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Ron Ashmore on the Whitlam Dismissal: The missing footage
Title:
Ron Ashmore on the Whitlam Dismissal: The missing footage
NFSA ID
1168193
Year
2013
Ron Ashmore was a camera operator for Channel 9 in Melbourne and an eyewitness to the historic events of 11 November 1975, when Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his government from office.
Ashmore was on the steps of Parliament House with his assistant, John Bowring, and producer Doug Wooding. They were there to interview former Whitlam minister Jim Cairns, when political history unfolded around them.
Reflecting that night on the significance of what they'd shot during the day, the next morning they decided to take the footage back to Melbourne. But by then it was gone, presumed destroyed.
John Fife interviewed Ron Ashmore for the NFSA's Oral History program in 2013.
Read more in The 1975 Whitlam Dismissal: Preserving the Footage
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