I first met Alan Stretton some years after the Darwin cyclone, the event which will always be linked with his name.
By that time he had retired from the army and taken up a career as a lawyer in Canberra and it was on a local issue that he first got in touch with me as a journalist on The Canberra Times. Over the years we spoke often and I got a number of good stories from our interviews, both over the phone and while enjoying hospitality at his Canberra apartment.
I remember his very public criticism of the Australian Government’s decision to join the coalition of nations that invaded Iraq. “Any suggestion that there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and global terrorism is ludicrous,” he said.
A dedicated St Kilda fan – and a player for the club in the 1940s - he convinced me that even with a soccer background it was positively un-Australian not to support a team in the AFL, so now the Saints’ result is always the first one I look for at each weekend during the winter.
Our contacts tailed off after he retired to the South Coast and I last saw him at his son Greg’s 60th birthday party a few years back. He was genuinely glad to see me again and to chat about current affairs.
Strangely enough we rarely talked about the events following Christmas Eve 1974. While justifiably proud of his achievements in evacuating some 36,000 people from the stricken city “and not losing a single additional life”, he lived in the present and looked to the future.
Alan Stretton wanted a better, fairer Australia, and used his position and his reputation to work for that end. May he rest in peace.
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