Blanche d'Alpuget
| Blanche d'Alpuget | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | Josephine Blanche d'Alpuget 3 January 1944 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation | |
| Education | SCEGGS Darlinghurst |
| Alma mater | University of Sydney |
| Genre | |
| Notable works |
Mediator; Robert J. Hawke, a biography; Turtle Beach; The Young Lion |
| Years active | 1973-present |
| Spouse | Antony Pratt (m. 1965–div. 1986; 1 child) Robert Hawke, Sr. (m. 1995–present; 4 stepchildren) |
| Children |
with Pratt; Louis Pratt with Hawke (stepchildren); Sue Pieters-Hawke Stephen Hawke Rosslyn Dillon Robert Hawke, Jr. (deceased) |
| Website | |
| Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library | |
Josephine Blanche d'Alpuget (born 3 January 1944) is an Australian writer and the second wife of the longest-serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.
D'Alpuget is the only child of Josephine Curgenven and Louis Albert Poincare d'Alpuget (1915–2006), journalist, author, blue water yachtsman and champion boxer. Her great-aunt, Blanche d'Alpuget, after whom she was named, was a pioneer woman journalist in Sydney and a patron of artists. Her father was a sports and feature writer and also news editor of a Sydney newspaper, The Sun.
D'Alpuget attended SCEGGS Darlinghurst and briefly the University of Sydney, before running away from home following a fight with her father. She worked at The Sun's rival newspaper, The Daily Mirror, then moved to Indonesia at the age of 22 with her first husband, Tony Pratt, whom she had married in 1965. She and Pratt have a son, Louis, an artist and sculptor and a co-founder of Mungo, a Sydney artists' colony. While in Indonesia, d'Alpuget worked in the Australian Embassy's news and information bureau; later she was a volunteer worker in the National Museum of Indonesia, leading a team that recatalogued the oriental ceramic collection of Chinese export ware. She was the world's youngest member of the famous English-founded Oriental Ceramic Society. After spending four years in Indonesia, d'Alpuget lived for a year in Malaysia. She travelled widely, and to remote areas, in both countries.
In 1973 she returned to Australia and became active in the women's movement. She began writing in 1974, inspired by her experiences in South East Asia. She has won a number of literary awards for both fiction and non-fiction including, in 1987, the inaugural Australasian Prize for Commonwealth Literature. She first met Bob Hawke in Jakarta, in 1970. They met again in 1976 when she interviewed him for a biography she was writing on Sir Richard Kirby. This meeting led to a long and sporadic love affair which eventually culminated in their marriage in 1995. D'Alpuget and Pratt had divorced in 1986. Between 1979 and 1982 d'Alpuget researched and wrote a biography of Hawke.
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