Bettina Gorton

Bettina Edith Gorton, Lady Gorton (née Brown; 23 June 1915 – 2 October 1983) was an American-born Australian academic who was best known as the first wife of John Gorton, the 19th Prime Minister of Australia. She was born in Portland, Maine, met her husband while studying in France, and married in 1935. She developed an interest in South-East Asian culture relatively late in life, learning to speak Malay and Javanese and completing her first university degree at the age of 50. She was involved with a long-running Australian National University project to compile a Malay–English dictionary, although she curtailed her involvement during her husband's prime ministership (1968–1971). Early life Gorton was born Bettina Edith Brown in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA, in 1915 to Arthur A. Brown, the president of an American bank in Cuba, and Grace M. Brown (née Whitaker). Her father died when she was two years old and her mother returned to her home state of Maine. She attended Bangor High School and the University of Maine, although she did not graduate from the latter. Marriage In 1933 she was studying languages at the Sorbonne in Paris, and was taken for a holiday to Spain by her brother, Arthur Brown, where they shared a cottage with John Gorton, an Australian friend of Arthur from Oxford University. She married Gorton on 15 February 1935, at St Giles Church, Oxford, and after his studies were finished they returned to his father's orchard near Kerang, Victoria. Her mother Grace Brown came to live with them, and she later revealed that her son Arthur, Bettina's brother and John Gorton's closest friend from Oxford, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. They had a daughter, Joanna in 1937, and two sons, Michael in 1938 and Robin in 1941. During John's war service, Bettina ran the farm and raised the children. He entered Federal Parliament in 1950, as a Senator for Victoria, and was often away in Canberra on parliamentary business. They moved to Canberra in 1958 when he was appointed a minister in the government of Robert Menzies.