Life On The Job


Indigenous Famous or Historic People

CHAUFFEUR: Alf George Stafford MBE, (1906 - 1996)

Chauffeur to Prime Ministers

Portrait
 (Source:ABC)
 This photograph was donated to AIATSIS by Michelle Flynn, Alf Stafford's granddaughter

Introduction

Alf was born in 1906 in Binnaway, north of Dubbo, and arrived in Canberra as a pioneer in 1928.

He loved billiards and in the 1930s opened a billiards hall in Kingston [ACT].

Mr Stafford served under Joseph Lyons, Sir Earle Page, Arthur Fadden, John Curtin, Francis Forde, Joseph Chifley, twice under Sir Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John McEwen, John Gorton and Gough Whitlam.

Born one of 12 children to Aboriginal parents in Binnaway in 1906, Stafford was discharged from the army on medical grounds in 1929 (incidentally, three of his brothers served as light horsemen in – and returned from – the first world war at a time when Indigenous Australians were not permitted to join up; another served in the second world war).

In 1930, a 24-year-old ex-soldier and talented cricketer, Alfred (Alf) George Stafford, arrived [in Canberra]. A Gamilaroi and Darug man, born one of 12 children in Binnaway, New South Wales, he came to visit a friend briefly after being discharged from the Australian Army. He stayed forever after finding a job and subsequently opening a billiard parlour in Kingston, where he hosted the later world billiards champion, Horace Lindrum.

 

Alf Stafford cricket
 (Source: Meanjin)
This photograph was donated to AIATSIS by Michelle Flynn, Alf Stafford's granddaughter

Experience & Opportunity

In 1937 he joined the Commonwealth Transport Department as one of its earliest ‘transport officers’—early bureaucratese for public service drivers. Over 35 years until his retirement in 1972, Stafford drove countless politicians, among them opposition leaders and 11 prime ministers, including Joe Lyons, Earle Page, Arthur Fadden, John Curtin, Frank Forde, Billy Hughes, Arthur Calwell, Ben Chifley, Robert Menzies (during two stints as PM), Harold Holt, John McEwen, John Gorton, Billy McMahon and Gough Whitlam.


As a driver, and later as cabinet officer, Stafford was the ultimate government insider. He was discreet, however, and spoke nothing publicly of his work until his retirement. Even then he waited until his later years to do so.

During Menzies’ 16-year postwar tenure Stafford, the former first-grade cricketer or St George and the Australian Capital Territory, served as adviser for the selection of the Prime Minister’s XI, beginning with the match against the West Indies in 1951. It was a duty for which Stafford, a left-handed batsman and leg-break bowler, was eminently qualified; in the 1920s he opened the batting for St George’s first XI. At number three was Donald Bradman with whom, it seems, Stafford had a relationship that is perhaps best described as ambivalent.

The Menzies–Stafford relationship extended well beyond cricket, however. The two were lifelong friends and confidants. When Stafford’s first wife Edith became ill with cancer in the early 1950s, Menzies—perhaps at the insistence of his wife, Dame Pattie, determined that driving the PM was keeping ‘Alf’ away from his increasingly onerous family responsibilities. So Menzies insisted that a job be fashioned for Stafford as a ‘Cabinet officer’. This was effectively a position as a personal assistant to the prime minister, a messenger for ministers stuck in meetings and their butler, who’d make the tea and pour the drinks when Cabinet rose.

“Menzies really was one of the greatest gentlemen I’ve ever met. And also Chifley was a grand man. And Curtin. They were outstanding prime ministers,” he [Alf] said.

He became Menzies’ permanent driver during his second stint as Prime Minister in 1949.



All the while, after the death of Edith in 1954, Stafford and his two youngest children, David and Diana, periodically lived in the Lodge. They did so at the insistence of the Menzies, so that Alf, with the help of one of the housekeepers, could better support his children as a sole parent. For the Menzies, who travelled on official business often, there was the added advantage that the Staffords could serve as caretakers at the Lodge while they were away. In 1956 Alf Stafford married another of the Menzies’ housekeepers, Heather Nesbitt. The Menzies threw a wedding reception for the couple at the Lodge.  

Did You Know?

Alf Stafford had first hand experience of the Cowra Breakout

In an interview he [Alf] recounted driving the then-Labor federal information minister, Arthur Calwell, through central west New South Wales on a freezing night in August 1944 when, unknown to either 1,100 Japanese prisoners of war had escaped from a prison in nearby Cowra. Four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese died in the breakout.

“We were pulled up by a military convoy ... they asked us if we saw any Japs on the road and we said, ‘no’ and of course we didn’t know what was going on. Just after that there was six little Japs walked down the road just behind us. I dare say if they’d wanted the car they could’ve knocked us off pretty easily,” he said.

“Arthur Calwell then got out of the car – it was the middle of June ... freezing ... and he went up on the hill and it was just like a miniature war really, there was machine guns going and searchlights all around.

“By accident we were there in the middle of it. I must say that Calwell did a mighty job. He got on the phone and got through to the papers in Sydney and asked them not to print anything on the show because we had prisoners of war in Japan.”
(Source: The Guardian)

The Cowra Breakout
(Source: ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee)

Later Life

Alf Stafford retired shortly after the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, the same year he was awarded an Order of the British Empire.

When he retired after working briefly for Whitlam in 1972, the Labor Prime Minister gave Stafford as a farewell gift the black Homburg hat that had belonged to Australia’s eighth Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce. Stafford later donated the hat to a charity auction.

[Alf was] well known in Canberra for captaining the ACT representative cricket side (he faced the first ball ever bowled at the PM’s XI match venue, Manuka Oval, in 1930) and [he was] a foundation member of the Canberra Racing Club (the Alf Stafford Guineas is raced in his name). 

Alf Stafford died, aged 90, in 1996.

 

YouTube: AIATSIS COLLECTION TELLS OF SIR ROBERT MENZIES’ FRIENDSHIP WITH DRIVER ALF STAFFORD

https://youtu.be/eN3tUUYgLFc

 

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