I’m positive. I said, Look, I’ll put you out of your misery, I’m Lindsay Thompson.’
The woman paused. ‘She had some skin her nose, I remember. She said, That’s twice I’ve fallen flat on my nose in two days.’
If that’s no clue, Thompson is a fine raconteur. Regardless the drama, his wit finds a way to shine. Such skill has made the ex-polly a hot ticket on the eulogy circuit. Despite his recent heart scare, his bronchitis, the electric chill of the various wires in his skull from a car-smash in 1999, Thompson still exudes charm. Holding court in his Glen Iris home, his feet elevated by a gas-fire under physio instructions. .
‘I might see something in the papers that makes me rant and rave, and Joan (his wife) will say you’re not in politics any more. Eat your poached egg before it gets cold.’
In 1981, Thompson took the poisoned chalice of leadership from his dear friend, and departing chief, (Sir) Rupert Hamer. ‘The Liberal party had been in office for 26 years at that stage. We’d only won the 1979 election by one seat, so I knew it was going to be very difficult.’ Thompson glances at Fox News in the corner. Sound down, a mute Mark Latham mouths a message to Camera 2, while Thompson continues. ‘Every second day was some crisis or other. I’d be working seven days a week, with worse weeks to follow.’
Thompson held the top job for 10 months, a glimmer compared to his previous 24 consecutive years where he held various portfolios under Bolte and Hamer. With a background in teaching, his darling niche was education. In the early 1970s, he oversaw a 1000 new classrooms being erected. It was also in that role that Thompson put his life on the line in 1972, acting as bagman in a kidnapping case.
Nine schoolchildren and their teacher had been nabbed from a one-room school in Faraday, near Castlemaine. The kidnapper demanded a million-pound ransom to be dropped off at Woodend Post Office. Overnight, Thompson and Hamer fast-tracked the money through Treasury, bypassing Cabinet to put lives first. At 5am, with two armed policemen in a staff car, Thompson drove to the dawn rendezvous.
‘If the kidnapper showed up,’ he recalls, ‘I had to jump out of the way, do some sort of backflip, and Assistant Commissioner Mick Miller, who was hiding under a blanket in the backseat at the time, he’d do the rest.’ A photo of Thompson, standing alone in Woodend hangs above the dining table, among a gallery of family photos, and Don Bradman memorabilia. The kidnapper, Edwin Eastwood, never fronted, and was later arrested. The children were safe. And Thompson won a special place in Victorian hearts.
Now it’s Lindsay’s own heart that’s causing the strife. His loving wife Joan recalls the ugly day in 2000. ‘I was getting Lindsay’s hat from the hallway when I heard this almighty smash. I knew something terrible had happened. I ran to the kitchen. There was glass everywhere. Lindsay was lying on the floor, not moving. I thought, well, you know…. I just started screaming.’
Thompson had suffered a heart attack, keeling over backwards, his head crashing through a door’s glass panel. ‘I smashed it with my head,’ he says, ‘but somehow I didn’t cut myself. Occasionally I was accused in politics of being wooden-headed, and they might have been right.’
Later that night, in Cabrini Hospital, our oldest ex-Premier was wheeled on a gurney, his pulse going haywire. Nurses looked into his pallid face and asked if he knew his own name. ‘I told them the football scores from that afternoon just to put an end to their questions.’
Football remains a Thompson passion. He’s a life member of Richmond, where his own son Murray, now the Liberal member for Sandringham, wore the black and gold. ‘I was patron of 20 things a few years ago but I’ve let a lot of them go. I’m the patron of the Australian Childrens’ Choir, the Prahran Cricket Club. I’m still pretty closely associated with Caulfield Grammar (his alma mater). They were nice enough to name their big sporting facility after me.’
On top of this, the Lindsay Thompson Fellowship is a $50,000 travel grant awarded to an outstanding Victorian teacher. Thompson himself spoke to 700 aspirants at Flemington Racecourse this year, though his speaking engagements are on pause while his heart is being monitored, and nearly stopped full-stop on August 27, 1999.
‘Joan and I were driving home from Broadbeach, on the Gold Coast. She was asleep, which was unusual. Normally she’s my second pair of eyes. I decided not to open the window – it might wake her – so I pinched my thighs a few times and kept going.’ Before he knew it, Thompson woke up with no teeth, and 20 fractures above his neck. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel, his car nose-down in a water channel, south of Casino.
‘The doctors at Lismore Base Hospital said two things saved my life – good fortune, and golf.’ (When fit, Thompson is a keen 9-holer at Kingston Heath.) Let’s call it three things – golf, good fortune, and that durable political head.