‘It was D’Alpuget he now loved’: Book reveals new details about Bob and Blanche
A new book on the late Bob Hawke reveals the key moment the former PM realised he needed his lover.
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Blanche d’Alpuget would later say that the death of Bob Hawke’s long-time lover Jean Sinclair had caused her to have visions in which Sinclair urged her to get closer to Hawke.
He’d rekindled his relationship with d’Alpuget while he was still prime minister, but there was no talk of marriage during their surreptitious trysts.
It wasn’t something he considered until he was suddenly confronted with the possibility of losing her altogether.
That happened in June 1993, when she was a passenger on a small seaplane that crashed on a flight to the Great Barrier Reef, where she was collecting material for an article for The New York Times. She and her fellow passengers were lucky to escape with their lives, swimming to safety through a window on the sinking aircraft.
Hawke was phoned by a mutual confidant and given the news, which was the catalyst for his decision that, finally, he would marry his long-time lover.
He’d told d’Alpuget back in 1979 that he couldn’t walk away from Hazel, the mother of his children, who’d borne so much else besides. Even though he’d then made a marriage proposal to d’Alpuget soon after, he’d pulled out of it for the sake of his political career.
When questioned in 1989 about his tumultuous relationship with the popular Hazel, he was adamant that she understood that his behaviour “was part of a pretty volatile, exuberant character and she knew my love for her had never changed. I have always loved Hazel – always”.
But he no longer did so. He realised that it was d’Alpuget he now loved.
His arguments with Hazel had again become heated and she was less inclined to accept his wandering ways. She was also dismayed when he went back on the grog.
It happened in a Double Bay restaurant in 1993, when friends and family were celebrating Hazel’s birthday. Depressed by the fractious state of his marriage and the lack of a clear career before him, Hawke was prevailed upon to celebrate Hazel’s birthday with a glass of Champagne.
And another, and another, only to become drunk for the first time in 13 years.
He was still inebriated when he met secretly with d’Alpuget, who was appalled by his backsliding. She didn’t want their relationship to be marked by bouts of drunkenness and the unbridled behaviour that came with it. He promised that he could keep it under control. Which he mostly would.
Hazel had been a supportive companion during his years at the ACTU and in parliament, but she had little interest in accompanying him on his business jaunts, not least because of her health problems. As Hawke explained to an interviewer, she “didn’t really have an interest in the business consultancy type of thing”, which “involved an enormous amount of travel overseas and she didn’t come”.
Although he was fit and healthy, Hawke couldn’t be sure how much more life he had to live, and realised that he would only be truly happy with d’Alpuget. She could accompany him on long-haul flights and buoy his moods.
Ironically, it was Hawke who had a fit of jealousy in late 1994, when d’Alpuget was flying into Hong Kong to meet him after completing a work assignment in Pakistan.
When her plane failed to arrive, she explained that it had been cancelled. Hawke refused to believe her, suggesting that she’d been engaged in a dalliance.
He was so distraught that he broke off their relationship. It was only after checking with the Pakistani ambassador in Canberra, who rang the control tower in Peshawar, that he found her flight had indeed been cancelled.
Their relationship was back on.
This was confirmed when the break-up of his relationship with Hazel was announced on November 29, 1994, and his relationship with d’Alpuget was plain for all to see when the couple were photographed holidaying on Berrara Beach, south of Sydney, in January 1995.
That was good for another highly paid media exclusive, this time on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes and in the pages of Woman’s Day.
Being filmed in bath robes and bathers brought the ageing couple few admirers and enraged Hawke, who felt he’d been betrayed by the magazine and announced that the $200,000 fee for the story would be donated to charity.
Public sympathy was very much with Hazel, who was voted as one of 100 “national living treasures”. (Although the list was updated over the years, Hawke never made it.)
The love between the betrothed couple was certainly real, but its graphic depiction couldn’t help but remind audiences of the long-suffering Hazel, who had given so much, only to be spurned.
The wedding of Hawke and d’Alpuget took place on July 23, 1995, in the familiar surrounds of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Double Bay, in front of 150 guests, including the ever-present Peter Abeles and Kim Beazley, who’d become Paul Keating’s deputy prime minister, as well as other friends from politics and the racetrack.
A gaggle of journalists and photographers snapped the happy couple. It was no ordinary wedding. With d’Alpuget in a cream wedding dress and Hawke resplendent in a white jacket and black bow tie, the ceremony was performed by a former Protestant minister, Dutch-born Mario Schoenmaker, who claimed to have clairvoyant gifts and became the mystical leader of the Independent Church of Australia.
Turning his back on traditional church structures, he had written A Short Occult History of the World and The New Clairvoyance: Deeper Perspectives on the Aura and Reincarnation. It’s not clear how much the besotted Hawke, who had long described himself as agnostic, believed any of this, but d’Alpuget was training to be a priest of the church.
The ceremony certainly marked a radical departure from Hawke’s marriage to Hazel, which had been conducted by his father in a Congregational church.
After the service, the couple and their guests were taken to the reception in a vintage double-decker bus, presumably directing a disparaging glance at protesters who were loudly objecting to Hawke’s business activities in Burma.
Meanwhile, the divorce with Hazel had been finalised after much negotiation. Hazel had developed a limited income stream of her own, from the sales of her book and other books that would follow, and from a three-year publicity deal with an Australian pharmaceutical company for their pain relief products.
With her partnership with Hawke over, it was he who left their Northbridge home in late 1994 until the division of their assets was finalised. Hazel had helped him to pack and “put him in a warm soothing spa”.
They had lunch together with (daughter) Sue and her husband, before Hazel drove Hawke to a temporary abode. It was agreed that he would buy her out of the home and she would go to a place of her own, which she eventually did late the next year, moving into a modest three-bedroom home in Middle Cove.
According to one of Hazel’s closest friends, Vera Wasowski, the “marriage to Bob was a torment, but she loved him – even on the day of his marriage to Blanche”. But she didn’t go to his wedding. Instead, her children arranged a “Liberation Party” at the Northbridge home for the same day.
They had gone to the wedding, but Sue and (daughter) Ros had been dressed in black to mark their displeasure. Others, wrote Wasowski, left the wedding “after the ‘vows’ (an ironical word to use when you’re talking of Bob) to come to Hazel’s party”.
Life would be dramatically different for both of them. While Hazel threw herself into working on behalf of charitable organisations, much like the ones she’d formerly represented, Hawke toured the world with d’Alpuget for six months every year, doing deals. Until she tired of the frequent travel.
One deal closer to home was to have the soon-to-be married couple photographed for colourful spreads in the Packer-owned Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day and a 60 Minutes program on Channel Nine for which they were reportedly paid a combined $500,000.
The media exposure didn’t help Hawke’s reputation, since it reminded people again of Hazel, the woman he’d spurned, whom they held in high regard.
No matter how often Hawke and d’Alpuget professed their love for each other, which was clearly evident, the public support for their relationship would always be less than fulsome. Which was frustrating for Hawke, who also had to deal with the reactions of his children and with accommodating himself to a new wife who had ideas of her own independence, insisting after a time on having her own bedroom and briefly walking out after one of his drunken episodes.
As it had been with Hazel, and despite his promise to keep his drinking under control, his drunkenness remained a source of tension.
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Originally published as ‘It was D’Alpuget he now loved’: Book reveals new details about Bob and Blanche
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