She developed an interest in South-East Asian culture relatively late in life, learning to speak Malay and Javanese and completing her first university degree at the age of 50.

Her mother Grace Brown came to live with them, and she later revealed that her son Arthur, Bettina's brother and John Gorton's closest friend from Oxford, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.

In 1958, in a widely publicised court case, the novelist Jean Campbell (the mistress of John Gorton's father, who had died in 1936) sued Bettina for shares in the family company.

She oversaw a number of restoration projects, and also arranged for the building of the prominent white brick security wall around the property, and established a garden of Australian native plants in the grounds.

Her interest in oriental studies was widely reported in South-East Asia, and her speeches during John Gorton's official prime ministerial visits to Malaysia and Singapore and her ability to converse with locals in their own languages made her very popular there.

She exhibited her personal collection of batik at The Lodge, and in June 1968 gave a lecture on Indonesian art and culture for the benefit of the Canberra Press Gallery.

She adapted a poem by William Watson, which she headed "Comment on Current Events": Edward St John was forced to resign from the Liberal Party, and the incident spelled the beginning of the end of his parliamentary career.

In a 1968 interview, it was reported: "she can read Malay fluently, but her speech comes into the category of 'more than conversant but less than fluent': 'My vocabulary is largely to do with historical and philosophic subjects, not everyday life.

She also lectured part-time at ANU,[11] and eventually completed a Master of Arts, writing her dissertation on the Indonesian author and playwright Achdiat Karta Mihardja.