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.
In 1958, in a widely publicised court case, the novelist Jean Campbell (the mistress of John Gorton's father, who had died in 1936) sued Bettina for shares in the family company. Campbell alleged that Gorton senior had given the shares to her. The judge ruled in favour of Bettina Gorton.
Wife of the prime minister
In 1968, John Gorton became Prime Minister and they moved into The Lodge. Bettina was the first foreign-born prime minister's wife since Dame Mary Cook (1913–1914). She oversaw a number of restoration projects, and also arranged for the building of the prominent white brick security wall around the property, and established a garden of Australian native plants in the grounds. The indigenous garden she created at The Lodge is now named the Bettina Gorton Garden in her honour.
Bettina Gorton was generally a low-profile prime ministerial spouse, but there were some significant exceptions. Her interest in oriental studies was widely reported in South-East Asia, and her speeches during John Gorton's official prime ministerial visits to Malaysia and Singapore and her ability to converse with locals in their own languages made her very popular there. She exhibited her personal collection of batik at The Lodge, and in June 1968 gave a lecture on Indonesian art and culture for the benefit of the Canberra Press Gallery. Gough Whitlam later praised her for making a lasting and valuable contribution to Australia's relations with Indonesia.
Confusion long existed over her nationality and eligibility to vote in Australian elections. She had believed herself to be ineligible to vote, as an American citizen. However, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs clarified in 1968 that as the wife of an Australian citizen (married in Oxford, UK in 1935) she was an Australian citizen and British subject. The convoluted chain of events resulting in her holding dual citizenship is detailed in the Australian National Archives. Bettina Gorton's other activities included officially opening Melbourne Airport at Tullamarine on 9 July 1970.