Christine Elizabeth "Tina" Lawton (23 March 1944 – 24 December 1968) was a South Australian folk singer and recording artist.
Lawton was born in Adelaide, a daughter of Edgar Vincent Lawton (1908–1990), a pharmacist and executive with Birks Chemists, and Kathleen Elsie Lawton, née Magarey, (1908–1997) of "Miramar", 3 Hilda Terrace, Hawthorn, South Australia, and was brought up in an affluent middle-class surroundings in a musically talented family. Her mother had a good voice, and was frequently called on to sing at functions.[1] She was a granddaughter of Sylvanus James Magarey; the immunologist John William Magarey Lawton (born 1939) was a brother.
Lawton was educated at Unley Girls' Technical High School and, in 1961, the South Australian School of Arts.[2]
She made early appearances on Adelaide television in the programs The Country and Western Hour (often in duet with host Roger Cardwell), the Marie Tomasetti Show, and Lionel Williams' Adelaide Tonight.[3] She appeared at Tony Bowden's "Catacombs" and other coffee lounges during the "folk song" boom of the early 1960s. She appeared at an Elder Park concert during the 1966 Adelaide Festival of Arts. She appeared in a two-woman show with Glen Tomasetti at John Edmund's Theatre 62. In 1967 she sang for the Australian troops in Saigon. Leaving Vietnam, she settled in Glasgow, Scotland, where she attended the School of Arts.[3]
During the Christmas holidays of 1968 she holidayed with some friends in Kenya, and while there took a flight into the crater of Mount Longonot. The plane crashed into the inner wall of the volcano, and Lawton, her friend Chris Paul, and pilot Graham Wright were killed instantly.[3]
Lawton recorded three albums: