Rt. Hon. Sir John McEwen GCMG CH

Prime Minister of Australia 1967 – 68

A former clerk in the Crown Solicitor's Office, Melbourne, John McEwen enlisted in the First AIF in the last year of World War I (1918). He later became active in the Victorian Farmers' Union and the Victorian Country Party (National Party) McEwen was elected to the House of Representatives in 1934 as a Victorian Country Party representative, but he soon shifted his allegiance to the federal Country Party, which was the junior partner in the coalition government led by Joseph Lyons.

McEwen was promoted to the ministry in 1937 as Minister for the Interior. He ceased to be a minister when the Country Party dropped out of the governing coalition when Robert Menzies first became leader of the United Australia Party. But he became Minister for External Affairs and, later, Minister for Air and Minister for Civil Aviation when the Country Party, by then led by Arthur Fadden, re-joined the government.

In Opposition for most of the 1940s, McEwen again became a minister in the Menzies government, which was formed in December 1949. He was Minister for Commerce and Agriculture (1949–56), Minister for Trade (1956–63) and Minister for Trade and Industry (1963–71). He remained in the ministry of the Liberal–Country party coalition until his retirement from politics in 1971.

McEwen was narrowly beaten for the Country Party leadership in 1939, losing to Arthur Fadden. But he was successful in 1958, when he succeeded Fadden as both Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister.
McEwen became Prime Minister on 19 December 1967, replacing Harold Holt, who had disappeared while swimming off the Victorian coast. His period in office was short, ending on 10 January 1968 when the Liberal Party chose John Gorton to be its leader.

Sir John McEwen, often referred to as “Black Jack” died at Toorak in 1980.

Stanhope Farmer 1924 – 1975

John McEwen was born on 29 March 1900 at Chiltern in Victoria, to pharmacist David McEwen and Amy (Porter) McEwen. His mother died after the birth of their second child in 1901, and his father died in 1907. McEwen and his younger sister were raised by their grandmother, Ellen Porter, who ran a boarding house. They lived first at Wangaratta and then moved to Dandenong in 1912.

At the age of 13 McEwen left school and helped support the family, working at a local wholesale pharmaceutical supplier. In 1914, the family moved to Balwyn, where McEwen studied at night school. After two years of classes he qualified for entry to the Commonwealth Public Service. At the age of 16 he started work at the Crown Solicitor’s Office in Melbourne.

Soldier and Settler

McEwen had hoped to enrol at the Royal Military College at Duntroon, but instead applied for enlistment in the 1st Australian Imperial Force when he turned 18. He was called up on 9 August 1918 and was in camp awaiting embarkation for France when the armistice was declared.

Working as a farmhand, McEwen picked up sufficient experience to obtain a qualifying certificate and apply for land. He astutely chose a larger block (86 acres, 35 ha) at Tongala, rather than one of the smaller holdings which beggared many of his colleagues. To obtain some capital he worked as a wharf labourer in Melbourne. He survived drought and a rabbit plague in 1919, improved his property by tenacity and unremitting hard work, and led what he recalled as a 'rough and ready' life, living in a humpy and spending solitary nights reading by the light of a kerosene lamp.

In 1919 McEwen joined the Victorian Farmers Union, one of the most influential of the primary producers groups that founded the Country Party the following year. . At Ballavoca, Tongala, on 21 September 1921 he married Annie Mills McLeod; they were to remain childless. She worked with him to develop the farm.
With hard work and frugal living they added to their original farm holding. In 1924 the couple sold their dairy farm for £1000 to buy a larger property at Stanhope they named ‘Chilgala’ where they lived for more than fifty years. They developed it first as a sheep property and later changed to beef cattle. The McEwens were both active in the local community and in the broader issues of rural politics. In 1923–24 McEwen was the first chairman of the local Stanhope Dairy Co-operative, the forerunner of today’s Fonterra factory in Stanhope