Former Warrnambool MP recalls royal visit, invites new King to visit again

He was the popular member for Warrnambool for 16 years from 1967 before moving to neighbouring Polwarth.

Even after all these years, he is still advocating on behalf of Warrnambool, at 83 writing to King Charles ahead of this weekend's coronation and inviting him back to visit.

Mr Smith was part of the royal welcoming party for Charles' flying visit to Tower Hill and the Warrnambool races in 1977.

He sent a photo of the royal visit to the south-west to the new King shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth.

"I have that photo on my desk actually," he said.

Mr Smith said the photo of him introducing King Charles to Warrnambool dignitaries on that visit was a bit of a treasure.

He said that as someone who had always "been a bit republican inclined", he was surprised people became heavily reliant not just on religion but the monarchy to help them mentally to rebuild their lives after such devastation. "To headline me as a monarchist would be bit of a overstatement. It can continue on as far as I'm concerned as long as you like," he said.

He said, in the letter, he told the King he would be welcome to visit again when he has time.

Mr Smith also told the King how much the royal family had meant to many fire victims in the aftermath of the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983.

He said there had been nothing as devastating as the Ash Wednesday bushfires which tore through the south-west 40 years ago, even burning the back part of his family's Terang home. "It was a frightful experience," he said.

Mr Smith was on his way home from Geelong that day after delivering a truck load of prime lambs when he came across a fire on the side of the road near Birragurra.

"By the time I got to that spot, there was an area about twice the size of a house block already on fire on the side of the road," he said. He alerted the CFA to the blaze.

Closer to home, he headed to the Panmure hall where CFA volunteers and trucks had gathered. "It was an absolute nightmare," he said. Mr Smith described the sound of the fire that day as like a Concord jet taking off. "Everywhere you looked everything was burnt," he said.

"There was masses of dead cattle...and the only living things I saw were two bulls in a creek fighting. There was nothing to fight over."

With no mobile phones and emails in those days, Mr Smith said he went to wherever there was a standing house and appointed the people there as "local mayors" to keep their neighbours informed. "Because this was so bad and unprecedented, there were a lot of new government decisions taking place and I used to keep the people that I appointed the local mayors informed because they had houses left and electricity and telephone whereas a lot of the others didn't," he said.

Mr Smith said he still had a painting from Warrnambool artist Robert Ulmann - who was burnout in the fires. "I bought one of his paintings which depicts burnt forest and in the middle of it, it has a little red robin...it depicts hope," he said.

Mr Smith, who now lives in Barwon Heads, has retired from politics but that hasn't stopped him mentoring young Liberals who come to him for advice.

He is also still a member of the party which he first joined in November 1957 just after leaving school.

He said his parents worked hard on their sheep farm to send him and his siblings to boarding school at Geelong Grammar - the place a young Prince Charles had also attended ..

After returning to Terang, his father told him he had been away so long he was out of touch with the local community and encouraged him to join some local organisations.

So he joined the local Liberal branch, the dramatic society, Noorat Show Society, Terang Rifle Club, the Presbyterian fellowship and young farmers. "At one stage my younger brother and I were the biggest growers of frozen peas in Australia," he said.

When the seat of Warrnambool was created, Mr Smith was preselected and won on preferences after polling 34 per cent of the primary vote. He eventually built his primary vote up to 64 per cent.

"I just loved representing the electorate of Warrnambool. It was fantastic."

Mr Smith said the things he remembered most fondly about his time as a politician were not the "big ticket items". "They're individual things you did for people who needed your help. They are by far the most rewarding things," he said. "I like to think I was approachable. They certainly approached me in droves."

Among those was an "incredibly nice couple" who were unable to have children but were not favoured for adoption. He spoke to the people in government on their behalf asking they be reassessed.

He said years later he was walking down Liebig Street when that couple yelled out to him from across the road and came running up to him with a young lad in his late teens. "They were just the happiest trio I'd ever come across, they'd had a wonderful family life," he said.

Mr Smith said that in the 1960s you didn't enter parliament to make money. "The first year's pay I think was $5000 and my expenses were $4500," he said. "We weren't provided with staff, or offices, or cars or anything like that. We had to pay for all that ourselves. I was lucky to have a farm and that provided the living." It wasn't until the mid-1970s that all the perks arrived.

After the Liberal Party lost the state election, Mr Smith said he and former premier Henry Bolte tried to persuade then prime minister and Member for Wannon Malcolm Fraser to step down and let Andrew Peacock take over. "We couldn't persuade him," he said.

After the defeat of the federal Liberal government in 1983, Mr Smith said Mr Fraser rang him up and wanted him to stand for Wannon. "So I resigned and then went to preselection but Fraser had changed at the behest of the Hamilton club and they were backing David Hawker," he said.

Mr Smith spent two years farming before returning to politics, taking the seat of neighbouring Polwarth when the sitting member retired. He held that for 16 years and built his primary vote up to 68 per cent. "No one has done anything like that since," he said.

He set up three government departments during his times in government - one of them a social welfare department which he described as "no mean feat".

"Bolte's statement to me was ... you can have as much money as you need, you can have as many staff as it requires but get those children out of orphanages," he said. "They bought a lot of houses in suburbia and had foster parents who would take in children," he said. "It was a bit of a world first. That was very rewarding."

Mr Smith is the last surviving member of Bolte's last cabinet, and retired from politics at the 1999 election.

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