The untold story inside Frances Abbott’s shock engagement
HER sudden engagement made headlines across the country. Now, for the first time, a candid Frances Abbott opens up about her wedding plans, her family and going her own way.
Stellar
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TONY Abbott first met Sam Loch, his son-in-law-to-be, when the former prime minister was passing through Melbourne. Loch, a two-time Olympic rower, and Frances Abbott were already head over heels in love, but not yet engaged. The way Loch handled his introduction to the politician impressed both father and daughter.
“I think meeting Tones can be quite intimidating for anyone, but that’s what I love about Sam,” Frances Abbott tells Stellar. “He’s so grounded, and so settled in his own skin, it felt totally natural. There was no change in [Sam’s] voice, no sitting upright. Dad liked him. Dad likes everyone, but I think he was particularly — well, Dad is a rower. He was like, straight away, ‘Let’s talk about rowing.’”
Tony and Margie Abbott, like the rest of the country, were surprised when their middle daughter told them of her engagement, which happened in Loch’s kitchen two weeks after the pair met. “Mum was like, ‘Frances, you are quite impulsive,’” she says. “My family just want what’s best for me, as any family would with their daughter. They are cautious because of the time, but they know me.”
Of the three statuesque, sporty Abbott daughters who stood beside their father during two hard-fought election campaigns, Frances has attracted the most attention. In 2014, she was dragged into the political muck due to questions about her scholarship to a prestigious design school. Lately she has made headlines with her candid Instagram account, where she has expressed her support of same-sex marriage (her father campaigned for the opposing view), shared her foray into fitness modelling and announced her engagement to Loch.
Yet, for all the interest in her social media accounts, we know little about the woman behind them. Now she is ready to talk.
In her first in-depth interview, Abbott tells Stellar about the joy of falling in love fast, bouncing back from controversy, and how she came to terms with her father’s political views.
At a riverside cafe in Melbourne, Abbott’s adopted home, the 26-year-old jumps to her feet and performs her competition routine. A 360-degree turn that is like a danced muscle flex, peppered with hand flourishes and hip tilts. Throughout it she chuckles, partly in self-mockery, partly in embarrassment, and partly in delight. “It’s so much fun,” she says. “I love it.”
There’s no giggling during the real thing, though. Fitness modelling is a serious business. Abbott spends months training and eating right for her 30 seconds in the spotlight on competition day, when judges assess her physique. A performer should be muscular but still feminine — a sixpack is OK, but the hard bulges of traditional bodybuilding are not.
Faces don’t matter — it’s not a beauty contest. But attitude does. “My first comp I think I went a bit [over the top] with the sultry look,” she says. “[The judges] are not looking for sexy, they are looking for fit.”
There are other things to consider, too. Designing the right bikini (they are tailor-made), finding flattering shoes (clear plastic elongates the leg), a good fake tan (this can decide a close contest) and, most importantly, the poses. For the latter, Abbott has a coach. “Posing is my favourite part,” she says. “Posing never stops. You can just keep practising and practising...”
Abbott is aware some think her hobby is, well, weird. “My family doesn’t really get it,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Why are you doing this? Why do you want to get onstage in these stripper heels and bikini?’” But she likes to test herself. “The goal was the experience,” she says. “I wanted to see what I could do, try to do it properly and do it in a way I can keep improving.”
The phrase “I wanted to see what I could do” comes up several times during Stellar’s almost two-hour conversation. She is excited by new experiences and pursues things that make her happy. Having grown up with a politician father whose brand of conservatism has made him one of the most polarising figures in the country, Abbott could be forgiven for being cynical. But she is not. Quite the opposite, actually.
“The first time I clapped eyes on Francie when she was a baby, she looked up at me and gave me the most beaming smile, and she has always been like that,” says her aunt Christine Forster. “She has a real joie de vivre about her. She has always been incredibly positive, enthusiastic, a bit boisterous at times. But she lives life to the full.”
Perhaps this is because Abbott has chosen not to engage with the family business. The only topic off limits when she sits down with Stellar is politics. “Politics is such a big thing in my family [but], to be honest, I find talking about it quite draining sometimes,” Abbott says. “Sometimes I think having too much of an opinion can make you more narrow minded. I don’t want to make my mind up about something until I have explored every option.
“I am creating my own ideas and forging my own path. I will continue to disagree with [my parents] on many things, I am sure, and that’s how they have raised me to be.”
Same-sex marriage is a case in point. Abbott, who is not religious, is a vocal supporter but still wants to understand her father’s views. “Dad was going to be a priest,” she says. “It’s really against what he learnt about. Dad tells a story about when he was at primary school and he got the cane for holding hands with one of his male school friends. He would have been five. When that happens when you are a child, I get why you think this way.
“I’ve been raised to love everybody, to look for the best in everybody. Which is kind of why I don’t get [his view]. I will do the eye roll at Dad, like, ‘OK, whatever.’ I love him all the same.”
It was during her photo shoot with Stellar that the results of the postal survey were announced — upon which a relieved Abbott burst into tears. “I was looking over at Sam, and I guess that summed it all up for me,” she explains. “Meeting this person and falling in love with him and then the thought of [same-sex couples] not being able to marry made it so much more real.”
Abbott met Loch in mid-October. A mutual friend thought they’d get on, so Abbott sent him a message. “Next thing he is standing in my lobby with a coffee,” she says. “As soon as I met him, I knew it was something special.”
Loch proposed two weeks later, standing at the kitchen door with a bottle of champagne while Abbott was putting peas in the freezer. “He said, ‘Why aren’t you asking me why I’m holding champagne?’ So I said, ‘OK... why are you holding champagne?’ He said, ‘Well, I thought we could drink it after I asked you to marry me.’” They have since moved in together, a ring is on its way and they plan to tie the knot sometime next year (it won’t be in a church). They waited around two weeks before announcing their engagement.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Wow, this is really fast,’” Abbott says of the frenzied reaction. “But it feels so natural to me. His energy, it’s so grounding. When I am around him, I am like, ‘This is what it’s meant to be like.’ Life is short, and love is special, and sometimes you just need to follow your instincts.”
The Abbott daughters travelled with their father at various times during the 2010 and 2013 election campaigns to show he was not, as he was famously characterised during Julia Gillard’s prime ministership, a misogynist. “That never made sense to me,” Abbott says of the label that was levelled at her father. “I look at who I am and there is no way I could be raised by someone who hated my gender.”
But only one of them ever became the story, and that was Frances. The ordeal was, she says, both the worst and best thing she’s ever experienced.
She was always the creative sister, so when she graduated from Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney, she was accepted into the Whitehouse Institute of Design, which was chaired by a friend of her father’s and a Liberal Party donor. In May 2014, a student illegally accessed the school’s records and leaked to the media that Abbott was on a $60,000 scholarship. The story ran for months, with everyone dissecting her work and debating whether her scholarship was the result of ability or nepotism.
“I am so glad that happened, because at the time I was like, this is probably the worst thing that could happen,” she says. “Really, it’s not. I have my health, I have my family. But having your work — which is so personal — in the media or on all these websites, and people tearing it to shreds, that was pretty tough. But that just made me so much more resilient, and stronger and more sure of myself. It taught me a lot. If it wasn’t for that happening, I don’t think I’d be where I am right now.”
The controversy was one of the things that prompted Abbott to move to Melbourne at the end of that year. At first she worked as a product-development assistant in boys’ fashion at Myer. She loved examining children’s clothing, but she was restless.
Abbott joined a gym as part of a summer beach-body pact with a colleague, and everything changed. She was exhilarated by exercise, so she followed her heart. She broke up with her long-term boyfriend, quit Myer, and dedicated herself to a fitness career, becoming a yoga teacher, pilates instructor and personal trainer. She embraced fitness modelling, and will compete again next March. “I think there’s something really strong about choosing to look a certain way,” she says.
In Melbourne, Abbott feels she has found her spiritual home. “I found my people,” she says. “I found myself. I feel like my 23 years in Sydney were beautiful, but this is where life has happened.”
In some ways, having a politician dad may have made things easier for Abbott. In other ways, it has made them harder. It has certainly made life more complicated. But when asked whether she ever wished her father had a boring job, she pauses before responding. “I really admire my father. Even though we don’t see eye-to-eye, he’s the strongest person. He stands up for what he believes in. He is determined. He was not a quitter — at all. Those qualities I really admire.”