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.
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“The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.”
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