Brian Keating with his wife Win at their daughter Katherine’s wedding in 1979. An air bomber, dentist, deputy mayor and serial stirrer in the public arena, Brian achieved lasting benefits for education and health. Photos: Keating family collection.
For 50 years or more, Brian Keating was known as the doyen of public speakers in Goulburn, and a creative agitator for change.
A deputy mayor in the 1960s who sometimes threw caution to the wind in public life and upset the status quo, Brian would be the exemplar for the current crop of would-be councillors seeking election across local government areas.
Born in the little wheat and sheep town of Barmedman, he was just six years old when he revealed a streak that marked him for life. Smudging his page with pen and ink at school, a nun teaching him boxed his ears and wrapped his knuckles painfully with a ruler.
Hopping mad because he had not been shown how to use the pen and ink correctly, he picked up and threw his inkwell, striking the nun’s head and earning a more forceful belting.
Years later, he was flying over the Canadian Rocky Mountains learning navigation for the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II, and transferred to North Wales to learn night navigation. As an air bomber experiencing barrage flak for the first time on a night raid over Stuttgart, Germany, he said it felt like someone was banging the aircraft with a sledgehammer, which terrified him.
His crew often flew at the head of a formation of 153 Lancaster planes, regularly visiting Cologne for pattern bombing over railway marshalling yards where trains were loaded with trucks and equipment for the fighting front.
On what would be his final raid, a daring daylight mission when aircraft came under direct attack from Germany’s anti-aircraft guns, an explosion knocked him from his bombing position inside the Lancaster, and he ended up at the pilot’s feet. Both men were seriously wounded.
“We were falling out of the sky tail-first,” he recounted in an interview for the Australian War Memorial in 2007. Their fate seemed sealed.
He did not remember what happened next, but believed another explosion righted the plane.
“The next thing we are back on our belly alongside our number two (plane),” he said.
“We took over, we bombed and everyone else bombed and the raid is recorded as extremely successful.”
While recovering in hospital, his wing commander visited to pin the prestigious Distinguished Flying Cross medal on him.
As a dentist and alderman on the council in Goulburn years later, Brian advocated for fluoridation when many of his peers were dubious about adding chemicals to the water supply. A visiting health expert later declared Goulburn infants’ teeth were the healthiest in Australia.
One of two paintings of a World War II Lancaster Bomber that hung in Brian Keating’s study in Goulburn. He had once been denied flying with the pilot of his choice during bombing missions, and from another aircraft saw that pilot and the bomber who took Brian’s place killed during one of their daring raids.
Goulburn Airport’s runway was widened and strengthened during his time on the council, wool sales were developed for the major wool firms and large factories established, he recounted in an oral history for Goulburn Mulwaree Library.
He became a leader of the Catholic community and a ferocious supporter of religious orders, culminating in his pivotal role in the school strike in 1962 when six Catholic schools closed in protest over the government’s failure to fund the upkeep of the schools. Consequently, governments then began funding Catholic schools.
Brian once led the entire board of the St John of God Hospital in Goulburn to resign suddenly. Leaving everyone hanging out for an explanation, he later revealed the resignations were over the West Australian-based order’s lack of support for their Goulburn hospital. Among several projects, he had invested much time and energy getting a hydrotherapy pool installed at the hospital, a godsend for people like him suffering from arthritis.
He never stopped agitating for a stronger, more informed community, mostly from a platform within Goulburn Rostrum Club. Such was his extraordinary service to the club the Australian Rostrum Council recognised him as Freeman Brian Keating.
He travelled and lobbied country and metropolitan clubs to break with tradition and hold the NSW public-speaking finals in Goulburn, instead of Sydney. Subsequently, in 1997 Goulburn hosted one of the best finals in years.
Brian Keating on his 80th birthday with granddaughter Emma. He died in 2009.
He was caught out while introducing fellow speakers one night and forgetting a key person’s name on stage with him during a state aid campaign. After correcting his error, the meeting proceeded, with Brian fixing a withering stare several times on the culprit who had so glaringly and publicly embarrassed him – his wife Win.
Closing the meeting later while frowning at Win, he said: “God help this government if they don’t provide more money for our schools, and God help you when we get home.”
Win’s disarming smile revealed, however, where Brian’s heart belonged.
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