Background
Sir John Grey Gorton was born in Melbourne, Victoria the illegitimate son of Alice Sinn, the daughter of a railway worker, and English orange orchardist John Rose Gorton. The older Gorton and his wife Kathleen had emigrated to Australia by way of South Africa, where they had prospered during the Boer War.
On 31 May 1940, following the outbreak of World War II, Gorton enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve. At the age of 29, he was considered too old for pilot training, but he re-applied in September after this rule was relaxed. Gorton was accepted and commissioned into the RAAF on 8 November 1940. Although Gorton had been a member of the Countru Party before the war, in 1949 he was elected to the Senate for the Liberal Party. Gorton retired to Canberra, where he kept out of the political limelight, although he quietly rejoined the Liberal Party.
