Partner’s vanishing act had Deborah Hutton’s friends worried
The former model’s relationship with businessman Rob Dulhunty first raised alarm bells with friends two years ago.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Deborah Hutton’s relationship with investor and former company director Rob Dulhunty, who returns to a Sydney court this week after being accused of stalking and intimidating his partner of five years, first raised alarm bells with the former model’s friends and associates two years ago — when Dulhunty disappeared.
For about six months, the man she described to The Sunday Telegraph’s Stellar magazine earlier this year as “the yin to my yang” was gone — and friends of the notoriously private and romantically prickly Hutton knew not to push the celebrity too hard for a reason why.
Some speculated he may have moved offshore for business — he was known to have his fingers in many pies, others assumed he was travelling, while some thought he may have been downed by illness but as the weeks turned into months Hutton’s friends stopped asking after “Rob” though some of his personal effects were still plainly on show in Hutton’s Sydney residence though Rob himself was not.
Over the past 30 years Hutton’s friends have learnt not to ask too many questions about her love life.
“She’s been known to explode when asked a question she considers too private, if she thinks a line has been crossed, so after a while you don’t ask,” one long-time companion said last week after being abruptly shut down by Hutton over dinner after asking about the status of one of Hutton’s former relationships.
Hutton allows only a few to slip under her guard concerning her love life and the question being asked last week was how she allowed Dulhunty, the former director of a chain of failed health food shops, to do so.
“He was devoted, handsome, charming and rich,” said one friend, who asked not to be named when approached for comment.
At 56, Hutton, who made her name as a model before being picked up by the Nine Network as a television presenter and becoming the fashion editor of the affiliated The Australian Women’s Weekly, has always been a head turner.
If there was one thing she learned during her decade-long relationship with her image-making boyfriend and manager Harry M Miller, it was that it can be prudent for a high-profile woman like herself to keep her cards close to her chest concerning her love life. She has guarded it fiercely for decades. Only one relationship, the one with Miller, did she ever flaunt, which in hindsight now seems out of character though professionally advantageous to both.
After years together, she was just starting to open up about Dulhunty — in February she told Stellar magazine they were in the fifth year of their relationship. “He is a really lovely man. He is my balance, he is very grounded,” she said.
It was a rare public statement which today reveals how quickly relations between the two soured in the months that followed.
Based on her statement, the pair started seeing one another in 2013 and a company search reveals that in December 2013 Dulhunty registered a business, Hutton Media Pty Ltd, to a New South Head Rd, Watsons Bay address. For 16 years that address had been the home Dulhunty shared with wife Lucija, the mother of his two young children before the marriage broke down and Dulhunty met Hutton.
In April of 2013, Facebook images showed Dulhunty in intimate poses with the beautiful blonde-haired blue-eyed Lucija and their children before the marriage broke down and Dulhunty met Hutton.
It would be another three years before Dulhunty and Croatian-Australian Lucija sold their house in May 2016 for $4,800,000.
By late 2015 he had relocated to the beach suburb of Tamarama and was apparently cohabitating with Hutton at her house. When she bought her home in Bronte in October that same year he was on the scene and when she moved out of the new home, last year, to begin renovations, the couple rented a property next door.
Dulhunty, a horse racing enthusiast and race syndicate member, has tried his hand at many business ventures over two decades. He has registered some 20 different companies since 1998.
A search reveals the 49-year-old’s business interests are wide-ranging — from Soccer Card International, to Healthy Life Share Plan, Bod International, Webcast Television Pty Ltd and Coffee Xchange — all deregistered.
Fragrance distribution company Jasham International and Healthzone Solutions are notable on the list for having gone into administration and when Dulhunty vanished in early 2016 some assumed he had retreated to lick his wounds following their collapse. By the end of that year, he was back in Hutton’s life and the relationship was by all accounts once again going strong, Dulhunty ever eager to offer business advice to boost Hutton’s wellbeing business, Balance.
Hutton has long been drawn to men with some swagger.
Harry M, who made his name as an entrepreneur, producer and talent manager — but also spent a year in jail after being convicted of misappropriating funds for a ticketing company — was big on swagger and an overt display of masculinity.
On August 2, Hutton paid tribute to Miller at a public memorial at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre following his death, a month earlier, from symptoms associated with vascular dementia. Dulhunty was not at her side as she arrived for the memorial.
The couple, say sources, were already in the throes of separating.
Just six days later, on August 8, a bag containing what police claim was a “rape kit” would be found outside her vandalised Bronte house.