John Curtin was born in Creswick Victoria on 8 January 1885, the eldest son of Irish immigrants John and Kate Curtin. His father John was forced to leave the police force through ill health and seek employment as a publican and the family moved around between Melbourne and country towns. The young Curtin left school at thirteen and over the next few years worked at a series of jobs as well as developing a keen interest in socialist politics.

In 1911 he became secretary of the Victorian Timber Workers Union and during his four year period in that office made his first unsuccessful attempt to enter the House of Representatives contesting the Victorian seat of Balaclava. After two years as an organiser for the Australian Workers Union and an active participant in the anti conscription campaign, Curtin came to Western Australia in February 1917 as editor of the Westralian Worker. A few months later he married Elsie Needham and eventually settled in Cottesloe with his wife and two children. In 1919 he made a second failed attempt to enter federal politics, this time contesting the seat of Perth.

Curtin first contested the Fremantle seat in 1925 and was successful at his second attempt in 1928 remaining in the House until Labor's landslide defeat in December 1931. He regained the seat in 1934 defeating future State Cabinet minister Florence Cardell-Oliver and a year later was elected (by one vote) leader of the parliamentary Labor party. During six years as Opposition leader his party was defeated in two consecutive elections (in 1937 and 1940) but on the second occasion, when Australia was at war with Germany, the incumbent Menzies United Australia-Country party Coalition government was left dependent for survival on two Independents.

In October 1941 the two Independents voted against the government on its budget and Curtin was sworn in as prime minister only six weeks before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and Australia declared war on Japan. Curtin was then and still is the only Australian prime minister to represent a Western Australian seat in the federal parliament.

In August 1943 Curtin's Labor party won a landslide victory and he himself increased his majority in Fremantle from a little over 600 in 1940 to more than 20,000 in 1943. In November 1944 he suffered a serious heart attack and although he returned to work for a time in 1945 he was taken ill again in April and died at the Prime Minister's Lodge on 5 July 1945.

At that time he was only the second Australian prime minister (after Joseph Lyons in 1939) to die in office.