The first sign that something truly extraordinary had happened should have been the sight of Laurie Oakes running.

At lunch at The Lobby restaurant, just a stone’s throw from Parliament House, the heavyset newspaperman got a call to say Australian politics had just been turned on its head. It was Remembrance Day 1975, and Oakes ran from the table when he was told governor-general John Kerr had sacked Gough Whitlam. He didn’t stop to pay the bill.