Annette Sharp: Have Francesca Packer Barham and Robert Bates split up?

Francesca Packer Barham stunned Sydney society types with her 15-years-older boyfriend Robert Bates last year, writes Annette Sharp, but the romance seems to be over.

Francesca Packer Barham at the 25th annual Gold Dinner, raising funds for the Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation, last year. Picture: Richard Dobson

The relationship of society heiress Francesca Packer Barham and her once-celebrated boyfriend Robert Bates is said to be over.

Sources last week informed this column that Barham, 28, and Bates, 43, founder of embattled wellness businesses Aquamamma and Aurum+, ended their relationship a month ago.

Barham’s romance with a man 15 years her senior stunned many in her social circle upon its discovery last year.

Now comes word the affair ended bitterly amid a storm of stinging allegations.

Close sources claim Barham fell head over heels with the rock star-styled Bates, even confiding to friends her desire to start a family with the divorced father who made his first public appearance at her side in November at her Barbie-themed 28th birthday party in Potts Point.

The party’s over for Robert Bates and Francesca Packer Barham. Picture: Matrix Media Group

That was eight months after Bates split with his partner of five years Emma Gibson, the one-time Hong Kong-based VistaJet aviation company manager with whom he courted prospective investors while living the high life in Byron Bay and Sydney.

The break-up talk follows the publication, on February 2, of a report in a national finance paper revealing Bates’ business investors continue to chase him to recoup large investments — one for $2.3m — in connection with Aurum+, a wellness supplement Bates pitched as a remedy for mental health disorders.

Robert Bates with ex-partner Emma Gibson. Picture: Facebook

Creditors associated with another of Bates’ wellness supplements, Aquamamma, have revealed they too are pursuing him for outstanding moneys, put at between $40,000 to $700,000.

Along with photographers, designers and social media spruikers who also allege to be out of pocket are former Aquamamma employees whose superannuation contributions went unpaid.

Bates has denied all allegations, last year telling media his company was working “to resolve operational issues with our banking partners”.

He added he had entered into a “super guarantee” concerning staff entitlements, and struck a payment plan agreement with the ATO.

Packer-Barham with grandmother Roslyn Packer (centre) and mum Gretel Packer in 2015. Picture: Getty Images

The latest reports of Bates’ growing financial predicament comes just two years after the Australian Financial Review, the publication now holding the blowtorch to Bates’ business record, trumpeted his arrival on its AFR Young Rich List.

It estimated, in 2020, that Bates’ fortune with then-partner Gibson was worth $145m.

Last week, the same title reported Bates had been now ousted from Aurum+ by his business partner Charles Akle, the British scientist still hoping to salvage his research work into the microorganism mycobacterium aurum aogashima and its purported links to stress relief.

Barham, meanwhile, could not be reached for comment last week on the state of her relationship with the divorced Bates.

She is understood to be currently overseas in London.

Sources suggest Barham was introduced to Bates by her one-time bestie, ex-PR maven Roxy Jacenko, who has known Bates since she was a teen.

In fact, so close were Jacenko and Bates at one time, the young Jacenko, who later married inside trader Oliver Curtis, took him as her date to her SCEGGS Darlinghurst high school formal in the ’90s.

Bates, who has previously worked in advertising and once wrote a weight loss book which featured a shot of the shredded author on the cover, is a SCEGGS Redlands old boy.

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