AUSTRALIA MOURNS BLANCHE D’ALPUGET AT 82 — BUT BEHIND THE FAMILY’S HEARTBREAKING FAREWELL IS ONE FINAL MESSAGE THE AUTHOR DELIBERATELY SAVED FOR THE DAY SHE WOULD NO LONGER BE HERE
Blanche d’Alpuget, the Australian writer and widow of former prime minister Bob Hawke, has died at the age of 82.
Her family has confirmed her death in a statement on Wednesday morning.
Blanche D’Alpuget, former wife of Bob Hawke, has died at the age of 82. The Age
Bob Hawke and Blanche D’Alpuget during the press conference after their wedding at the Ritz-Carlton Double Bay in 1995. Andrew Meares
“Blanche wrote and lived entirely on her own terms,” her family said.
“She was full of vitality, generosity and curiosity, with an extraordinary appetite for beauty, ideas, history, new places and spirited conversation.
“She refused to be confined by convention or by other people’s expectations of who she should be.”
She requested her family share a simple, final message: “Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another”.
She was an accomplished author of biographies, novels and essays.
Her bestselling 1982 book Robert J. Hawke: A Biography won the New South Wales Premier’s Award.
Her novels Monkeys in the Dark, Turtle Beach, Winter in Jerusalem and White Eye won several literary prizes including the PEN Golden Jubilee Award, The Age Novel of the Year Award, the South Australian Premier’s Award and the inaugural Australasian Prize for Commonwealth Literature.
She was married to Hawke for 24 years, from 1995 until his death in 2019.
The pair married at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Sydney’s Double Bay.
There were 150 guests at the afternoon ceremony as well as more than 50 members of the media.
Blanche d’Alpuget and Bob Hawke on holidays on the NSW South Coast on New Year’s Eve in 1994. Orlando Chiodo/Illawarra Mercury
The pair originally met in 1970 when d’Alpuget was working as a journalist.
She was married to her first husband Tony Pratt and living in Jakarta.
Hawke and d’Alpuget reunited six years later when she interviewed him for a biography she was writing on Sir Richard Kirby.
From there, the pair began a love affair that lasted in secret for nearly two decades.
Hawke, who served as prime minister from 1983 to 1991, admitted to having a two-decade-long affair with d’Alpuget.
At the time, he was married to Hazel Hawke, and the pair had four kids.
Hawke was the first Prime Minister in Australian history to divorce, ending his marriage to Hazel four years after leaving office.
Bob Hawke and Blanche d’Alpuget pictured in Sydney in 2013. WireImage
Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and wife Blanche on the red carpet at the Australian Captains Dinner in Star City Casino, Sydney, Monday, May 17, 2010. AAP
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2019, d’Alpuget said they were instantly attracted to each other.
Though she did realise, over the course of their affair, that Hawke was simultaneously “having affairs with women all over the country”.
In 2020, D’Alpuget revealed she was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer.
She underwent weeks of chemotherapy, followed by four weeks of recovery.
Her cause of death has not been confirmed.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has led the tributes to the accomplished writer.
“With the passing of Blanche d’Alpuget overnight, Australia has lost a true one-off,” Albanese said.
“Blanche’s novels were compelling works of verve and originality, and her biographies comprehensive and definitive – most famously those she wrote of Bob Hawke, who became her great love and ultimately her husband.
“It is so fitting that Blanche’s final message to us all is this: ‘Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another.’
“Our hearts right now with her family and all who loved her.
“May Blanche d’Alpuget rest in peace.”
SOURCE: https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/blanche-d-alpuget-bob-hawke-widow-dies-aged-82-20260909-p60vrb.html
