Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was my hero during the 1970s, but I did him a disservice at Sydney's Oktoberfest.
This photograph I shot of Whitlam, mid-speech, clutching a giant beer stein – looking like he's as drunk as ten men – appeared on the front page of The Daily Telegraph.
In reality, Gough was a moderate drinker when socialising with admirers like me. I know this because at another function, the great man nursed a single beer for more than half an hour while we shared a drink and talked politics.
Gough Whitlam was an iconoclast and luminary. The privilege of being a working photojournalist meant I got to better photograph him on other occasions.
**This photograph is part of an IA series that looks at Australia through the lens of award-winning photojournalist Bill McAuley.**
Bill McAuley's 40-plus-year news career began in 1969 as a cadet photographer at 'The Age' in Melbourne.
He has several published collections, including 'Portraits of the Soul: A lifetime of images with Bill McAuley' and the recently launched, 'Last light on Victoria Dock, 1999'. To see more from Bill, click here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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