Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s widow Blanche D’Alpuget, once dubbed “the most hated woman in Australia” because of her affair, has died aged 82 from complications from influenza.
The award-winning author asked her family to share her latest message to Australia.
“Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another,” it read.
She is survived by her son, artist and sculptor Louis Pratt, daughter-in-law Brianna and granddaughter Sienna. She was also close to Hawke’s children, Sue Peters-Hawke, Rosslyn Dillon and Stephen Hawke, and their families.
“Blanche wrote and lived entirely on her own terms,” her family said.
“She was full of vitality, generosity and curiosity, with an extraordinary thirst for beauty, ideas, history, new places and lively conversation.
“She refused to be limited by convention or other people’s expectations of who she should be.
“We will miss her strength, her humor, her curiosity and her endless love.”
The widow of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and prolific Australian writer Blanche D’Alpuget has died aged 82.
Hawke left his first wife Hazel (pictured with Hawke) after years of a secret affair with D’Alpuget.
D’Alpuget died seven years after Hawke, Australia’s longest-serving Labor Prime Minister, whom she first met in Jakarta in 1970.
They then met again in 1976 and became lovers, despite Hawke being married to Hazel Hawke.
She also said she was under no illusion that she was his only lover, and once wrote that she realized Hawke was “having affairs with women all over the country.”
“It was mutually agreed upon that we would become lovers as soon as possible,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“He was charming, cheerful and straightforward: he liked me and liked to talk to me; he loved sex.”
The couple, nicknamed B1 and B2 as shorthand, reunited in the 1990s and began a long-term romance after Hawk invited her to write his biography.
When Hawke separated from his first wife Hazel after years of a secret affair, D’Alpuget faced harsh public backlash and was labeled “the most hated woman in Australia”.
“People called her a housewife,” her son previously recalled of the public after Hawk’s divorce from Hazel.
When Hawke left his first wife Hazel after years of a secret affair, D’Alpuget faced significant backlash and was labeled “the most hated woman in Australia”.
A light aircraft carrying d’Alpuget crashed into the sea off north Queensland in 1993, an incident that prompted Hawke to take their relationship more seriously.
“I was involved in a light plane crash in North Queensland. A friend who was our middleman called him and told him about it,” she said.
“Bob said he felt like he was dying and that was it.
“At that moment he decided. He suddenly took this relationship extremely seriously and made that clear to me. But that was the time. It was an angel, holy angels.”
Hawke divorced Hazel and the couple married eight months later in 1995 and were together until the former prime minister’s death in 2019.
D’Alpuget refused to hide from the public eye, despite criticism over her affair with Hawke, and was open about her sex life with Hawke.
D’Alpuget told the Herald she was in a state of “great judgment” and said it was “really very unfair”.
“But I still don’t blog or Facebook or Link-In or anything like that because I know I’ll be trolled to death,” she said.
“But I also have to say that I don’t really worry about what people think, or things in general.”
D’Alpuget grew up as an only child in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and first worked as a journalist and then traveled the world.
A rebellious teenager, she ran away at 17 with a married Polish immigrant and has previously detailed their whirlwind romance.
“In three days we made love 21 times, stopping only to swim and eat rye bread, chabai and cucumbers,” she said.
She returned to Australia at the age of 30 to begin working as a writer.
The author also spoke candidly about how she prepared for death in her last media interview earlier this year.
“I think if you’re of a certain age and you don’t start to recognize yourself, then you’re stupid,” she told News Corp.
“Just as we prepare ourselves for life by learning language, reading, writing and arithmetic, I think we should prepare ourselves for death.
“But I believe in an afterlife.” Our soul continues to live. I don’t know in what form, but this life in the body is not the end of your life. Perhaps we will be reborn. I don’t know, but it could be a huge, exciting adventure.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was one of the first to pay tribute, calling D’Alpuget one of a kind.
“As a writer, she was at home in both fiction and non-fiction, working in each area with a keen eye for every nuanced detail that revealed to readers the humanity of her subject matter,” he said.
“Blanche’s novels were vivid and original, and her biographies comprehensive and exhaustive—most famously those she wrote about Bob Hawke, who became her great love and eventually her husband.”
Derek Rielly, who wrote Hawke’s biography Wednesdays with Bob, shared a heartfelt tribute with the Daily Mail.
“Blanche believed that the pain of death was temporary, that it was a door of fire and it would burn you, but it was a temporary pain that would go away,” he said.
“She lived a beautiful, full and vibrant life and radiated love for all humanity until her last breath.
“As she told me: “The more people, the more love.” Love is what distinguishes humans from the rest of creation.”