Lyall Howard - Later Life

Later Life

Lyall with his father Walter Howard owned two petrol stations where in later years John Howard worked as a boy. The first was located on the corner of Ewart Street and Wardell Road in Dulwich Hill. In 1938 they purchased a second, which they named Prince Edward Service Station, across the Cooks River on the corner of Permanent Avenue and Wardell Road in Earlwood.

By the end of World War II, Lyall was strongly against appeasement, and an admirer of Winston Churchill. The turmoil of the 1949 Australian coal strike and subsequent petrol rationing caused difficulties for the two Howard family petrol businesses, a dispute which ended when the army was sent in to defeat the unions. Both Lyall and Mona Howard became enthusiastic supporters of the newly created Liberal Party of Australia, and celebrated the election night of 1949 which brought Prime Minister Robert Menzies to power, defeating the Labor government of Ben Chifley. When the election results were declared, Lyall built a bonfire in the backyard to burn his petrol rationing card. He later became a paid-up member of the Liberal Party.

According to a Sydney Morning Herald report published on 7 January 1989, there were some suspicions in the Howard family that Lyall was a member of the New Guard, an unofficial paramilitary organisation active in the 1930s which stood for "unswerving loyalty to the Throne; all for the British Empire; sane and honourable government throughout Australia; suppression of any disloyal and immoral elements in government, industrial and social circles; abolition of machine politics, and maintenance of the full liberty of the individual." Lyall's son Walter Howard disputes the claim. However, when interviewed by author Peter van Onselen about his father's involvement in the New Guard, another son, Bob, an academic and a member of the Australian Labor Party recalls Lyall defending New Guard activities, and said his father probably was a member of the New Guard.

Lyall never recovered from the gassing on the battlefields of World War I. He died of chronic bronchitis in 1955, at the age of 59. John Howard, who was age 16 at the time, remembers: "You never think at that age that your father was going to die. I'd always hoped that my father would be proud of me ... My mother lived to see me become treasurer and go into politics, came to my first Budget, had dinner at The Lodge. My dad, my dad didn't, unfortunately."