Code, Bill
‘The childhood homes of Australia’s prime ministers – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 28 October 2014
The imminent (but then delayed) demolition of the home in Kew, Victoria, where Gough Whitlam was born (reputedly on the kitchen table) provoked the author to produce photographs of other childhood homes of prime ministers Hawke, Lyons, Keating and Rudd, plus the boarding school attended by Malcolm Fraser, the site of John Howard’s family’s petrol station and adjacent residence, and Julia Gillard’s former home in Altona.
With a little effort the author could have turned up photographs also of Ben Chifley’s Busby Street, Bathurst, cottage (admittedly his home as an adult, although there are pictures around of the desolate paddock which was the site of the hut where he lived for some years with his grandfather), the famous picture of John Curtin as a baby outside his parents’ home at Creswick (which is in the biographies by Day and Ross but is not easily found on the internet), Curtin, aged 11, outside the family pub at Charlton, Victoria, and Curtin’s family home in Jarrad Street, Cottesloe, Western Australia. No doubt the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House has plenty more. Finally, it is relatively easy to Google the address of Julia Gillard’s family in Barry, Wales, before they left for Australia, then sidle past their door using Google Street View.