World War Two veteran and Western Australia’s longest-serving MP Bill Grayden has died at the age of 105.
In a statement, on behalf of the family, James Grayden said his father was an exceptional role model for his large family and everyone who knew him.
“He was a doer, not a talker, and if he set his mind to a task he would see it through whatever the odds,” he said.
“He instilled in all of us a love of the outdoors and nature and for seeing what was around the next corner.
“His curiosity and readiness to adopt emerging technology remained with him to the end, and he was fascinated with the possibility of driverless cars giving him back the freedom he gave up when he was unable to renew his driver’s licence in his mid-90s.”
Born in Perth in 1920, Mr Grayden’s father served in Gallipoli during World War One.
Mr Grayden later lied about his age to enlist for World War Two, and was commissioned as an officer in the Australian Imperial Force in 1940.
He served in the Middle East before being sent to Papua New Guinea’s infamous Kokoda Trail.
“Towards the end of the Kokoda campaign our whole brigade had been decimated,” Mr Grayden told the ABC in 2015.
“Apparently I was blown down the slope towards the Japanese.
“I must have been unconscious for a while, because when I picked myself up and clambered back up top … they’d reported to battalion headquarters that I’d been killed.”
A year after being discharged from the army in 1946, Mr Grayden was elected to the state seat of Middle Swan.
He quit in 1949 to run in the federal election for the seat of Swan, and became a member of the 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 then returned to state politics, holding the seat of South Perth until his retirement in 1993.
In total, he spent 43 years in government.
Mr Grayden married his wife Betsy in 1949 and they remained together until her death in 2007.
They had 10 children, 36 grandchildren and at least 50 great-grandchildren.
