Sue Pieters-Hawke opens up on father’s colourful life in new book

The colourful life of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke has been remembered in a new book, with friends, family and the who’s who of Australia reflecting on their memories with the loveable character.

Remembering Bob cover image. A book by Sue Pieters-Hawke

Sports stars, politicians, friends and family share their memories of former PM Bob Hawke in a new book. Daughter Sue Pieters-Hawke looks back with fondness on her dad’s life

GROWING UP WITH BOB

People used to ask me what it was like growing up with a dad who was Prime Minister of Australia. And I would say that I didn’t — I grew up with a dad who was a trade union official.

I will admit to having some identity issues growing up. My parents, who were raised in Perth, didn’t know Melbourne but wanted to live near the beach when we first moved there from Canberra in 1958. With an advance from the ACTU they kept looking further along the coast south of the city until they found and bought a little weatherboard they could almost afford.

“Morning with family in bed. It was a family tradition to pile on Mum and Dad’s bed on the weekend morning to read the papers and muck about. The tradition continued in The Lodge. This is mid-1983 and my daughter Sophie is with her Nan and Pop.” - Sue Pieters-Hawke

A few years later we moved to a home they couldn’t really afford on the other side of the tracks in the same suburb. Dad was proud that the local bank manager had said that he was ‘a bloke on whose future I reckon it’s worth taking a gamble’ and knew it would be a great place for us kids. It was hard yards for Mum, but we loved the freedom to roam both inside and outside the house. The downside, apart from financial pressure, was that the social

environment was not easily welcoming for trade unionists and fellow travellers. But Mum, of course, gradually made a good home and friends everywhere, and we formed enough local friendships for it to work.

One of the great things about living life around Dad was that his curious and gregarious nature, together with my mother’s flexible, welcoming, inclusive bent, meant that our life was full of interesting people. I grew up amidst a library of ideas and people, a cauldron of folk who were not all pointed in the same direction — although there was a common kindness and humanity and effort and humour that threaded through this diversity.

“As a family we loved escaping to the bush on holidays, much as Mum and Dad had done in their earlier years. During this long weekend we stayed in the old cabins at Pebbly Beach on the NSW South Coast and played disputatious board games, dozed, read and chatted. Dad, as usual, had work to hand.” - Sue Pieters-Hawke

That might mean waking up to find a stranger asleep on the floor, a cricket team barbecue at half an hour’s notice, or a hoary old unionist making our first dilapidated house fit for habitation in a way that Dad’s

education had never taught him to master. The barbecues in the backyards from earliest times, the optioned tennis court we could never afford until a libel case took care of that, and later a swimming pool, ditto, were all convivial playgrounds for people of all ages. Our New Year’s Eve parties throughout the 1970s were awesome.

MEMORIES

As is usually inevitable when families have broken a bit, a shadow of the pain can linger and subtly colour the nature of relationships — and whilst I certainly had a good, mellow, loving relationship with Dad in his last years there was perhaps still a touch of shadow in us both.

What I had fully restored to me and loved in putting this together was the magnificence of who he was.

The cover of Remembering Bob

Hawke with some local wildlife.`

Immersion in Dad’s life over the last six months has reiterated that I was deeply loved by a dad who sort of became problematic at times. In sifting my own memories, and hearing observations from others, I see how much he did, how much he loved and played, hoped and wanted for us. I am reminded that the only compensation in his own mind for his deficit in fathering was his absolute belief that Hazel was an excellent mother doing a great job. Which she was.

One lesson I learned when Dad became Prime Minister was how easy it could be to forgive someone for a sense of accumulated hurts or slights when you see that person is giving themselves two hundred per cent to something bigger than themselves. Not that that wasn’t the case earlier — but I was younger then.

REGRETS

Dad had always said, ‘Arrhhh, I don’t do regrets’, but at the private reception after Mum’s memorial he asked me shyly if he could say a few words. He said some good things about Mum, then paused and became very sombre.

‘Hazel and I had a great life together for many years,’ he said, ‘but I unreservedly apologise for all the pain I caused her at times.’ You could have heard a pin drop in the room. This

most sincere and authentic acknowledgment and apology was healing both for many of us and for Dad himself.

So when I asked him about regrets in his public life, he did come forth and without hesitation he named his failure to stand stronger on the issue of a treaty with indigenous Australians. Expressing great disappointment most bitterly at himself, he said, ‘I was swayed by false arguments.’

“Playing with kids on lawn between engagements at Kirribilli House.” - Sue Pieters-Hawke

I knew he had never been one to feel or indulge personal fear much at all, but when it came to discussing it, he said: ‘Well, I’ve had a great life, and I’m not scared of dying but I am fearful for the future of the planet. Some are trying but too many are being blind and selfish and risking our children’s and grandchildren’s future. Both in Australia and globally it’s the issue that requires the most concerted response and I am fearful for future generations if it doesn’t happen effectively.’

ABOUT THE HUSBAND THING

I was over at his and Blanche’s on what happened to be Valentine’s Day. A glorious bouquet of crimson roses was on the table, which Dad was quick to point out was entirely due to him (always the irrepressible child within …). ‘I thought of it and went and got them all by myself!’ he proudly exclaimed, failing to realise as usual that this might be a slight barb to some of us, given his fairly profound lack of any romantic gestures towards Mum — at least any that we saw. Despite myself, I smiled,

and complimented him on being a good husband second time around. He grinned and looked at me, faltered over how to take the backhander, then with his usual optimistic self-confidence decided that he would take the compliment.

AGEING

I first thought of Dad as getting old when I looked across at him at 80 and saw a shift.

The next eight-odd years saw a slow progression of ageing to a point where Dad was clearly becoming frailer. This was complicated by a couple of heart-related episodes and then, most limitingly, by a peripheral neuropathy of hisfeet that rendered movement extremely slow and painful.

It wasn’t until further into his 80s that his feet were a near constant pain and he started to be really frustrated by his ageing. He needed more sleep. I asked him about his legs and feet one day and he dismissed the pain with a grimace but said, ‘I f---ing hate it. It makes people think I’m old and dithery and I’m not.’ I don’t think the downsides of ageing bring anyone much pleasure, but you can imagine that someone with the vigour, self-belief and drive

that Dad had, found all this especially frustrating. Slowing down had never been part of his nature.

Sue Pieters-Hawke at the State Memorial Service for the former Prime Minister Bob Hawke at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Richard Dobson

But two or three years before his death he first started saying occasionally, ‘I think I’m ready to die’, and it was neither particularly dramatic nor mysterious.

I think in that unconscious way that you often hear of, it’s almost as if he hung on despite himself for key events: my daughter’s wedding, my stepbrother’s wedding,

a return to decent government.

BLANCHE

At times in his last year he needed people to be there overnight for him but Blanche also needed sleep, so various male family members and friends stayed over in case assistance

was needed during the night. As often happens through caring process, it’s a constant adjustment. I was touched seeing Blanche make the adjustment from being not at all the

carer-type to confronting the reality that her best friend and husband had become frail and was approaching his death. I was moved to see her transformation into the most tender carer imaginable.

SAYING GOODBYE

Dad’s death happened fairly quickly after a sudden turn for the worse — in less than 24 hours he was gone.

He had made it to (stepson) Lou and Bree’s wedding the weekend before — he was thrilled to do so, but it was tough for him, and it was the last thing he attended. I then received a gentle

phone call from Blanche on the afternoon of Thursday, May 16, and was not surprised but still deeply shocked. From Blanche’s delivery of the news and from conversations I’ve

had with her and others since, I feel absolutely confident that Dad did indeed die without fear or fuss and went peacefully surrounded by love. This was an enormous comfort.

I was very sad that I wasn’t there to sit with him for a while near the end, especially as I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks, but I know that when it did happen it progressed

so quickly that having someone supporting him through it was all that mattered.

“Taken at the Davos World Economic Forum, it captures the humour, warmth and camaraderie that existed much of the time between Mum and Dad.” - Sue Pieters-Hawke

During the last year or so I’m sure he occasionally felt it was a bit of a useless tail-end he was enduring. In the end his timing was perfect. He had made it to Louis’ wedding and died a few days later before the shock election loss that would have broken his heart.

On election night, two days after his death, we still gathered as planned for the counting

and results, but were subdued, and commented more than once that we were glad he wasn’t there.

The private funeral was organised by Blanche and led by a wonderful celebrant who is a close friend of hers. It was beautiful, but an important luxury to have the safe and private space with only close family and friends and no intrusion by media or protocol or crowds we couldn’t have coped with at the time. I had surprised myself by wanting to see Dad before he was cremated. Not having been with him for a couple of weeks, there was part of me that needed to do that in order to process his death, so a viewing was kindly arranged. And when at the conclusion of the private service he was placed in the hearse and slowly driven away

from us, it’s as if I saw through the coffin to him, his feet in shiny black shoes slowly receding from us forever. It was the most vividly awful moment.

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To have that and then the memorial about three weeks later did truly prove to be a satisfying way to deal with many things, including both the privacy of our grief and the widely shared nature and the widespread desire, including our own, to mark his passing and celebrate his life. It somehow all worked perfectly.

THIS IS AN EDITED EXTRACT FROM REMEMBERING BOB, EDITED BY SUE PIETERS-HAWKE (ALLEN & UNWIN, RRP $29.99), OUT ON TUESDAY