Inside Blanche d’Alpuget’s new CBD life
Since selling the harbourside home she shared with Bob Hawke, Blanche d’Alpuget reveals why she’ll never go back.
Since selling her deep-waterfront mansion in suburban Northbridge in 2019 and moving to a city apartment, Blanche d’Alpuget, best-selling author and widow of Australia’s longest serving Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, had an epiphany.
“I would never go back to a house,” she says.
D’Alpuget has adopted her new city lifestyle living in a high-rise apartment tower fronting Sydney’s Hyde Park with vigour.
“The day view is beautiful, while the night view is romantic and exciting,” she tells The Weekend Australian.
“The War Memorial and St Mary’s Cathedral are both bathed in light and Hyde Park has lights dotted throughout it. There is a building at the end of the park with a wonderful stairway to heaven that is lit in a different colour each night. Then there are the city lights, and car headlights, which give vibrancy. Guests often take pictures of the night scene from this apartment. You also see lots of the harbour fireworks,” she adds.
On a more practical note, d’Alpuget says city living is so convenient: “You can just walk everywhere, there’s the medical centre in College St, you can walk through Hyde Park to the Domain to the Botanic Gardens to the Harbour to David Jones, the shops are everywhere it’s a great location,” she says, adding that city life is so easy that when her car gets older she doubts she will replace it.
“I have never lived in a CBD before but my stepmother highly recommended it.”
d’Alpuget, who is putting the finishing touches to a murder mystery which she reckons will be completed within six weeks, loves the CBD so much she has just purchased a second apartment next door.
“It was one of those mad things,” she says. “It was accidental love at first sight. I went into the building and I went up to it and I thought oh I am in love (with this apartment). It is in the building right next door. I have all the same facilities, in terms of shops and walking and restaurants, but it is nine stories higher.
“Because it’s higher naturally the view is greater, the layout is excellent it was just one of things, and I think there’s something else – I bought (the original one) for Bob and me and the fact that I bought it for Bob and he died before it was finished and he didn’t move in … this new place will be a completely new beginning for me, in a way it will be the end of grieving.”
Indeed d’Alpuget plans to move into the level 23 apartment which she purchased for $4.6m come November.
As such she has put her existing 14th floor two-bedroom and two bathroom flat replete with a loggia at 130 Elizabeth St, Hyde Park, on the market with price expectations of $4.3m to $4.5m.
“I have made the existing apartment as cheerful and happy as I possibly could,’’ she says.
Real estate agent Peter Chittenden, executive director of Woodhill Estate Agents, is marketing d’Alpuget’s 14th floor apartment, saying that it is the largest two-bedroom unit fronting Sydney’s Hyde Park available.
Indeed before moving in, d’Alpuget knocked down a couple of walls taking it from a three bedder to a larger two bedder with an expansive study tucked off the front door entry. Importantly – and rarely – for the area, d’Alpuget’s apartment sports two carparking spots, a highly valuable commodity in the centre of the Sydney CBD, Chittenden says.
Apart from the 24-hour concierge and large designer marble kitchen, d’Alpuget has decked out her Bates Smart-designed airy corner apartment with her own personal touches.
She has brought a large granite sculptural piece which she and Hawke imported from Zimbabwe, while the master bedroom overlooking Hyde Park is lined with wallpaper imported from France.
She has also bought several Harry Bilson oil paintings across from Northbridge, given her love for the Reykjavik-born artist’s works.
“Downsizing is difficult no doubt, but I have been very lucky I have been able to keep all the sculptures from Northbridge,” she says.
Chittenden says in real estate terms Hyde Park is a valuable locale as there will be no more apartment buildings around the southern end.
“They are not making any more apartments around Hyde Park, and nearby Oxford St will soon undergo a re-boot,” he says.
“It’s a rarity that you get a Hyde Park frontage. For the good stuff you have to pay more than you want to get a good position. No one has an apartment like this with a two car spaces.”
Chittenden, who sold the Northbridge house for d’Alpuget and Bob Hawke for $14.5m back in 2019 to Peter Rawson of Rawson Homes, admits real estate inquiry is right down across the board.
But he is not worried about rising interest rates, saying buyers in the $4m plus bracket are not concerned by higher rates.
Ray White Residential Sydney CBD agent Michael Lowdon is the co-agent on the marketing of d’Alpuget’s apartment.
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