Alfred Deakin Brookes

Alfred Deakin Brookes (11 April 1920 – 19 June 2005) was the first head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the intelligence agency of the Australian government that collects foreign intelligence. He was appointed in 1952 by Robert Menzies the prime minister at that time. He was the grandson of Alfred Deakin, Australia's second prime minister. His mother was Ivy Deakin Brookes (14 July 1883 – 27 December 1970), Deakin's daughter, and his father was Herbert Brookes. His parents married on 3 July 1905 and he had an older sister, Jessie (Jessica) (later Jessie Clarke) and a brother Wilfred. Between 1929 and 1930 he lived with his family in Washington as his father was the commissioner General to the United States. His father died 1 December 1963.

Military and intelligence career

During World War II, Brookes enlisted with the army in Melbourne with service number VX112158. He was a Lieutenant in the Australian Army, and worked at the Allied Intelligence Bureau in Melbourne. He was the Chief of the Army section in the Far Eastern Liaison Office, which was also known as the Military Propaganda Section or section D.

Brookes lobbied the Menzies government to set up an intelligence organisation in Australia similar to MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service in the United Kingdom). Richard Casey—the then-Minister for External Affairs—agreed, and Brookes became the first Director until 1957 when he departed public office to work in the private sector.

He named a street "Brookes Street" in Point Lonsdale, Geelong when he subdivided land which had belonged to his father, Herbert Brookes, into a housing estate.