Bob Hawke — The man who became Prime Minister, and his women
Australians adored Bob Hawke’s first wife Hazel, but they were not to be. He left her to marry his longtime lover Blanche d’Alpuget. It was a move that drew outrage from the nation.
BOB — THE MAN AND HIS WOMEN
It was 1991. Bob Hawke was resigning from parliament after his ouster by Paul Keating, and Hazel Hawke was closing her memoir.
She envisaged she and her husband of 38-years would contentedly go on with their married life, surrounded by their children and grandchildren.
“We two sexagenarians have gathered just a touch of moss, but not nearly enough to stop us rolling busily, contentedly, on — with each other, our children and theirs — in our little bit of magic,” Hazel wrote at the conclusion of her memoir.
But it wasn’t to be that way. Bob Hawke would shortly leave the wife Australians had adored to marry his longtime lover, the journalist and writer Blanche d’Alpuget.
It was a move that drew outrage from the nation, ending an affair that as an open secret had tormented his wife for decades.
Bob and Hazel met while at university in Perth. It later became part of the public record that Hazel, pregnant, agonised before having an abortion so that Hawke could take up a Rhodes scholarship. At the time the scholarships were only open to unmarried people.
They married in 1956 and went on to have four children — Sue, Stephen, Rosslyn and a son, Robert Jr, who died a few days after birth.
Hazel stood by her husband as his political career took off, first leading the Australian Council of Trade Unions in the 1970s, his entry to parliament and then as the country’s Prime Minister from 1983 to 1991.
The Australian public adored Hazel. At the same time, Hawke and those closest to him knew there was another love, whom he had first met in April of 1970.
He was at a party in Jakarta. Hawke would later tell the story of sitting on a veranda when “this vision in white walked around the corner. She wore a white dress and was beautifully tanned”.
That vision Blanch d’Alpuget. At the time she was living in Indonesia with her then husband, a diplomat, Tony Pratt.
In 2018, after the release of her new book, On Lust and Longing, Ms d’Alpuget told how she and Hawke met.
“My husband and I had just arrived back there (Jakarta) … we met at a party of a mutual friend from the embassy and we just clicked,” she told Mamamia.
She said there were no sexual sparks on her part at the time: “Not on my side. I hadn’t been long married and I was very keen on my husband. I think on his side he was definitely interested but men are a bit like that aren’t they? Especially that one.”
They sat on a swinging chair together and chatted. She didn’t have a clue who he was.
“I didn’t know who the hell he was. I thought his name was Robin. I had never heard of him because I was living out of Australia for so long.
“We sat on one of those swinging chairs and I knew Jakarta very well and he was very interesting. He asked lots and lots of questions and we talked about all kinds of things.
“The thing that I found most attractive about him was that he didn’t want to go and see the kampongs where the poor lived in absolute dire poverty with open drains,’ Ms d’Alpuget remembered, saying others always wanted to go and the see the poverty.
The couple met again the following year, again in Jakarta, but it wasn’t until 1976, when Ms d’Alpuget was researching a book, that she says their affair began. At the time her own marriage was on the rocks.
“With mutual, wordless consent it was agreed we would become lovers as soon as possible — which happened to be in a different city, the following night,” she wrote in her memoir.
“He was charming, funny and straightforward … what he loved was sex. He was a busy man; I was a playmate. That suited me — I wanted a playmate too.”
After that the couple met for regular trysts but there were many other women in Hawke’s life.
“I knew he had lots and lots of other women,” she said. It was part-intuition and part gossip, she said.
“He really was a rock star. Women absolutely threw themselves at him … they really threw themselves at him,” she said.
Affairs then, Ms d’Alpuget would later say, were “par for the course”. It was a different era, one in which social media did not exist.
Although in 1978, the then ACTU President asked his blonde lover to marry him, it wasn’t a serious offer. With his eye on a Federal seat, the ambitious politician Hawke, knew that leaving his wife and the mother of his children was not a publicly palatable thing to do.
“Divorce could cost Labor three per cent,” Ms d’Alpuget wrote about what Hawke had said would be the consequence.
“As it turned out, he made the right decision: for himself, for me, for his family, for mine, for his party — and, as became obvious, for the nation.”
They had an affair while Hawke stayed with his wife Hazel. Ms d’Alpuget later worked on a biography of Hawke. Their relationship was an open secret but neither she nor Hazel could leave the charismatic man whom both loved and who lead the nation.
Ms d’Alpuget said it wasn’t until 1993, when she was involved in a seaplane crash in far north Queensland, that Hawke “realised he couldn’t live without me”.
When Hawke finally announced he was leaving Hazel, after 38-years of marriage, there was public outrage. The couple’s children were deeply hurt and the attention sparked a public rift.
Ms d’Alpuget told The Australian in an interview: “It took an enormous amount of courage on Bob’s part. It took much more courage on his part than on mine. Because I was a single woman, divorced. But he was married. The whole country expected him to behave in this way and was unaware of what his true feelings were and so were bound to be shocked, angered and amazed when they discovered them.”
Bob Hawke and Blanche d’Alpuget married in 1995 and their love for each other was evident each time they were photographed in public.
When Hawke’s first love Hazel, then 83, passed away in 2013, after developing dementia, Hawke paid tribute to her in a touching statement: “I remember Hazel with deep affection and gratitude. She was more than a wife and mother, being father as well during my frequent absences as I pursued an industrial then political career.”
He reportedly had visited Hazel before she died and apologised to her for the toll his affair had taken on the family.
When Hawke is laid to rest in the coming days, it will be in a gravesite chosen by the couple and where Ms d’Alpuget too will one day be buried, next to the love her life.
“The graves are side-by-side,” she has said. “We chose a spot where the public can come. It’ll be nice. It’s in a rose garden and there’s a seat there so if a member of the public wants to come and have a sit, they can.”
Hawke has always maintained that “love is not something you can control”.
“My love for Blanche has been the greatest thing in my life and I don’t apologise for it,” he told Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report.
And in February this year, Ms d’Alpuget broke down in tears, during an interview with Leigh Sales, when asked how she will cope without Hawke: “With difficulty, he’s my best friend.”
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