Honest John Allan: In November this year it will have been 100 years since leading Kyabram identity, and Wyuna South farmer, John Allan was sworn in as the 29th premier of Victoria.
A Victorian premier of a different era, and gender, but with the same surname will be celebrated by the township of Kyabram later this year.
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In November 1924 long-time Wyuna South resident John Allan became Kyabram’s one and only state premier.
The name will be familiar to modern-day residents of Kyabram, who will know John Allan Rd (named in his honour) and Allan St, named after his father Andrew in 1886.
Allan St was among the first few streets named in Kyabram.
Both Mr Allan and his father were prominent Kyabram leaders, Andrew Allan in the late 1880s and his son in the post-World War I era.
A century after John Allan rose to prominence in the world of politics, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is now the 49th premier of the state. In September last year she took the top job when Daniel Andrews resigned from the post.
Same name, different era: Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan became the 49th premier of Victoria in September last year, 99 years after John Allan was sworn in as premier of the state.
Photo by
Aidan Briggs
Known parochially as ‘Honest John’ he was voted into office and became the 29th premier of the state when he took the leadership of a newly-formed coalition of the Country Party and Nationalists to victory.
Though born at Chintin (near Lancefield), where he spent the first seven years of his life, the seventh child of Andrew and Jane Allan grew up on a wheat and dairy farm north of Kyabram.
He married the daughter of a Kyabram farmer, Annie Stewart, in 1892 and was a Deakin shire councillor for many years, including a stint as president in 1914-15.
He helped to form the Victorian Farmers Union in 1917, a political party that rose to prominence in the post World War I era.
Mr Allan won the Legislative Assembly seat of Rodney and in the ensuing years the VFU (which soon after become more widely known as the Country Party) increased its stake in Victorian politics from five members to 13.
After becoming the leader of the Country Party it was just six years into his political career that John Allan became deputy to premier of the day Alexander Peacock.
Mr Allan held the ministry for immigration and was commissioner for crown lands.
At the March 1924 election the Allan-led Country Party, holding the balance of power, abandoned its allegiance to the Nationalists and that led to the demise of premier of the day.
Under the new coalition agreement, Mr Allan later became Victoria’s first Country Party premier, with Mr Peacock as his deputy.
Mr Allan’s political astuteness was no better evidenced than by a contemporary profile attributed to him by a leading journalist.
It said Mr Allan possessed “an astuteness in negotiation that his appearance belies, a dull-looking, heavy man, with the lumbering walk of a born-rustic, he has deceived many into a belief that he is politically negligible”.
His term as premier fell five months shy of three years when Labor swept to power against the now-split Nationalists and Country Party.
Mr Allan resigned as leader of the Country Party in 1935, but did serve for a time as minister for agriculture in the 1932 United Australia Party-Country Party coalition government.
He remained on the backbench until his death in 1936, at just 69 years of age.
Mr Allan lived on his property at Kilmarnock for several decades, was a foundation member of the Kyabram Cricket Club, a Deakin shire councillor for more than 30 years, was chairman of the Kyabram Butter Factory and was a leading figure in the construction of the Kyabram Cannery coolstores.
He was given a state funeral and was buried in the Presbyterian section of the Kyabram cemetery.
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