Gordon Upton

Gordon Noel Upton was born in Sydney in 1920 and attended Canterbury Boys High School and the University of Sydney. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1940 and served in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War, reaching the rank of flight lieutenant. He entered External Affairs as a diplomatic cadet after the war. ^{1, 2}

Upton worked under Patrick Shaw in Jakarta and later headed Australia's mission in Ceylon. After Shaw died while ambassador in Washington in December 1975, Upton temporarily led the embassy as chargé d'affaires. He remained on its senior staff after Nicholas Parkinson arrived and attended Henry Kissinger's March 1976 lunch with Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock as minister-counselor. The discussion covered relations with the Soviet Union and China. ^{2, 3, 4}

His later career took him to the Pacific and South Asia. He led Australia's missions to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu in 1976–79, followed by India in 1980–84 with concurrent accreditation to Nepal until 1983. In 1982 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his diplomatic service. ¹

In India, a confidential dispatch to Peacock became a public controversy in 1980. Upton judged that Indira Gandhi's government had made little progress against domestic problems and warned of a possible military coup. Publication of the leaked assessment led Indian parliamentarians to demand his removal. Australia expressed regret, and Gandhi wrote to Malcolm Fraser defending her government's record while reaffirming the importance of the relationship. Upton stayed in New Delhi and reported a year later that the episode had left no lasting embarrassment. ²