Death
Bjelke-Petersen died in April 2005, aged 94, with his wife and family members by his side. He received a state funeral at which the then Prime Minister, John Howard, and Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie were speakers. Beattie, who himself had been sued by Sir Joh for defamation and was arrested during the 1971 Springbok Tour protests said "I think too often in the adversarial nature of politics we forget that behind every leader, behind every politician, is indeed a family and we shouldn't forget that." As the funeral was taking place, approximately 200 protesters gathered in Brisbane to "ensure that those who suffered under successive Bjelke-Petersen governments were not forgotten". Protest organiser Drew Hutton said "Queenslanders should remember what is described as a dark passage in the state's history."
Bjelke-Petersen is buried "beside his trees that he planted and he nurtured and they grew" at the family property "Bethany" at Kingaroy.
Read more about this topic: Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“The raven is my talisman.... Death is my talisman, Mr. Chapman. The one indestructible force. The one certain thing in an uncertain universe. Death.”
—David Boehm, and Louis Friedlander. Dr. Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi)
“The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)