It was “like a leaf being taken out,” lamented Marjorie Gillespie. “So quick and final.”
It was December 17, 1967 — a Sunday morning, ostensibly like any other.
Christmas festivities were in full swing, and as the nation collectively prepared for the holiday reprieve, Australia’s 17th prime minister Harold Holt set off in his maroon Pontiac, navigating a tarmac road bound by moonah trees to the entrance of Cheviot Beach.
Named after the SS Cheviot — which had broken apart some 80 years prior, killing 35 people — the remote stretch of coastline was, in many ways, a portent of tragedy.
But…
