CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LIFE OF THE PARTY

[Barton] is not and probably never could be popularly known or understood.

Rydges Magazine, November 1970

In the late 1960s, another eccentric, Melbourne-based race car driver Peter Janson, would become a close friend of Barton’s, playing an important role in not only bringing him out of his shell but providing useful business introductions. He must have reminded Barton of Francis James. Like the eccentric James, Janson had an intriguing past and had also suffered some horrific accidents by the time Barton met him.

Janson was one to cultivate intrigue. Tales about his past swirled in slow eddies in the wake of a larger-than-life persona. Like something out of a Boy’s Own storybook, Janson told stories about hunting with Ireland’s Galway Blazers, and shooting big game with his friend Jackie, the Maharajah of Baroda. It was Janson whom the Melbourne press identified as initiating the now de rigueur Melbourne Cup tradition of throwing a private party from the boot of his car—a Rolls Royce—in the Members’ Car Park. He was credited with introducing Fashions in the Field to Melbourne’s spring racing season, having accompanied London model Jean Shrimpton to the Cup in 1965. On Janson’s arm, she had shocked the conservative Melbourne crowd in a dress alarmingly shorter than was then acceptable.

Gordon in his Shore school uniform, circa 1946. (Barton family archives)

Gordon planned and led this university prank in Sydney’s Martin Place in May 1949. A circle of fellow students in tutus perform a Maypole dance around him. (Courtesy of Daily Telegraph)

Gordon with his first truck, and on his first entrepreneurial adventure in 1950. (Barton family archives)

The IPEC management team in 1964. George Barton in bowtie stands next to Greg Farrell. John Konstas and Gordon Barton sit at the left. (Courtesy of Toll-IPEC archives)

These Commer vans were used for intra-city deliveries from the early 1960s. (Courtesy of Toll-IPEC archives)

Gordon, Vonnie and the family dog. (Barton family archives)

Gordon, Vonnie and their first child, Cindie, circa 1964. (Barton family archives)

Cartoonists had a field day with the federal government’s attempts to block IPEC AIR. (Courtesy of Daily News)

The Australian Reform Movement Senate team for the 1967 federal election: Gordon Barton, Ken Thomas, Peter Mason, Paul Allsop and Harry Seidler. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery) Vonnie Barton in 1967 after a period of radiotherapy with Cindie and Geoffrey. (Barton family archives)

Diana Ward, journalist, TV presenter, Australia Party candidate and Barton’s one-time lover. (Courtesy of The Herald & Weekly Times photographic collection)

The opening of Wrest Point Casino, February 1973. (Courtesy of Federal Hotels archives)

Magicians at money-raising. Nick Aboud, Greg Farrell and Gordon Barton make history as the first Australians to arrange a loan in Saudi riyals, May 1975. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

Liz Weeding, Tjuringa company secretary and for a time Barton’s lover. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

Barton commissioned the painstaking restoration of the historic NSW Club as Ipec Holdings’ Australian headquarters. This ground-floor drawing room became Barton and Greg Farrell’s shared office. (Courtesy of Tim Collis-Bird)

Celebrating Tjuringa’s success at the Bligh Street office, October 1977. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

Barton and Mary Ellen holidaying in Venice, 1978. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Barton)

IPEC AIR unveils its Midnight Flyer DC-3 service in July 1979 after the federal government refused to let it fly the more efficient Argosy aircraft. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

Barton as King Arthur en route to Sydney Harbour’s Clark Island, February 1979. (Courtesy of Katherine Cummings)

The IPEC Europe dealmakers (left to right) Peter Laverty, Hugh O’Neill, John Konstas and Ian Sayer outside O’Neill’s Spitalfield residence, 10 October 1979. (Courtesy of Ian Sayer)

This delivery van, then the only one in IPEC’s yellow and black livery, was photographed throughout Western Europe for IPEC Europe’s first marketing campaign in 1979. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

The fifteenth century Kasteel Ophemert was rented from Baron Reay in 1979 to house Barton’s Australian IPEC team while they attacked the European express transport industry. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Barton)

Barton in his favourite leopard-skin costume at the Kasteel Ophemert party to welcome the Australian team. Behind him, moody Pierre was useful for more than his cooking. (Courtesy of Maria Vandersman)

Left: Barton trapped in his Spanish suit of armour in the basement of Kasteel Ophemert in 1980 during a visit by his bankers. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Barton) Right: Barton’s rented London residence from 1981–86, 20 Thurloe Square. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Barton)

Barton as chairman of Ipec Holdings, circa 1980. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

Left: Greg Farrell, Barton’s key business partner for 25 years, was a devout Catholic and a devoted family man. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery) Right: Graham Cooke was a Tjuringa advisor and Barton’s lawyer and close friend until they fell out in the late 1980s. (Courtesy of Ossie Emery)

As the Ipec Holdings empire sank further into crisis negotiations, Barton escaped to the Caribbean for a family holiday during Christmas 1982. From left to right are: Kate Ayrton, Mary Ellen, and Gordon, Geoffrey and Cindie Barton. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Barton)

Seen here in 1988, Barton was elected chairman of the International Express Carriers Conference meeting when it was formed in 1983. In that role he would fight on TNT’s behalf against the European postal monopolies. (Courtesy of Jim Campbell)

Barton purchased Hurlingham Lodge, Fulham, in 1989 for £2.5 million. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Barton)

Barton moved into his architect-designed Vaucluse home in 1972. This 1990 photo of Loch Maree shows the renovated courtyard paved with flagstones from a French abbey. (Courtesy of Richardson & Wrench)

After ten years in modest quarters, in August 2002 Gordon and Geoffrey Barton moved into the stunning but decrepit Villa Paradiso above Lake Como. (Courtesy of Philip Copeland)

A favourite tale concerned his trip through India in the mid-1960s. He had received word that the King of Bhutan was looking for English officers to serve in his army. Not letting his lack of rank deter him and in search of adventure, Janson’s account had him hightailing it to Bhutan to introduce himself as a desirable mercenary. He claims to have served two years in the Bhutanese army. The nickname Captain Janson soon followed.

Janson had never been one to reside in anything as pedestrian as a private home. In the tradition of eccentric writers and wealthy spinsters, he instead took hotel rooms in grand style. In London he was variously a tenant of the Dorchester and the Royal Garden Hotel. In Melbourne his rooms were at the Menzies until the hotel group’s inconsiderate 1969 sale forced him to ponder where he might find appropriate new digs.

The Federal Hotel was far larger than the recently vacated Menzies. Its grand lobby boasted an imposing white-and-red marble staircase that split in two, rising to meet arched arcades that surrounded an atrium that soared four floors, culminating in a stained-glass ceiling. Under each of the Federal’s four corner towers lay a magnificent bridal suite. Standing on the corner of King and Collins streets, Janson recalls watching pigeons flying in and out of the top tower windows. They would not fly into inhabited rooms.

John Haddad was running the Federal at the time. He knew of Janson from his Menzies days. Janson’s presence had always brought a certain desirable frisson to a hotel. So when Janson approached him regarding cleaning out one of the Federal’s unoccupied tower attics and turning it into an apartment, Haddad was agreeable.

The huge round corner tower Janson had in mind was 10 metres wide with a spiral staircase rising through it to a flagpole on top. Inside, large piles of pigeon droppings stained every floorboard. Janson and his friends would shovel 84 bags of pigeon excrement, and earn a profit selling it for fertiliser.

Janson turned the attic space into one of the most beautiful penthouses that you’d ever see. ‘There was interior wood and stained glass, about five levels and quite beautiful’, Haddad recalls. At the top under the dome lay Janson’s bedroom, surrounded by four portholes in the wall. The city view, a dozen floors above the street, was spectacular. In the empty space below Janson created a drawing room, dining room and bar, before lowering an enormous chandelier, close to 2 metres across, with 100 lamps in it, down from the tower roof despite the whole concept being judged as impossible.

‘Gordon . . . used to go for the big guys . . .’, John Konstas recalls. ‘Gordon would say “I want to meet the manager of this finance company and that finance company” and Peter Janson would arrange a dinner. They’d all be there with their wives and Gordon would introduce himself and they’d talk and have a nice sociable evening . . . Next day he’d go and see . . . his new mate to discuss a new loan.’

Janson’s world atop the Federal was not to last, however. By the close of 1970 Barton and Greg Farrell’s hotel group had concluded negotiations to sell Janson’s eyrie and the Federal Hotel beneath it for $3.7 million. Haddad’s freeloader was in shock. Interviewed by writer Chrystopher Spicer, Janson would recall: ‘I never stopped to work out how much money I’d put into the place—if I had, I probably would have blown out my brains with a shotgun—but I’d put a tremendous amount of energy into creating my own little environment there. It was the kind of place I’d always wanted to live in; it was magnificent.’

Janson’s farewell party went on for three days. Guests, including racing car driver Stirling Moss and a British camera crew who had flown out for the occasion, were reported to have partied their way through over one hundred cases of champagne.

In the weeks prior to his exit, Janson had been hanging above the street on a painter’s platform, quietly chipping away at two statues of naked ladies. The day before the demolition team arrived, two trucks and a crane pulled up. The statues were gone before Melbourne’s trams started moving. The grand old lady that had been the Federal was soon replaced by a dreary government office block.

The Chapman father and son team who had arranged Barton’s visit to millionaire pastoralist Charles Russell had helped found the Basic Industries Group (BIG). The organisation’s principal thrust was that Australia should not sacrifice the basic industries of wheat and wool by constantly raising their costs (by imposing tariffs that protected urban light industries). They had run press ads, supporting rural interests, private enterprise and decentralisation. Russell was one of the group’s leaders in facilitating a clandestine campaign that had attempted to oust Prime Minister William McMahon and have him replaced by the Country Party leader, John McEwen.

In Barton’s view, McMahon was a rather pathetic figure, with the unfortunate habit of embarking on and getting lost in convoluted sentences—or forgetting the nature of his audience. Even his opponents felt sorry for him and would volunteer a helpful suggestion. Barton would recall being invited to a meeting of about 100 BIG supporters at Sydney’s Argyle Tavern. He recognised few faces and remembered it having a conspiratorial atmosphere. The meeting’s main theme was that McMahon was an embarrassment and a disaster and should be replaced by a ‘Real Man’. The veiled references to McMahon being a confirmed bachelor were greeted with sniggers. ‘Let’s face it, he’s a bloody poofter!’ somebody yelled out. There was a groundswell of assent.

Barton left quietly and had no more to do with the group. He told Charles Russell he thought pragmatism had its limits and he did not approve of some of his friends. The group soon faded out. Nonetheless, the meeting was to stimulate a long correspondence that lasted until Russell’s death in 1977.

By 1972 the Australia Party had grown to around 1700 members. Branches had sprouted in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia, though the most impressive growth was in Queensland where membership leapt from a handful to several hundred. By then the party had attracted a large group of younger activists committed not just to ideas but to political representation.

Long-time national secretary Mary McNish was also one for action rather than words. She admitted in an April 1972 interview in The Australian: ‘In the old days, ideas were the most important thing. Now we’ve realised we have to get into Parliament to have those ideas heard.’ Party candidate and lawyer John Fisher agreed. ‘It may have been naïve of us to think we could change the world by simply disseminating ideas.’ McNish warned: ‘The one real danger would be the appearance of ambitious people in the party.’

However, disagreement was beginning to crack the party executive. For Barton and others, elections were an opportunity to draw attention to better policies rather than to win seats. ‘A danger I see is that once you have men in Parliament they tend to think of what people might accept. The challenge of exploring new ideas withers away.’

In October 1972 Barton was re-elected unopposed as national convenor. A federal election was called for mid-December. The party fielded candidates in 59 seats in its most expensive campaign ever. While nearly half the contested seats were in New South Wales, every state and territory was represented. Queensland’s representation had grown from one seat in 1969 to eight seats. The party cleverly headlined its public campaign with the slogan ‘Put Australia Before Party’ and planned to use preferences to elect a Whitlam Labor government.

The party’s small advertising budget meant editorial space was essential. Televised current affairs and commercial news gave it little airtime. Radio stations and local media were far more receptive, particularly in Sydney, where the party worked the medium keenly.

Barton embarked on a national campaign tour. After a week taking in all the capital cities, he fell ill, completely losing his sense of balance. All he could do was lie on the floor. In hindsight it was perhaps lucky, for deputy convenor Diana Ward stepped in. The popular and engaging Ward gave the campaign fresh impetus.

Whitlam’s Labor Party won government with 67 seats compared to the Liberal and Country Party coalition’s 58. Australia Party preferences delivered at least four of these seats to Labor. Commentator Malcolm Mackerras concluded that Whitlam owed Labor’s victory to Barton’s Australia Party, which had more than doubled its vote since the 1969 election. In the ACT, it had won close to 14 per cent. The win marked the end of 23 years of conservative government.

Barton declared the Australia Party was ready to act ‘as a think tank and prod’ to the new government. Commentators scoffed at this suggestion. Barton, however, continued to prick the government. One week he would be blowing the whistle on rigged union elections, the next he was criticising Whitlam for banning any minister other than himself from making statements on foreign policy.

The Angus & Robertson business continued to bleed money, so Barton assigned Tjuringa adviser Shann Turnbull to find a solution. Unable to compete with cheaper offshore printing prices, the Halstead printing business was a liability. It was sold to John Sands and the printers and typesetters dismissed. Turnbull also engaged John Singleton to not only review the image and advertising strategy for the bookstores but, rare for the times, commissioned market research on what customers wanted.

In March 1972, Barton announced he would be appointing a new publisher. Gordon McCarthy was relegated to the role he most detested— overseeing the bookstores. Long-time staffers Barbara Ker Wilson, John Abernethy, Bruce Semler and John Ferguson all felt entitled to the publisher role. None of them would receive the mantle. Given the clash of ambitions and unpleasant atmosphere, Barton would instead look outside the business. Grahame Bunyan observes: ‘Barton had this idea that if you had enthusiasm and felt good about something then it would work . . . To Gordon . . . if you chucked in some bright, bouncy talented people that he liked and he knew then they’d fix it.’

Richard Walsh was just such a person. Barton liked what Walsh was doing on his Nation Review. As Beatrice Davis’ biographer Jacqueline Kent wrote, he recognised in Walsh someone who epitomised ‘the assertive, well-educated, progressive generation that would shortly sweep Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party into office. There was a youthful impatience about Walsh, a willingness to chop away dead wood, to bring in fresh ideas.’ To Barton it was this freshness that would save Angus &Robertson from its stick-in-the-mud past.

Walsh was a book-lover and a man with energy equal to that of his proprietor. He was keen to take on the challenge. However, he was unwilling to surrender his coveted publisher role at Nation Review, which was fast becoming the country’s most celebrated journal of opinion and commentary. As a compromise Walsh proposed combining both roles—Mondays and Tuesdays in Sydney running the far-flung Angus & Robertson publishing empire, and the rest of each week in Melbourne overseeing both Nation Review and Angus & Robertson. Reluctantly, Barton agreed.

Among both staff and the wider publishing industry, there was surprise. Walsh was seen as an abrasive iconoclast—naïve about book publishing. To Barton it was attitude and aptitude that mattered.

Under Walsh, Angus & Robertson Publishing shifted gear dramatically. Tensions amongst the top executives ran high with the shake-up. In Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia 1946–2005, Walsh would recall that there was no sense of teamwork. With years of poor performance there was no proper pension fund, so ancient staff remained working because their tiny retirement entitlements were insufficient. Bert Iliffe, who ran royalties, was in his eighties.

Walsh had to focus on revenue. It soon became clear that Angus &Robertson was doing too much. He believed it could excel in educational publishing or in general publishing, but not both. Ultimately the educational backlist was auctioned off and the division sold to McGraw-Hill, jettisoning dozens of staff.

Angus & Robertson stalwart Beatrice Davis was alarmed to find the first title Walsh brought in was Dennis Altman’s Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation. Just as controversially, tie-ins published on the back of a film or TV series such as Number 96 or Peter Weir’s Gallipoli were introduced—with the popular actors emblazoned across the covers. Angus & Robertson dusted off the best in its backlist, collecting related titles into themed series—hardly a new publishing concept, but it was for Angus & Robertson. There would be a Natural Science series, a Famous Australian Lives biography series, a Modern Comedies and the fail-safe Commonsense Cookbook series. Profitable travel guide and craft book lists were also strengthened.

Walsh was also intent on nurturing new Australian literature. A Poet of the Month series was established and a new style of Australian fiction writing encouraged—Frank Moorhouse, Louis Nowra, Glenda Adams and Robert Macklin all began to publish with Angus & Robertson. The stable of authors established during Beatrice Davis’ time—including Xavier Herbert, Thomas Keneally, Hal Porter, Thea Astley and Colin Simpson—began to drift away, many switching to Penguin’s reinvigorated local publishing program.

Out of his depth in retail and frustrated at the blocks Barton put in his way, Gordon McCarthy did not stay long looking after Angus &Robertson Retail. Max Ell, whose Newcastle bookstore business had been acquired by Angus & Robertson, took over. Not used to operating stores on such a scale, he too did not work out.

After Ell’s dismissal in 1974, Nick Aboud would be assigned the role. Aboud had excellent retail credentials, having run the Buckinghams department store business. He soon had the retail arm making a profit for the first time. It would be another five years later—January 1979— before the bookshop division was offloaded to Gordon & Gotch for $2.5 million.