War hero and former MP Bill Grayden dies aged 105
Bill Grayden, a Second World War veteran and Western Australia’s longest-serving MP, has died aged 105.
In a statement on behalf of the family, James Grayden said his father was an outstanding role model for his extended family and everyone who knew him.
“He was an activist, not a speaker, and if he set his mind on a task, he would accomplish it no matter what,” he said.
“He instilled in all of us a love of the outdoors, nature and seeing what is around the next corner.
“His curiosity and readiness to embrace emerging technology stayed with him until the end, and he was fascinated by the possibility of self-driving cars, which gave him back the freedom he had given up when he was unable to renew his driver’s license in his mid-90s.”
Born in Perth in 1920, Mr Grayden’s father served at Gallipoli during the First World War.
Mr Grayden later lied about his age to join the Second World War and was commissioned as an officer in the Australian Imperial Force in 1940.
He served in the Middle East before being deployed to Papua New Guinea’s famous Kokoda Trail.
“Towards the end of the Kokoda campaign our entire brigade had been wiped out,” Mr Grayden told the ABC in 2015.
“Looks like I was blown down the slope towards the Japanese.
“I must have been unconscious for a while, because when I picked myself up and climbed up… they notified battalion headquarters that I had been killed.”
Mr Grayden was elected to the state seat of Middle Swan a year after he was discharged from the army in 1946.
He resigned in 1949 to contest the federal election for the seat of Swan and became a member of Menzies’ government.
In 1956 Mr. Grayden chaired a committee investigating the conditions faced by First Nations people, and his film was reportedly instrumental in the success of the 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal citizenship.
He later returned to state politics and held his seat in South Perth until his retirement in 1993.
He remained in government for 43 years in total.
Mr. Grayden married his wife, Betsy, in 1949 and they remained together until her death in 2007.
He had 10 children, 36 grandchildren and at least 50 great-grandchildren.
