Special Episode: Blanche D’Alpuget Has Died

0:05Speaker 1:And is that going? Not yet.

0:07Speaker 2:Oh, that's going,

0:08Speaker 1:that's going now. I just hate the way this rolls over.

0:12Speaker 2:So have you got it up?

0:13Speaker 1:Yes, it's, but it sometimes gets all like a caterpillar.

0:18Speaker 2:No, it looks beautiful. It's

0:19Speaker 1:not like a caterpillar.

0:20Speaker 2:I love your water

0:21Speaker 1:bottle. It's not bad, is it? It's

0:23Speaker 2:the only one

0:24Speaker 1:I've ever seen.

0:25Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, where did you find it? It's got a picture of Bob on it.

0:28Speaker 1:Uh, I found it at, it must have been at an ALP function or something, it's probably from, From the 1984 or 1987 election, and they would have put these out it's held up

0:41Speaker 2:quite well, yeah,

0:43Speaker 1:yes, yes.

0:45Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Mia Friedman, and this is No Filter, conversations with interesting people about life. My guest today is a woman who has spent 62 of her 74 years exploring lust, longing, and a lifelong quest for love. Blanche D'Alpuget is a journalist, the author of 11 books, and the wife of Bob Hawke, Australia's longest living and 23rd Prime Minister. When you hear Blanche's name, the first image that may come to mind is of Blanche and her husband Bob, her new husband at the time, wrapped in fluffy white bathrobes looking lovey-dovey in a women's magazine. Those photos were actually a stitch up, but we'll get to that later.

1:32Speaker 2:In person, Blanche is extraordinarily beautiful, down to earth, quick to laugh, searingly honest, and still madly in love with a man who has, along with her career and her son, been the big love of a big life. This interview was just sublime to do. Blanche is warm, funny, and most definitely a woman's woman. Here's Blanche D'Alpuget. Tell me about the first day you met Bob.

2:01Speaker 1:It was in Jakarta in it was April 1970, it was almost

2:05Speaker 2:50 years ago.

2:07Speaker 1:Yes. Ah, my husband and I just arrived back there, we'd lived there before and we were staying in the Hotel Indonesia. He was also staying in the Hotel Indonesia, but we didn't meet in the hotel, we met at a party at a mutual friend's from the embassy, and uh, We just clicked.

2:26Speaker 2:There were sparks.

2:29Speaker 1:Not sexual sparks, not on my part, not on my side, I, I hadn't been long married and I was very keen on my husband, uh, I think on his side he was definitely interested, but men are a bit like that, aren't they? They are, especially that one, And we just sat on one of those swinging chair things. I didn't know who the hell he was, I thought his name was Robin. I'd never heard of him because I've been 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 interested.

3:01Speaker 1:So he asked lots and lots of questions and we talked about all kinds of things.

3:05Speaker 2:That's always very attractive in a man, isn't it, when he asks questions.

3:08Speaker 1:Yes, and 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. Nearly all the people I took around Jakarta, and they were nearly all men, they always wanted to see the kampongs, how the, how the poor of the city lived. And and I think it was to give themselves a warm inner glow about oh we come from a superior country, and when he didn't ask for that.

3:39Speaker 1:I thought you were a really decent guy.

3:43Speaker 2:And what happened after that, how did you stay in contact, or you.

3:47Speaker 1:No, he came back the following year and uh we had a sort of all night party in our house with a great deal of alcohol consumed. It was the 70s, it, it was, uh, that's right, it was 1971. And the Vietnam War was raging and we were arguing like hell about that. Everyone was everybody was arguing about it, and he had his dau his daughter Sue with him, his eldest child. She, poor thing, had to put up with all of this stuff. And then I didn't see him again until 1976.

4:24Speaker 2:That's when you started writing a biography of

4:26Speaker 1:Sir Richard Kirby Kirby.

4:28Speaker 2:And did you reach out to say, hey, can I interview you for my book?

4:32Speaker 1:I did.

4:33Speaker 2:And what happened when you saw each other again? You hadn't seen each other for a while.

4:37Speaker 1:Uh, yes, and he actually did remember me, and, um, well, this time the clique was different.

4:46Speaker 2:Was your marriage in a different place?

4:48Speaker 1:My marriage was in a very different place. It was going down the drain and um, So, yes, we, there was a very strong attraction to each other, which we uh followed up, it was, as you say, the 70s.

5:04Speaker 2:You wrote um, 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. He was late and arrived wearing pancake makeup. I presume that was from television, not just, not just for lols. Um, did he enchant me with flowers, chocolates, sentiments? On the contrary, he was charming, funny, and straightforward. He liked me and enjoyed talking to me. What he loved was sex.

5:33Speaker 1:That's exactly right.

5:35Speaker 2:What are your other memories of that night? He was still married, you were married, but it was the 70s, so can you kind of talk about what the sort of climate or the moral seems like too big a word, but the decision to, I suppose, you know, have embark on an affair, was that a big decision?

5:55Speaker 1:Not really, again, we come back to, it was the 70s and I was a feminist, I was in the uh women's movement and very active. We didn't believe in monogamy, uh we believed in uh liberty, equality and sorority and supporting other women, and um affairs were par for the course, they were part of that life, but, One tried to be discreet and and not hurt anybody, that was also part of it.

6:27Speaker 2:And where did things go from there? Was it seen as this is just a one-nighter or the chemistry was, was clearly something more?

6:34Speaker 1:The chemistry was very strong, and it was clearly not a one-nighter.

6:39Speaker 2:Was that discussed? How you would navigate that?

6:42Speaker 1:No, never discussed, never discussed and uh. It just sort of flowed at its own pace, and I, so there was that night and then I didn't hear from him at all for, for 3 weeks until he turned up in town again and said, can you get out?

7:03Speaker 2:It's funny thinking of a time before electronic communication, where you couldn't stay in constant contact. I suppose you could have written letters to each other.

7:12Speaker 1:That would have been very foolish.

7:14Speaker 2:But Bob doesn't strike me as the letter writing sentimental type, is he? No, no. So that would have been one-way letters from you. Yes. And of course they would leave a trail of evidence. Exactly. So, um, to be discreet, I suppose, which, which sort of is, is so much about what, what your, the, the name of your book on lust and longing. That idea of longing, these periods when you can't be together. Yes. How did you navigate that and how did you, sort of reconcile it as it wasn't just sex, you wanted to be with him for more than that.

7:47Speaker 1:I honestly at the time didn't want to be with him for more than sex, I only wanted to be with him for sex. Surprise, surprise, I enjoyed it. I like it. Uh, I was, I'd started writing and I was mad keen on writing. So

8:05Speaker 2:we're in the lust phase, not the longing phase.

8:07Speaker 1:We're certainly in the lust phase, and, uh, and my, my longing was to become a writer. I'm sorry, I do have to cough.

8:15Speaker 2:Please do. Do you want some water out of your Bob Hawke

8:19Speaker 1:water bottle? I want some water out of my

8:21Speaker 2:I think it's, I think it's Bob wanting to be involved in this story.

8:23Speaker 1:I think he is, he's creeping in, gone, hard to get rid of him. Um Um, so I was, I was passionate about work and writing, and um, and I was also very passionate about my son. Um

8:41Speaker 2:how

8:42Speaker 1:old was

8:42Speaker 2:he?

8:43Speaker 1:Uh, Louis, he was born in uh 72. Sometimes I get it wrong, say 7. So he's 45 now. Yeah, he's 45 now. So he was by 76, he, he was just a little, a little darling, yeah.

8:59Speaker 2:And so you were really passionate about your writing career, and at this stage, had you split from your husband?

9:05Speaker 1:No.

9:07Speaker 2:So it was just, uh, when you're in town, Bob and you would have a good time.

9:12Speaker 1:Yes, and because I was so active in the women's movement, I did, I must admit, use that sometimes as a cover. I used to sometimes say, oh, I'm going out to the women's refuge where I used to work. But it was really something, the women's refuge in those days, though these were poor women who were being beaten by their husbands and there was nowhere for them to go, and they'd have little children. And so we, we women who, who uh were protected and so forth used to go there and patrol and used to have to threaten the husbands. I can remember one night picking up a can of baked beans and threatening to hit a man with,

9:57Speaker 2:you're tiny.

9:58Speaker 1:I'm tiny but I'm very fierce.

10:01Speaker 2:I believe that. I believe that. What did feminism look like in the 70s, what did it feel like?

10:07Speaker 1:It was, it was kind of madness, it was wonderful. It, for many women, it was sort of a new religion. Because of the, what we had called consciousness raising sessions in which women, they learned to question all the things they'd been brought up with, like what? That you had to be married, #1, that you gave up your career for your husband, 2, that looking after children was the most important thing you could do in keeping the house nice and keeping, keeping yourself nice, uh.

10:42Speaker 1:That fidelity was very important, don't forget the pill. It was an extraordinary period between the introduction of the pill and there were no sexually transmitted diseases. Oh, happy days. So there was a, there was genuine feeling of liberation and women were doing things they'd never dared think of doing before. The husband would come home and say, well, what's for dinner, and the reply was, oh. Would you like to make it?

11:12Speaker 2:Which was really transgressive,

11:14Speaker 1:a very, very

11:16Speaker 2:transgressive unimaginable just a few years earlier,

11:18Speaker 1:yes, and then women were going, getting jobs, that it was transgressive. I can remember having a great argument with a really conservative friend of mine who said to me, why would I want to work in a pickle factory? And I thought, I couldn't get it through her head, you don't have to work in a pickle factory. It's not, there are other kinds of jobs. There are other kinds of jobs, yeah.

11:44Speaker 2:You know, when you talk about that freedom and that idea of enjoying sex, it's hard for women of my generation to imagine a time when you would have been so worried about pregnancy because birth control was pretty slapdash and hit and miss, so to speak. That must have really infringed on women's ability to enjoy sex. I thought that, oh my God, I could get pregnant. Of course

12:07Speaker 1:it did, terribly and suddenly that was removed, so the lid was taken off the pressure cooker, wow.

12:15Speaker 2:Yeah, and that idea that women could also enjoy sex, that it wasn't just something that had to be endured or lie back and think of England

12:22Speaker 1:and yeah, could enjoy it and there were a lot of uh, A lot of the consciousness raising sessions were about sex, and uh how to enjoy it and what to do, etc. I think a lot of that's been forgotten, you know.

12:37Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very true in the, in the age of dick pics. There's not a lot in it for a woman that receives a dick pic, it's not a very sexy experience.

12:47Speaker 1:I'm glad to say I never have, yeah.

12:49Speaker 2:Oh, Blanche, there's still time. Um, yes,

12:52Speaker 1:yes, before I turn 80.

12:55Speaker 2:Exactly, put it, put it on your bucket list. When did things really shift between you and Bob, when, when did it turn from lust to love for you?

13:11Speaker 1:Uh, within a couple of years, every time he was in town, that is in Canberra, or I was in Melbourne, or in Sydney, uh doing research, um, we, we would, Hook up, and so within 22 years that it, it had turned into love, I knew he had lots and lots of other women, lots of, and uh some very longtime favorites, um,

13:42Speaker 2:How did you become aware of that, because you write, um, in your book, uh, you said you came to realize that he was having affairs all over the country and that his love life was a kind of freewheeling, decentralized harem with 4 or 5 favorites and a shoe sale queue of one night stands. Yes. I love it. How did you become aware of that or did he just never try to hide it?

14:03Speaker 1:Ah I'm not sure, I think it was, it was part intuition and. Part of it was gossip, uh women talking to me and gossiping. Uh,

14:17Speaker 2:what was his role at this point? Was it head of the ACTU?

14:20Speaker 1:He, he was then head of, yes, he was, he'd just become head of the ACTU when I met him in 1970, yes.

14:27Speaker 2:And so, were you jealous when you found out? Were you angry?

14:30Speaker 1:Initially I was insanely jealous, and then I just got over that. How

14:36Speaker 2:did you get over it? I mean, besides the fact that you were both each still married,

14:41Speaker 1:that helped a lot. Uh, and I did have other interests, as we might

14:47Speaker 2:also

14:48Speaker 1:had other lovers. I had other lovers. It was still the 70s. It was still the 70s, yes, um. Well, I, I just, God, I, I realized how stupid it was to be jealous of, of, particularly of a man like him, uh, um, nothing was going to stop that, and when, and the thing, it might be hard to understand now, but he really was a rock star, women absolutely threw themselves at him, and he was in public all the time and enormously extrovert. But they really threw themselves, uh, at him,

15:28Speaker 2:so. And it's an interesting phenomenon. I was just talking to, um, one of my friends who works here, and she was saying when she was quite young, when she was a kid, her mum took her to some public event to meet Bob, because she loved him so much, even as a little kid, because there was something about him. He wasn't the most conventionally good looking man, but he had a charisma that you can see how much he loves women.

15:54Speaker 1:Loves everybody,

15:55Speaker 2:yeah, loves women, children, animals, men,

15:57Speaker 1:men, yeah, the lot, he really loves people and life, and, and, and you're right, and children, he particularly loves,

16:06Speaker 2:yes,

16:06Speaker 1:and he particularly loves children, and he loves dogs. He once said to me, Nothing's better than to see a little boy with a happy dog.

16:17Speaker 2:Oh, that's so true. True. And so, you know, you decided that you weren't going to be jealous, which sounds very pragmatic, but I'll take your word for it. It was the 70s. And then, He ended the relationship, didn't he, because he said he was gonna leave his wife Hazel for you. Was there any discussion about leaving all the others, or it was just gonna be that he was gonna get a divorce and

16:40Speaker 1:he was going to get a divorce and we were going to be together, but I mean it was so ridi it was so ridiculous. Did you want that? I said I'd think about it for 2 months over the Christmas break, and I thought about it a lot, and what I realized was I really wanted to leave my own marriage, but I didn't want to go with him, because I knew that would be the end of my career as a writer. Why? Because he, he would, Absorb so much energy so because he lived in such a, a spin cycle of the washing machine life, and I wouldn't have the really boring, quiet life that a writer leads, and that's what I needed, and I could get that, um, either if I lived on my own, um, or married to my first husband, but I chose to live on my own.

17:37Speaker 2:You were complete, you didn't need him to complete

17:39Speaker 1:you. No, I, uh, that's right.

17:42Speaker 2:Thank you for saying

17:43Speaker 1:that.

17:43Speaker 2:I should have written the book for you. Well, no, I know cos you're very much a a a feminist role model. I've talked to my mum about it before and she talks about jumping ahead a little bit, when you finally did marry Bob and you guys got together officially. That you seem to stop working and stop writing for quite some time.

18:05Speaker 1:I did And that is because Mia, my, I really, truly believe that life's greatest reward and highest ideal is love, and I'd waited a long while for this relationship, we were madly in love with each other and for me, Love was everything, so I was prepared to give up, uh, writing. I also think that that by that stage I was pretty much written out and I needed a break. Writers do need a break, um. So, yes, I, I, I gave up writing, we, we set up a, a business together, a consultancy business, and um, well he'd set it up and I joined as a director, and then we just traveled every six weeks, so it was, it was wonderfully exciting and very, very stimulating, and I, and I started to get from that, uh, not new material for, for a book as it would turn out, but, Just a, a, a wider perspective on the world than I'd had beforehand.

19:13Speaker 2:There was 30 years between, um, 25 years between meeting him and getting married. Your relationship went through so many phases in that time from the, you know, just quite a physical thing to, um, more serious to then a long period of time where you didn't see each other. You're apart. Tell me about what that was like. And what precipitated it?

19:38Speaker 1:Well, what precipitated it was that he had decided he wanted to go into parliament and the only thing he wanted to do in parliament was to become prime minister and he couldn't become prime minister if he were divorced back in those days.

19:52Speaker 2:It was the early

19:53Speaker 1:80s, yep. Uh, and we couldn't go on. So,

19:59Speaker 2:so you said it would have leaked, so he had to end it.

20:03Speaker 1:I wanted to end it too. it? Well, I was terribly, I was terribly angry with him for asking me to marry him, and I thought about it and I realized I wanted to leave my husband, and then he was, Bob was still keen on the marriage idea, and, So we went along assuming that was what was going to happen next, but I kept on thinking, what about Louis? How, how, I can't leave him in Canberra, I can't go and, I can't live with Bob in Melbourne, how is all of this going to work? It was just an impossible thing.

20:43Speaker 1:And then one day he, he didn't contact, well, one week he didn't contact me, another week he didn't contact me. A 3rd week he didn't contact me, which was frightful, and I nearly went beresque, uh, and then he just rang up and said, not getting divorced, just like that. I, I couldn't understand what he was talking about, and I had to ask him to repeat it. He said, I'm not getting divorced, and that was the end of it.

21:09Speaker 2:He almost ghosted you. He almost ghosted you. Have you heard that expression, ghosting, when someone just disappears on you and you don't hear from him again. At least he said to you.

21:17Speaker 1:Yes, he did. For

21:18Speaker 2:3 weeks he ghosted

21:19Speaker 1:you. So 3 weeks he ghosted me. Uh, I was, during that period, I was, I wasn't able to write a word. I was so upset. And then to, and then he, um, Announced he'd dumped me, so Look, I understood why, and after I'd got over the terrible fury. And wanting to

21:48Speaker 2:murder him. It's like I didn't want to marry you, but you can't break up with me.

21:53Speaker 1:Yes, I didn't really want to marry you, but you can't do this to me. Uh, that's intelligent, isn't it? So I, I, I thought, well, I hardly know this man, and the, I really hardly knew him, although we'd seen each other so often, but in such a narrow, narrow context, and I thought, and the Australian public, Intuitively knows something about him, but he was presented by the news media as a kind of cartoon from the man I knew.

22:28Speaker 2:That's true, the sort of ocker larrikin, it's beer,

22:32Speaker 1:exactly.

22:33Speaker 2:Isn't he in the Guinness Book of World Records for beer drinking or something? Yes,

22:36Speaker 1:yes, he is, which goes back to

22:37Speaker 2:but also a Rhodes scholar.

22:39Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, and the beer drinking goes back to his time as a Rhodes scholar, right, uh, so, I, I thought, I, I will write about what he is really like, as he wants to really become Prime Minister, the Australian public should really know what the, who and what this man is and what he stands for, what his values are, and so that's what I set out to do.

23:03Speaker 2:Was that just a way to stay in his life though?

23:07Speaker 1:I, well, maybe it was, um. Look, I didn't think of it in those terms, really, I, I thought of it in professional terms because I'd, I'd written a biography beforehand of, of, um, a judge, and it had been very successful, not in terms of money, but in terms of, of, uh, respect for what I'd said, and, I, I just thought

23:39Speaker 2:you fucked yourself, you knew you could do it,

23:41Speaker 1:I knew I could do it, and I thought, and this one might make some money, might, because only might, I couldn't get a publisher at the time, a, a, a, a really, was he

23:53Speaker 2:already leader of the opposition?

23:54Speaker 1:No, he wasn't even in parliament when I started work, um, and people I went to, the, the publisher said to me, Oh no, he's finished, he's had it, because he'd had that he, he'd had a huge and ridiculous, um, fighting in Adelaide and in which he'd very vulgarly abused Bill Hayden, who was the leader of the opposition, and the whole of the press corps had written him off as a ratbag, and self-destructive and so forth, and he was because he was still drinking, and when I started writing, I, Had a few doubts uh because he was still drinking, but

24:37Speaker 2:about whether he'd go the distance,

24:39Speaker 1:he was going to either self-destruct, or he was going to make it, and the, and the self-destruction was going to be through grog and, I do think I helped him stop drinking because. Did

24:51Speaker 2:you ever say to him, you've got to stop drinking or you're not gonna become Prime Minister?

24:57Speaker 1:Oh I and I and about 10,000, I and all his other, all his close friends all said the same thing to him, and Hazel would have said it to him a million times too.

25:08Speaker 2:And what finally made him stop?

25:11Speaker 1:Well, I went down and interviewed his family in South Australia. And I came back with and told him the stories that they had told me about how against drink his mother was and that she'd enrolled him in this band of little, little Nazarenes who, and at the age of 8 he was sworn never to let alcohol pass his lips. I mean, how to turn your son into a drunk. But didn't work. Yeah, could, yes, but of course she didn't, people were wise after the event and bringing all of that family stuff back to him was very, very shocking.

25:57Speaker 1:Because he'd he'd sup I think he'd conveniently suppressed it all, yeah.

26:04Speaker 2:How much did Hazel know about you?

26:06Speaker 1:Um, Quite a bit Look, I, you never know how much somebody else knows about you, but she certainly knew of me, she knew Bob was in had been in love with me, she knew he'd wanted to marry me, um, yeah.

26:23Speaker 2:Cos he's not the kind of guy who can keep a lot of secrets it would seem.

26:26Speaker 1:He's not, he's not

26:27Speaker 2:and he's a very bad liar. His nature, I mean, was obvious to you and was no doubt obvious to her being married to him for that long. Did she kind of turn a blind eye?

26:36Speaker 1:I honestly don't know that. Um, he had a very long-term relationship with his uh personal assistant, much

26:46Speaker 2:20 year relationship you said, yeah. Yes,

26:48Speaker 1:far predated me, so. She, Hazel, much more disliked that woman. Than me And apparently there was some other silly woman who, who, who stalked him and rang him at home and, and so forth, um, so she disliked that, but I was always very discreet and in the background and never seen

27:11Speaker 2:did you feel jealous of Hazel for being his wife?

27:18Speaker 1:At this distance, I honestly can't answer that, but I think the, The honest answer is probably yes. I think that the uh the lover always feels jealous of the wife because the wife's got ownership.

27:35Speaker 2:Well that's why he's going home every night, isn't it?

27:37Speaker 1:Yes, yes, whatever that's going to be like, and you don't know, and he and I had a, had a, a sort of an, a, an unspoken honorable agreement, neither of us ever talked about our spouses. I didn't talk about my husband, he didn't talk about Hazel, so I honestly don't know that. What, what it was like, except friends have told me that it was pretty ugly, their friends who, who used to go to the house.

28:08Speaker 2:So you, you were apart for what, 6 years? Uh yeah, and how did things start, and when you were writing the book, did you not like, Try it on, you know, it's late at night, we're still talking interviews,

28:22Speaker 1:very first night when we were when we were still, when he was still drinking, he did.

28:27Speaker 2:Every night, did you

28:28Speaker 1:try it

28:28Speaker 2:on?

28:29Speaker 1:No,

28:30Speaker 2:right, just that first time, cos you, it took a long time to, it takes a long time to write a book, you have to get, spend a lot of time with your subject if you're writing a biography.

28:36Speaker 1:Um, you have to spend much more time with other people actually. OK. Much more time. So, the times I spent with him were, were nothing compared with the times I spent with others. So

28:48Speaker 2:he tried it on, and you said, no, we've broken up.

28:51Speaker 1:We've broken up, yeah.

28:53Speaker 2:And then when did you get back together?

28:55Speaker 1:In um. Hang on, 1990. No, that can't be right, 1988.

29:06Speaker 2:So he'd left the prime ministership by then? Not quite.

29:10Speaker 1:He just made the Kirribilli Agreement.

29:12Speaker 2:I see. That was the agreement where

29:16Speaker 1:the agreement was made at Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister's house in Sydney, and it was an agreement with Paul Keating that in 2 years Bob would step down and Keating would take over, could take over as Prime Minister. And so suddenly Bob obviously felt freedom.

29:37Speaker 2:Yeah, cos he knew that he couldn't divorce Hazel while he was in office. That was never gonna happen. That was never going to happen. It had to be on the other side of that. Yes. But no, no sitting prime minister, I mean I can't think of any prime minister who's ever actually stood down willingly. No one really goes of their own accord, do they?

29:56Speaker 1:Menzies did, but he was ill. Hm. And he'd also been Prime Minister for a very, very long while and he was getting old and uh if Harold Holt was to have any chance at all, he had to go when he did.

30:09Speaker 2:And so, the Kirribilli Agreement famously didn't quite work out in the way it was intended, um, and when did you realize he was the big love of your life? I mean, obviously before now.

30:22Speaker 1:Uh Probably after we resumed in, in 80 out uh but I think it wouldn't have been until 89 or, or 90, it, it, it became increasingly intense.

30:40Speaker 2:And it became hard to be a part.

30:43Speaker 1:Yes, but we weren't so far apart because as soon as he ceased being Prime Minister, which was uh December '91, uh he moved from Canberra to Sydney and I was already by then living in Sydney, and he, he moved, I was living in Woollahra and he moved into, he and Hazel moved into a hotel in Double Bay. So it was just down the street.

31:07Speaker 2:And why wouldn't he leave her at this stage?

31:12Speaker 1:Well, she was not well, that was number one. She'd she'd had um a tumor on her pituitary gland, so he wouldn't think of leaving her. And I don't think at any stage really then did he think of leaving her. It wasn't until '93 when something happened to me that he suddenly realized he, he, he couldn't live without me.

31:37Speaker 2:What happened to you in '93?

31:39Speaker 1:I was in a, a seaplane. I was up in uh far um far north Queensland. I was doing a story for the New York Times, and the Great Barrier Reef and the seaplane crashed into the sea, and we had to, uh, swim out of the window. Oh my God. There were, there were 6 passengers in the pilot, and we were very lucky to, um, Be alive because um we, we all grabbed onto the, the, the, the wings, and avgas was pouring out of them, and covering us it's and it's very, very burning, I can assure you, I don't recommend a bath in out gassed any sage.

32:24Speaker 1:And uh um fortunately, um, a yachtsman was moored not too far away, and he had a motorized dinghy and he leapt in his dinghy and came rushing over, we all grabbed onto the dinghy and the plane sank, but when we got ashore onto Hamilton Island, we were allowed to make one phone call, and I, the one phone call I made was to our go-between. The man who, who kept us in, he was our secret, um, contact, and but he was a drama queen, and he rang up Bob and he said, Bob Blanche has been in a plane crash.

33:07Speaker 1:And paused, and Bob said in that moment he felt himself die, and then the man added, but she's alright, but it was just that instant, uh, and he, he knew then that it was, Had I died It would have been his life wouldn't have been worth living.

33:31Speaker 2:What's it like when you don't have to hide anymore?

33:35Speaker 1:Oh, it was marvelous, it was absolutely marvelous, but

33:37Speaker 2:the does it take a while to get used to though? Like, oh, you're just in the other room, oh yeah, we can go out and have dinner together. Oh we can

33:43Speaker 1:just hold hands in public, how wonderful. Um, it, that was absolutely marvelous, but what I found very interesting, I, I cleaned out the storeroom, a couple of weeks ago, and I had newspaper articles and and um magazines back, I don't know how many years, and I hadn't realized that I was actually quite famous, but before I was with Bob, and up until 1994, I really was the golden girl, and I was one of the 50 most eligible women in Australia and my writing was all terrific and so forth. Come 1994 and I'm with Bob, suddenly, I am the world's worst person.

34:25Speaker 1:And um you know, Mrs. Caligula sort of thing, and

34:30Speaker 2:a the idea of you as being a trophy wife.

34:33Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, I was a trophy wife. All my other books, which were sold in a number of languages, my novels and so forth, that was all ignored. I just, Became Bob Hawke's biographer, so, uh, I couldn't write, I was, I was reduced in size, and Mia, I have to tell you, unfortunately, the worst people were, are women, were other women.

34:59Speaker 2:How did that play out before the days of social media? How did, uh, women's displeasure make itself known to

35:05Speaker 1:you? Articles they wrote, things they said to friends. I had a very good friend, uh, another writer. And she said to me, Blanche, the rancor against you is unbelievable. I had no idea.

35:23Speaker 2:Why do you think that was?

35:26Speaker 1:Look, I've, I've thought about it, I think it was fear mostly, I think it was women thinking, oh, That could happen to me, um, some minx could come along and take my bloke,

35:43Speaker 2:as if he had no agency.

35:46Speaker 1:Exactly. As if it were my doing, and the, the suggestion that I'd broken their marriage was, was horrendous. I hadn't, it, it had been broken for a very long while, uh, and, We'd been in love for a very long while, yeah, it, it was just grotesque really.

36:10Speaker 2:Did you ever talk to Hazel, did you interview her for the book?

36:13Speaker 1:Sure, yes, several times, yes.

36:16Speaker 2:And what was that

36:16Speaker 1:like? Well, she and I both steeled ourselves for it. I, uh, it was not pleasant for either of us, but, We both took it like grown-ups. She knew that if it were a good book, it would advance his career and advance his ambitions to become Prime Minister, and, and I interviewed her right after he or soon after he'd stopped drinking, which showed her that he really was serious, and so that everything she'd put up with from the uh uh the women and, and the drinking and blah blah blah.

36:54Speaker 1:Could all now be coming to what was her very justified reward, and that is that she would live in the lodge and, and have Kirribilli House and have a, have a, the status of being the prime minister's wife, so I think all of those things came into her thinking. He, he'd had to persuade her very strongly. The uh to to be interviewed by me, she really didn't want to, but, but she, she came around and agreed, and we were just very straight with each other.

37:27Speaker 2:Oh, the elephants in the room during that conversation, my goodness, yeah. I guess so. Did you speak to her after the divorce or it was just,

37:37Speaker 1:yes, sure, uh because we had to talk about the kids on occasions.

37:41Speaker 2:Yeah. Her kids and her, yes,

37:43Speaker 1:but her and Bob's kids, yes.

37:46Speaker 2:And how did you forge a relationship

37:48Speaker 1:and, and we, and we would see each other socially sometimes at Christmas, for example, in, in one of the in Sue's house,

37:58Speaker 2:yeah. There was this sense, I suppose publicly that people had to choose a side. Were they team Hazel or team Blanche?

38:04Speaker 1:Yes, why do people think that? Yeah,

38:07Speaker 2:as if Hazel didn't have any agency either.

38:10Speaker 1:Yeah, it, it, it's it's insulting to, to everybody. They don't have to choose sides, and a number of our friends didn't at all, they, they stayed good friends with Hazel and they were good friends with me.

38:24Speaker 2:You and Bob in those early years when you first came out publicly together. We're so um you were like teenagers, you were giddy in and and you weren't it's not like you'd just met. I mean you'd known each other for what upwards of 30 years or or more and you had been together on and off through much of that time, but there was clearly such a joy that you both took in each other. You were about 55 when you got married.

38:53Speaker 1:5

38:54Speaker 2:51, and

38:55Speaker 1:he was 60. 5.

39:00Speaker 2:And there was that famous 60 Minutes interview you did in the bathrobes.

39:03Speaker 1:Let me tell you about those bathrobes. We were fully dressed. Under the bathrobes. Under the bathrobes. This, it was a real gotcha. Um, fully dressed on our way to the airport out of the hotel in Singapore, we walked past the swimming pool with a photographer's tray, and they said, oh, let's get a, a photograph of you by the pool, and I said, no way. And they said, look, we'll, we'll just get, uh, from the pool shop some bathrobes. So we put them on over our clothes, and if you look closely, you can actually see the top of my shirt under.

39:44Speaker 1:Underneath it, and, and so, and he sat on a, on a chaise long and I stood er er I stood behind him, and they took the photographs and the palm trees and blah blah blah, and, Then they painted out all the palm trees.

40:04Speaker 2:Oh right,

40:05Speaker 1:so, so and just put in blue, so everybody imagined, oh, This is them together. I know. We've suffered from it ever since.

40:15Speaker 2:Oh, that's a very funny backstory. Um, you clearly took such a delight just in being with each other though.

40:22Speaker 1:We did,

40:22Speaker 2:and still do and still do.

40:23Speaker 1:I do, yeah.

40:25Speaker 2:Um, you know, lust is, is part of the title of your book, and you've talked a lot about your and Bob's chemistry. You've, you know, had a sexual relationship on and off for 50 years. How does sex change as you get older?

40:41Speaker 1:Well, it doesn't have the same drama as when you're young, but it has a, a greater sweetness, I think. You know, like late picked grapes make uh late picked wine stickies as they're called.

40:57Speaker 2:I was trying to think of the other words, we're getting into such bad metaphors here, a very,

41:02Speaker 1:very bad word there, uh, but,

41:07Speaker 2:But there's a tenderness at what a tenderness

41:10Speaker 1:tenderness and understanding and you feel so, so enormously comfortable with each other and you communicate with each other and you're completely uninhibited.

41:22Speaker 2:Physically, I'm, I'm not gonna get too personal, but in terms of, you know, you're a very beautiful woman at this age, at every age. How do you, you know, reconcile growing older and, and aging, and, you know, how that impacts on your physicality, and, I suppose, how sexy you feel?

41:41Speaker 1:I do keep myself very fit. Ah, and I love feeling fit and, and healthy, um. And uh. I visit the hairdresser.

41:55Speaker 2:Very natural

41:55Speaker 1:blonde. I'm a completely natural blonde.

42:00Speaker 2:And just finally you have a, have a sip of your coffee. I have a sip you can have a sip of coffee it's very free, free and easy. When you think back on your life with Bob. What Is the most joyous period of that time, oh

42:20Speaker 1:gosh. We've had some truly marvelous. Holidays, we went to the Antarctic for my 60th birthday, that was just fabulous, and there was a we went on a small Russian ship, and there was a big party for me on deck as we went through the, oh let me get it right, Lamer, oh no, I've got it wrong. Anyway, this beautiful passage, divinely beautiful scenery, that was really wonderful. It wasn't half bad going for dinner at Buckingham Palace, you know, when the, the car drives around

43:03Speaker 2:the I don't know, but I can I've seen it suddenly,

43:05Speaker 1:and suddenly it turns left in through the gates of Buckingham, into the gates of Buckingham Palace and, and there's the red carpet and uh all those men with the big bear skins on their supposed bear skins on their heads. And uh footmen and so forth and I thought, wow, this is very, very wow, but with with him, I think honestly, the happiest times when we were out fishing. Just being together, just being together, yes, and either at at at home reading, or if we weren't at home reading, out catching fish on a boat.

43:51Speaker 1:You like to fish? Yes, I, yes, I was brought up fishing, and he's mad keen on fishing, and he's mad keen on golf in which I have no interest whatsoever. But that, that was always great fun and we'd have competitions who'd get the first fish. He would nearly always win until recently, which he's always thought, which he's always said I've cheated.

44:23Speaker 2:Something I didn't get to ask you about, um, that in fact is how your book opens is with this extraordinary, You call it a love affair, but it was really sexual abuse by a 55-year-old neighbor who was a pedophile when you were 12. Yes. You had a relationship with him ongoing for many years after that,

44:46Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, not many years, no, no, no, for between 12 and 15 or 12 and 14.

44:54Speaker 2:That's 2

44:54Speaker 1:years. Yes,

44:56Speaker 2:that's a long time.

44:57Speaker 1:Yes, but it wasn't every day or every week or anything like that,

45:01Speaker 2:and you didn't recognize it as abuse.

45:03Speaker 1:No, and it wasn't abuse.

45:05Speaker 2:But it was, you were 12 and he was

45:07Speaker 1:55. I know, but I, this is a really important thing, Mia, women, however, whether they're 12 or, Hm, 200 must never give away their power, and I never gave away my power to that man. And so I never felt in his power. I always felt completely free, free agent that I could just walk away from him at any stage. But I had something which these poor children who are abused by uh teachers and priests and scoutmasters and God knows what didn't have, and that was, I had a seriously terrifying father whom who was violent, who was, yes, and would have been much more violent to this man who was frightened of him.

46:01Speaker 2:He was a judge, this man,

46:02Speaker 1:he was a district court judge, that's true. Yes, but he knew that if I ever told my father. His neck would have been Broken.

46:14Speaker 2:Was he ever caught? Or charged

46:17Speaker 1:or never, never charged, never caught, gave the most horrendous, uh, sentences, horrendously harsh sentences to sex offenders. It's going to come out in a book next year, about him. The, the, the author wrote to me and asked, is it him that you wrote about, and I confirmed that it was him because he, he was notorious in the, The, the um harshness of his sentences,

46:45Speaker 2:while at the same time being a sexual predator,

46:47Speaker 1:well, yes,

46:48Speaker 2:I thought of you a lot um around the whole Barnaby Joyce thing, Vicky with Vicky Campion because, As much as we like to think attitudes have changed, they haven't really, I mean, that, how did you view that whole sordid chapter?

47:07Speaker 1:Well, I didn't view it as sordid, to start with, I think the media made it sordid, um, I felt, great deal of compassion for both of them, and, and for, um, Barnaby's wife who, Apparently didn't know about the relationship, that one doesn't know what she did or or or didn't know, but he clearly had been unhappily unhappy in his marital relationship for some time, he actually said that in parliament. And

47:42Speaker 2:I think she used the expression, his, his wife, he's a hard dog to keep on the porch.

47:48Speaker 1:Oh did she say that said,

47:49Speaker 2:I don't know if she said it publicly, but she was reported to have said it, which is something that could have been said about Bob, I imagine. That kind of guy,

47:56Speaker 1:yes, yeah, exactly, and it was originally Hillary Clinton said it of Bill.

48:02Speaker 2:That's where that that's what, OK, no, you're 100% right, Hillary said it of Bill. So I think it was then maybe paraphrased around Barnaby, but could have also been said about

48:12Speaker 1:Bob. Absolutely, yeah, and, and before me he was an impossible dog to keep on the porch, um. So I, I thought he was madly, I hope it's still the truth, that he was madly in love with her and it and it's mutual, and I thought he did the he and he doesn't know if he's the father of the child or not. And so I thought it was extraordinarily honorable of him to say, whether I'm the father of this baby or I'm not, I love her and I'm going to bring up the baby as my own, and how many guys have, excuse me saying this, the balls, To say that and mean it.

48:56Speaker 1:And I hope that's that that's how it happened. I mean, I hope it's his baby, but

49:01Speaker 2:Was Fidelity um a deal breaker for you when you married Bob and when you guys got back together?

49:07Speaker 1:It would have been for both of us, yeah. No, 70s were over,

49:11Speaker 2:huh? The

49:11Speaker 1:70s were over 70s were over. This was, this was a whole the 90s.

49:15Speaker 2:Yes,

49:16Speaker 1:yes, and, and he, he was not a man. Look, he's a silverback gorilla.

49:24Speaker 2:I imagine if he was here, he'd be flirting right now with everybody, men, women, children, like he's still very charismatic, so I suppose that part doesn't necessarily change.

49:35Speaker 1:No, no, and, and flirting is flirting's sort of now getting a bad reputation. But flirting is happiness and friendliness, really.

49:45Speaker 2:And also sometimes it's

49:46Speaker 1:acknowleding necessarily

49:47Speaker 2:sexual. No, sometimes it's just I acknowledge, you know, you can, you can flirt with friends and just have good banter or good chemistry.

49:53Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, I flirt with a tradesman in lifts.

49:57Speaker 2:I bet you do. And I bet they flirt back. Yes, you're quite the hottie.

50:04Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Mia.

50:06Speaker 2:Blanche, it's been so beautiful to talk to you. Thank you so much, and please send all my love to Bob.

50:11Speaker 1:Thank you very much.

50:13Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to No Filter this week. You can find Blanche's book on lust and longing. It's so fantastic. Uh, it's at any good bookstore or you can get it online at apple.co/mamma Mia. You'll find all the books of many of the people that we've interviewed here on this podcast. The producer of No Filter is Eliza Ratliff, and I will see you at home on the homepage, Mamma Mia.com.au.