Cardboard king Richard Pratt's daughter Paula Hitchcock, speaks out

THIS is Paula Hitchcock, Sydney's richest love child who has inherited millions from her late father Richard Pratt - a man who tried to protect her at all costs.

PAULA Hitchcock, illegitimate child of the late billionaire Richard Pratt, is mature for her 12 years.

"I think she shares a lot in that way with her father. She is very confident in her abilities, has a lot of his nature," her mother and Pratt's long-time mistress Shari-lea Hitchcock says in an interview published this week.

Paula, now one of the nation's richest children after finally inheriting $22.8 million from her father's estate, is revealed as a smart, vivacious and engaging little girl.

"Every bit her father's daughter - more the parent in the relationship with her mother," friends of Hitchcock's have said.

Paula confirmed this, telling the magazine: "Mum is a lot of fun. We get on really well. She makes me laugh and we like the same clothes and shoes. Mum sometimes borrows my shoes and she even wears my mini skirts. She looks great."

The Watsons Bay waterfront home held in trust for Paula also features in the spread; huge oriental fans decorating walls, a baby grand piano and opulent fittings hinting at the riches Pratt once showered on his much younger mistress.

The child the pair had together bonded them until his death last year.

"His eyes lit up whenever she came into the room. He was so sweet with her and he wanted her to have the very best in the world. He was just wonderful, really. I guess you can judge somebody by how hard they work and how much they love their children," Ms Hitchcock said.

Ms Hitchcock details her side of the couple's affair - for a small fee - to a national magazine and, in so doing, casts a spotlight on the couple's once protected love child.

In an expansive nine-page interview, Ms Hitchcock has given her version of the affair that amused Sydney and shocked Melbourne's conservative establishment, of which Pratt was a peer, to The Australian Women's Weekly.

Yesterday the Pratt family was holding tight to their dignity and refusing to comment on the spotlight-loving mistress who has brought the family great distress and embarrassment over the past two decades.

Sources close to the Pratt family claim they are furious but unsurprised that Hitchcock, who seemed to be at last adopting a lower profile away from newspaper social pages, was once again drawing attention to an affair that caused arts patron and society matriarch Jeanne Pratt, the magnate's wife, so much anguish when it was revealed in 2000.