Life
Houghton was born in Melbourne, the son of solicitor William Sharwood Houghton and Doris Thackery. He attended Melbourne Grammar School and spent a year at the University of Melbourne studying law, but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. At the time he had also been working as an articled clerk in his father's law firm, Mills, Oakley and McKay. From 1940 until 1945 he served in the Australian Imperial Force, earning promotion to the rank of Lieutenant in 1942. When he returned to Australia in 1945, he decided not to return to the law, instead setting up as a farmer near Yarra Glen. In 1948, he married Audrey Gourlay.
After retiring from politics in 1985, Houghton concentrated on his family and his work as a farmer. He died in 2001, eight days after his eightieth birthday. At Houghton's funeral, former Victorian Premier Lindsay Thompson praised him for his conservation work, telling mourners that "That probably proved to be the best $6 million the government spent that year because Evan Walker took up the project and Southbank is now one of Melbourne's great assets." The funeral was held 16 January 2001 in St Peter's Chapel, at Melbourne Grammar.
The "Vasey Houghton Bridge," a bridge on the Melba Highway across the Yarra River, was named in his honour and opened on 23 January 1999.
Read more about this topic: Vasey Houghton
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion
Larger than in life they managed—
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
“But one sound always rose above the clamor of busy life and, no matter how much of a tintinnabulation, was never confused and, for a moment lifted everything into an ordered sphere: that of the bells.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Alvina felt herself swept ... into a dusky region where men had dark faces and translucent yellow eyes, where all speech was foreign, and life was not her life. It was as if she had fallen from her own world on to another, darker star, where meanings were all changed.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)