Chris Watson - Later Life

Later Life

Out of the Parliamentary arena, Watson continued to work for Labor, becoming Director of Labor Papers Ltd, publishers of The Worker, the Australian Workers Union paper. He also pursued a business career and was also a parliamentary lobbyist. But in 1916 the Labor Party split over the issue of conscription for World War I, and Watson sided with Hughes and the conscriptionists. He was expelled from the party he had helped found. He remained active in the affairs of Hughes's Nationalist Party until 1922, but after that he drifted out of politics altogether.

Watson devoted the rest of his life to business. He helped found the National Roads and Motorists Association (NRMA) and remained its chairman until his death. He was also a founder of the Australian Motorists Petrol Co Ltd (Ampol). His wife Ada died in 1921.

On 30 October 1925 Watson married Antonia Mary Gladys Dowlan in the same church in which he had married Ada 36 years previously. His second wife was a 23-year-old waitress from Western Australia whom he had met when she served his table at the Commercial Travellers' Club he frequented when in Sydney. He and Antonia had one daughter, Jacqueline. Watson died at his home in the Sydney suburb of Double Bay.