Menzies' departure was the least dramatic prime ministerial exit

To a whole generation of Australians, the writer among them, there had only ever been one prime minister in memory, Bob Menzies, and on this day a fresh face would take his place.

To many people, especially key figures in the Liberal Party, a post-Menzies Australia was simply unthinkable. No matter that the grand old man had become a walking anachronism, stuck in his quaintly old-fashioned double-breasted suits and clinging to the trappings of a British colonial empire that had vanished, there were serious attempts to persuade him to stay on. The Liberals' federal president, Jock Pagan, and his immediate predecessor, Sir Philip McBride, both pleaded with him, arguing that without his leadership it could be a "rocky year" ahead.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Menzies' resignation was not so much the fact that it happened but rather that it did not happen sooner. Having narrowly escaped electoral defeat by a single seat in 1961, he called an early election in 1963, rebounding with a handsome majority of 22. Speculation before that election that he might retire proved groundless.

Liberal Party historian Ian Hancock poses the question of whether Menzies, elected in 1949, bequeathed "a poisoned chalice" with the party relying solely on someone like himself. One possible successor, Paul Hasluck, later governor-general, speculated in his diary that Menzies had entertained doubts about Holt, his deputy since 1956. He recorded that Menzies hoped another serious contender would emerge, once telling Hasluck and another colleague, Athol Townley, that one of them would one day be prime minister. As it was, Townley died in 1963 and Hasluck did not want the job.

There was more than just sentiment behind the moves to have Menzies stay on. By the mid-1960s, the Liberal Party was beginning to worry and senior officials were talking of the need for rejuvenation – but as Hancock points out, Menzies the septuagenarian who was being pressed to remain, was "hardly the right person … to revive or replace the spirit of 1949". Recounting a description by Holt of how Menzies regaled his discreetly amused cabinet colleagues in late 1965 about details of "his uniform, accoutrements of establishment, etc" of the historic honour and title of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth, Hancock observes Menzies' delight with this "relic of another country and another past" as an indication of how demonstrably out of touch he was with the Australia of the mid-1960s. It did not augur well for the Liberal Party.

In contrast to the suspense, uncertainty and high drama of his first departure from office in 1941, almost a quarter of a century earlier, this exit was utterly devoid of any element of excitement or conflict. There was not even a contest for succession. The only public question being asked was when, in what his biographer Allan Martin called "the resignation charade". It was the least dramatic of all prime ministerial exits.

And just as he returned to political life on his own terms – at the head of a new party built to his specifications – so he would leave it, at a time and under circumstances of his own choosing. Only Edmund Barton (1903) and Andrew Fisher (1915) before him had relinquished the prime ministership voluntarily, but in Barton's case he was being gently persuaded to go amid fears of electoral setback if he stayed in office. Fisher, tired and frustrated by having to manage a nation at war as well as an increasingly fractious party, saw the high commissionership in London as a welcome escape. He also had the hot and urgent breath of Billy Hughes on his neck.

When Menzies addressed the nation, he explained simply that he was 71, and weary. An election was due later that year and he could not promise to serve another term if he won it. He was conscious of having become a fixture. "In short, I am tired: my pace has slowed down; I could not properly continue in office for very much longer and at the same time do justice to the growing problems of the nation," he said.

"Our people have become accustomed to me, for better or worse, for so many years that it would be grossly unfair to my successor to give him insufficient time to make his own mark in his own way. I am sure that the right thing for me to do is to make way now."

Long time admirer Jim Killen records how he encountered Menzies on the day he handed in his resignation to the governor-general, telling him how sad and sorry he was to see him go. Killen was surprised at Menzies' response: "Jim, the thought of going through another election just fills me with horror."

If the first exit was marked by the bitter disappointment of a man still with much to prove, the second was characterised by an air of breezy insouciance, neatly captured by a press photograph of a smiling carefree Menzies walking from Parliament House with his grandchildren; a man at peace, fulfilled and, above all, vindicated.

The Sydney Morning Herald, at times a vociferous critic of Menzies, was as effusive in its praise of the way in which Menzies left office as it was of his stature and achievement.

"The severest critic of Sir Robert Menzies must admire the manner of his going. In the whole history of democratic politics there are very few examples of a prime minister retiring voluntarily at the full height of his powers…In all his long reign he has never enjoyed greater dominion over his party ... His retirement is a model for other politicians both in Australia and abroad."

* Norman Abjorensen chronicles the departures of all 28 former prime ministers in his new book, The Manner of Their Going: Prime Ministerial Exits from Lyne to Abbott (Australian Scholarly Publishing).