Everyone, Welcome to conversations. I have a special guest today. Blanche del Puget is my guest author, writer, wife of the late Prime Minister Bob Hawk. She has a new book out, a new novel. Now it's a little bit different because it's fiction. It's murder mystery, and it's all sort of all sorts of sex in it and stuff like that. But Blanche is more renowned as a writer of serious biographies and author of serious biographies and historical fiction. Blanche del Puget, welcome to the program.
Thank you very much. Fancy.
I love that name, del Puchet. It is the way it rolls off the tongue. Can you tell us the origin of it? Please?
Sure it's from Bordeaux in France. It's typical Bordeaux name that get ending. And with my great grandfather who left Bordeaux at the time of I think it was called the phlox of whatever it was that destroyed the French venue. It's the economy of Bordeaux. And he came out to the South Pacific game to Australia.
There was so much to talk about. But I mean treat I wish I knew your father. He sounds like a really much so sort of a guy. Can you tell us a bit more about him?
Yeah, he was very much Oh he was. He was love sailing, was bluebody, yachtsman. He was a champion boxer, champion wrestler, champion water polo player. The guy who beat him for the Australian title in boxing went to the Olympics and won the gold medal, according to family legend history. I've never looked that up.
And the Lifesaver as well.
I mean lifesaver sure, sure, and in a champion team.
So tell us about tell us about you, your child. Is it true that your dad wanted you to be was expecting you to be a boy, or wanted you to be.
My mum really wanted me to boy. My dad was absolutely love me as a girl. But I grew up as a daddy's girl, I think because of that. And he did teach me all sort of some things like boxing and shoesing, and of course how to catch fish and how to kill an octopus. That's pretty dairy.
If you're such a feminine lady, how did boxing fit into it? Did you do you ever have to use it?
No? I didn't quite Seriously, it's very good for a woman, especially as a small woman as I am, to know something about self defense and armed combat. It's very good. I did have cause to use that later.
In life against two a.
Very large Italian male who was bent on doing something dreadful to me.
Can you expand on that? That's intriguing?
Yeah. Sure. He was the person of the ship on which I was sailing to England. I was twenty one, and he invited me to a party in his apartment whatever you call it on a ship cabin, I guess, And of course the person is a second in command on a ship after the captain. And I arrived at the party and I looked around as nobody else there. It was just him and me, and he was a big bloke. I was five for three. I can't do that in the new money. He was about six foot
two and big. And he grabbed me and kissed me, and I did. I remembered what I'd been taught. I grabbed him by the years really hard and jammed my thumbs in his eyes, and he gave a yell of surprise and horror. Let go. I went in my life, and he wore sunglasses for wite Some.
Days feel satisfying.
Yeah, it was very satisfying. Yeah. Well, my father taught me some other things to do in that in nasty circumstances, but I didn't ever have to employ them.
So what ambition did you have growing up? Your father high achiever, charismatic guy, he's an editor of a newspaper. What ambition did you have?
My only ambition was to travel and have fun. I was don't terribly serious.
Is that all?
Yeah? Really, I was mad keen on traveling and did a lot. I lived basically, I lived outside of out of Australia from the edge of twenty one to thirty, in various countries, a lot of the time, spending Indonesia and Malaysia.
I read something that I've found quite shocking, and I don't know. I'd have to run it past you to see if it was actually you said you had your first affair when you were twelve.
It wasn't an affair. I was groomed.
He was a district court judge who was a neighbor and a friend of the family, and he started by walking me.
Home from the school bus stop every day and it sort of went on from there. He was a nut. I mean, I've I realized that in retrospect. At the time, I thought he was wonderful. He was fifty four and you're twelve.
Yes, when you reflect back on that, I mean a lot of young ladies would be scarred by that.
Well, I wasn't, partly because I had a father as a backup. I knew that if anything went wrong, I could go to my father, and I would get into terrible trouble myself, but he would walk down the street and he would pull that man limb from limb, and the man knew my father, and he knew that. He realized that too, that he had to be very careful.
We spoken about your father, tell us about your mother. Your mother's influence on you.
She was a sky blue soul, or I can say she was a really lovely woman, terrific sportswoman. Used to she done gymnastics, used to go sailing all the time. She was just a wonderful, loving mother. And she had a terrific sense of humor, very very funny, which was important with my dad, who could be extremely trying.
What do you mean by that trying of that of the day. Perhaps it was.
The male of the day, honestly, and he was he fell when, when I was eight, he fell in love with somebody else, which another a woman journalist.
Years later he married, but luckily, I regarded it as luckily they stayed together because of the child, because of me, and as a consequence, I had a much more interesting adolescence than I would have had I been living alone with my mother. But it was a very great strain on both of them, but I think particularly on her because he was quite cruel to her.
It was a sign of the times that I think we'ther in a male dominated era. Yeah, how did that shape your opinions in your career?
Perhaps It's very hard for me to know that, because except to know that I wouldn't accept being put down, my father had always brought me up to never to allow myself to be put down, and he himself, I've got it. I have to say. It was a terrible bully, So it had one very good effect. I grew up completely unafraid of men, and I think because of that, I was completely unafraid of Bob Hawk when I met him,
not that I knew who the hell he was. I thought he was somebody called Robin Robin Hawk, Robin Hog, whom I met in Chakata. But a lot of women were afraid of Bob because he was very, very aggressive. But I'd grown up with a super aggressive male and so didn't find Bob in any way intimidating.
Butd you pursue your career as a journalist initially? Didn't you?
Just initially? That's because I had a huge fight with my father and ran away from home when I was seventeen. I was meant to be studying. I was studying science at Sydney University. So then I had to get a chop because she couldn't do science and work. So he did help me get a job as at a cadet on the rival newspaper. I pursued that only for a
very brief period. I think I was eighteen when I started. Seventeen, and then I went to London twenty one and worked in their office in London, and then came back and then that was the end of journalism really, And he got married.
I got married, but well we used to in those days. But also for that same reason that women then did need a male protector. We really did, and having either a steady boyfriend or a husband was pretty important.
Blanche Delpiget is my guest, Folks. Her new book is called The Bunny Club. We'll talk about it. We'll get into it in detail, but obviously Blant's life is so interesting we have to explore that before we talk about her new novel. Shortly, folks, my guest on conversations is Blount del puge. She has a new book out called The Bunny Club. It's a murder mystery. I've read the compelling novel of mystery, passion, and revenge. I can see
your life was mysterious and it was passionate. Was it any elements of revenge in your life?
Not that I'm aware of, No. Look. It centers on a television a morning television diva, a very highly paid morning television hostess who is the station, wants to get rid of it because she's Her pay rate is what set when the television stations were earning a heap of money and now they're not. And also she's getting on. She pretends to be fifteen years younger than she actually is thanks to a lot of cosmetics, and she goes off down to Barrel, to her mansion in Barrel and
for a romantic weekend. What she thinks of as a romantic weekend with her lover, who is actually a males court whom she pays very well, but she still thinks of him as her lover. Next thing, we know, she's dead. Whether she's dead from a sex game gone wrong or has been murdered takes quite some sorting out. That's what the superficial story is about. There's a second underlying theme of story there, which I can tell you if you're a very nice man.
Well, I'll try to be a nice man. But a couple of questions there immediately in that description. The sex game is a Japanese sex game. Firstly, I want to know how you discovered this Japanese sex game which involves cables and pulleys and the like.
Well, it's called shibari. It's burning around in Japan since the seventeenth century, and it was used for tying up pess. But you know, the Japanese like to turn everything into a work of art, so they turned this into a work of art, and then it became used, as so many things do, for sex. It's still used for tying up people on trees. I think when you go to Japan, all the trees and to retied up. Yeah, how I learned about it? Well, I think I've known about it
for a while. But I interviewed all together four but mainly two male escorts, and one of them is a shabari master.
Really, there's such a thing. It's such a thing as a master.
He's a bit modest, and he would say he's just a he's just a practitioner, but he he, he really knows a tremendous amount about it, and of course it is. It can be very very dangerous. You can accidentally murder somebody or kill somebody with it. So he showed me a lot of videos that he'd made of himself tying up people.
There's so many questions. So you've you hired a mail escort, You paid him? I paid him.
Look, they've only got I believe the worker should be paid and so and all they've got to sell is their time, and they have a sliding scale obviously what their time costs. But for an interview, it was just one hundred and twenty five dollars an hour, or more elaborate things, that's considerably more.
Were you attempted to explore those more elaborate things. Yeah, I've seen the description of the male escort. You said he looked more like a diplomat. Can you describe him?
Yes, very tall, quite reserved and sharp. An introvert, I think so. He's all his friendships were with his female clients. He likes women a lot, obviously, and from a very good family. Went to the same school as well, King Charles as he now is in Victoria. Not a scrubber.
Oh, the mind boggles.
The other guy is extrovert, much smaller, mad keen on Art say, a real salesman, and he doesn't know anything about Shabari though.
Well, I look, that's an outline of the book, and people need to buy the book. It's called the Bunny Club. Now let's talk a little bit more about about you. You marrit An Anthony Pratt, and you go to you live in Jakarta. Yes, did you embrace that?
For the first two weeks I wasn't sure where Indonesia was at that age. He said to me. My husband said, go north and turn left, and I'll never forget the day we flew into Jakarta together. As the plane came towards the landing the airport, the landing field, a little flock of brown goats were chopping trotting across in front of us, and there was nothing to say except coconut trees around it. You couldn't see a damn thing.
What was your life like as the wife of a diplomat?
Oh no, that's when he was a student. That's when we first went. He was a student studying for his masters in linguistics.
A student is a life of poverty, basically.
Well it is, except that I got a job in the working in the embassy in what was called the News and Information Buro, which was actually our propaganda department, and I was paid initially. It was funny. I've paid initially in rupia, which is worth nothing, and bags of rice that didn't last very long. They transferred me onto real money. But back in those days it was five hundred percent inflation, so our embassy and every other embassy dealt in the black market and black market dollars.
It seems to me as I read stories about your life that you really enjoyed living in Chicago, Individeres, I loved it.
It's the Indonesians are terrific people. Number one, wonderful sense of humor, very rich culture, and it's just a back then it was a very fun place. It was already terribly overcrowded. The city had been built by the Dutch for I think five hundred thousand, and it was already five millions, so it was terribly overcrowded, but nothing like it is now.
I'm not sure they were great people when they invaded New Guinea. How do they defend that?
Well, that was the army who did that. Armies often very nice to the people there in Fading whoever, whatever there the civilians are like the military are different ours? Is it no different?
You didn't like it so much when you came back to Camber though.
Oh after the excitement of Jakarta, where you didn't know one day from the next, tip for be electricity, if the if the surage would be working. You know. It was the telephones I don't think worked at all. We all took messages by hand. Well, you see, I went there twice. So I went there first with Chiny as a student, and then he came back and joined foreign affairs, and then we went back and lived in the and he was working in the embassy.
And you met Bob Hook there in nineteen seventy.
Yes, when for the first I was an embassy wife by that stage, and one of the duties of an embassy wave was to take around visiting Australians, whom we used to refer to as visiting fireman. And the thing that impressed me about him was he did He was the only one of all of god knows how many I took around who didn't want to go and look
at the slums. Nearly everybody wanted to see the slums in Jakarta, which I thought was creepy, and Bob had no desire to as a word, perv on the on the poverty of the people.
Why do you think they would want to visit the slums? Though?
Oh it made me feel good, really well, it gave them a sense of the exoticness of poverty, and it was poverty was exotic for people who had had, I guess, no contact with our original people back then, back in the sixties.
When you first met him, was there chemistry?
No? Not on well, apparently there was on his part.
I heard a story. Now you can tell you can correct me or tell me that it's inappropriate. But when he first met you, did he proposition you in an inappropriate manner?
Not when he first met me that was when he second met me, or I mean when he met me for the second time in.
Jakarta, and that was nineteen seventy six.
No, No, that were nineteen seventy one, the following year.
When a male proposition is an attractive lady like yourself, surely that's an inappropriate manner. Is that not a turn off? Yeah?
I ignored it. I mean he did it in public in front of a whole lot of people, and we all just they we're all diplomats, we all just pretended it hadn't happened. And somebody said, oh, are that bunt is just going to London, and the conversation went on. It was something like that.
So you decide to pursue, You decide to you start to write, and your first book is called Mediator, a Biography of Sir Richard Kirby. Now that's not what is that what you said out to write?
Yes? Absolutely, And it was because of Kirby's contact with Indonesia, and he was head of something that doesn't exist anymore, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, which oversaw wages for workers. And so I was interested in him because of Indonesia, because he had so much to do with the first President, Sakano,
who was a real bogeyman in a street Australia. But he also to write the book, I had to study the trade unions a lot, and that's when I became really interested in the trade union movement.
Was your first interest, was it Albert Monk the first.
Albert Buns was the first president, Bob was the second.
Yes, But you couldn't get access to Albert Monks.
Yes. So I wanted to do as a second biography Albert Monk's biography because all his papers he kept an enormous trove of papers in a special shorthand he'd developed in the State Library of Victoria. But his wife wouldn't give me permission to have access to them. And ages later I discovered it was because she was his second wife and she and people didn't know, and she didn't want anybody finding out she was his second wife. I mean, that's how stitched up we were back in those days.
So I thought, oh, well, if I can't do the second one, because I was still mad on about the importance as it was then of the trade union movement, I'll try the current president. I met Bob Hawk.
We need to take a break, because it gets really interesting after that. Blanch dal Pouget is my guest, folks. Her new book is called The Bunny Club. It's fiction. We're going to talk about the biographies that she has subsequently written or written previously. Back after the break, folks, welcome back to conversations, everybody, if you'd just tuned in, and it's a great chat. That's even greater when the microphone's turned off. I guess it is Blanche del Puge.
She's an eminent author, there's no doubt about that. Some of the great books that she's written. Most significant, I think is Robert J. Hawk, a biography that's probably famous. And we're talking Blanche about meeting Bob in Jakarta, in Indonesia, and again a year later you meet him again in nineteen seventy six. Now can I quote? I'm quoting your words? So the business just not a prurient interest. I'm quoting your words.
Okay, it could still be a prurian interest.
Well, yes, I confess it is. 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. Now, why are you so brazen about that?
That's not brazen, that's honesty.
Well, it's brazen honesty.
I was just telling the truth.
But you knew the man was a womanizer.
What's that got to do with it? You're very twey and squeamish.
I like, well, maybe I am, Because then I go on it don't go slowly dreadfully. I came to realize he was having affairs with women all over the country, that his love life was kind of free willing, decentralized harem, with four or five favorites and a shoe saile queue of one night stands. Now, surely you would have tried to pull him into line.
I wasn't so foolish. I mean, he was a larger than life guy, as you would know. He wasn't somebody that could be pulled into line by a woman who was fourteen years younger than he and had was just one of the cure of women. He had taken a fancy too. Of course, later when we were married, that was quite different. But by then he was madly in love and he was truly truly committed to me.
But going back to those days, you were a strong beautiful, attractive woman. Would you know you're not going to tolerate your lover having multiple affairs?
Why did you what's to say he was my own lover?
Well, here we go, Come on, I don't know how to answer that.
All right, I'm glad to see you blushing.
Were you still married at the time, yes, Well, what was your relationship with Anthony? Your husband?
Oh?
Well, that was praying badly? It was a marriage that Look, we met when I was seventeen and he was twenty and fall in love and by that stage I was I don't know, thirty something, and the marriage was really very badly fraid And is it achieved what I think it was destined to achieve? And that was we had a son and whom I absolutely adored.
And still do you have these discussions with your son when he would read things and hear those things about his mother? Would you have to explain yourself to your son.
No, he's not a judgmental person. If anything, he was a very wild boy.
I suppose it was in the jeans.
Perhaps I think it was because dad was too, and so was my grandmother, and he was wild as hell and before he got married. Now he's got married, he's got a little he's got a daughter, I'm a grandmother, and he's settled down too, But he didn't become a father until he is fifty or forty nine.
Probably not the right expression, but I'll say you found fame with your biography of Bob Hawk. Robert J. Hawk a biography, and there was difficulty getting that published. And I'm trying to work out why that would have.
Been prejudice conservatism and so don't forget how much Bob was a bogey man for a lot of conservatives. He was also a drunk, a seriously bad drunk, and people just thought he was going to implode and being nothing. Very good journalist Matt Such, who was famous in his day, said to me, well, you'd better be quick there, because he's going to be Bob Hawk, very Bob who very soon. It was just thought he was a rocket who was
going to burn out. There's a lot of money that has to go into publishing a book, and they just didn't want to risk their money.
And the fact he's still alive that I mean, one of the comments was biographies when someone's alive probably don't read as well. It was that true.
It's not that they don't read as well, but they're more difficult. And indeed the distance of history gives you a better look at the importance of the life. And in fact, if you looked at Bob now, you'd say it was even more important.
So when you're researching the book and you're writing it, are you having an affair with him at the same time.
No, because we'd had one of our many rows. We're both follow tile. So it was in and interregnum at that stage, and I didn't think it would ever resume. And when I finished the biography, I couldn't wait to get out of Australia and get away from him and went to live in Israel. I was living in Israel when he was elected Prime minister.
It is said that your book helped you to become elected. Do you agree with that?
Well, yes, and I actually know it's true because two men who were on the National Executive, John Button and Nigel Bowen, who loath Bob all the polys, loathed him well because he was a show pony coming in from the outside, you know, and he hadn't done them hard yards that they had they were on the National Executive and thought he was just a show pony and a immediate tart and they read the book and realized that he was actually a very serious person and very very
serious about the well being of working people, and it changed their view of him dramatically. So at that famous meeting and breakfast Creek in Queensland when it had to be decided, would the party stand behind Bill, who may or may not have won against Fraser.
Bill Hayden, or would they switch to Bob, who certainly would wipe the floor with and would get Labor into government after many years out of government and would beat Fraser.
They decided to switch to Bob. It was a hell of a wrench for them because loyalty is very important within politics.
Bluche del Puget is my guest. Folks. Look, we're on the premise to talk about her new book, The Bunny Club. We've organized interview, but it's lots more interesting stuff as well. So back after the break, my guest today on conversations is Blunt Delpugee. In the break, she said she's sick of being defined by Bob. So does that mean we can don't talk about Bob work anymore?
Just about yes, Well.
You've got to got to get him married. You've got to get married to him, and you got.
Okay, I got married to him in nineteen ninety five and get and we lived happily ever after. It was terrific marriage. He was a wonderful husband second time round. His pretty terrible husband first time round. Hazel had to put up with a pretty terrible Bob, except he did do what he promised her, and that is he took her to the lodge, and so she that was good because he wasn't drinking, he wasn't womanizing much a.
Much much.
Yeah, And that made her She had a very delightful life during during that period, but she'd had a difficult time before then.
Were you on good terms at the end?
Yes, Yes, we're quite good terms.
Yes, And of course Bob has now gone. How has your life been since?
It was very very difficult initially because I loved him so much and I was in very poor health for about Look, I'm still getting over it, still physically recovery.
Bob's passing or your health, my health. You had COVID, you had breast cancer, you had Yeah, I.
Had COVID twice, had ammonia twice, had breast cancer. I had long COVID. What else do you want.
Written your book yet?
Well, actually somebody is, but it's not published yet.
And are you as frank in that as you have been with us?
Oh, I'm too frank. I'm going to see the look at the paid for it and cut down a few things.
I think, what are you what are you going to cut out?
Well, that would be a very foolish question to answer.
We've come to this current book. Yes, you want to talk about the book. You know you've indulged this with our you know, salacious questions. Tell us a little bit more about the book, the research that went into it.
Well, yes, there was a lot of research. I had to spend a lot of time. The male escorts were very useful, but that a particular former detective was super wonderful for me. I also had to talk to IT experts. I had to talk to a woman who was an advocate for people of short stature then would otherwise be known as dwarfs. As a dwarf in IT, I had to know a lot about I had to go down
and stand barrel and investigate the Southern Highlands. I had to learn about the ins and outs of the suburb of balmains from friends, So lots and lots of research.
Yeah, did you go to the Bradmann Museum in Bowl?
Look? I didn't. I wasn't even aware it was there. One of my editor told me.
What did the detective teach you?
Well, how they look at things, It's absolutely extraordinary. I showed the manuscript to about ten people before I'd revealed at the end who done it and why done it? And from a very early point the detective picked it. Only the detective really, everybody else that very intelligent people read and still had no idea who it was. But there is something special in their their training and their way of looking at things.
So is the is the culprit mystery to the end?
Yes?
Okay, so you can't. You're not going to give that away, aren't we?
Well, certainly I'm not, So.
I'm not going to do that. That's half the fun that is going through the book and try to absorb all the clues you and come to quick clue. Is that half the fun of the book.
That's why people read murder mysteries because there's an unwritten contract between the writer and the reader that at the end all will be revealed. So the reader spends the entire book guessing is it him? Is it her? Is it them? And they're following what they hope as a little thing of bread crubbers, but actually is often read herrings, and it's hard for them to tell the red herring from the bread grumb the little trail of bread grumbs.
But this book is about has got another level of meaning, which I really would like to say, and it's kind of hiding in plain sight. But people just read are taken up with the superficial, with the fun of it, the color and movement. But the other level of meaning is much more serious, and it's about our founday, the foundational myth about culture, which is original sin, expulsion from paradise, suffering, repentance, and then redemption. And that's all there underneath.
And can I identify that if I go a bit more deeply into the book, If.
You've had some if you have some knowledge of the Bible, you'll see it.
Well, not a biblical student, but most of us have a good idea of what the Bible's about.
Yeah, well, if they've read some of it, they should pick it up.
Your previous works of fiction have had an historical base, like a lot of interesting authors. You know, they could be true, they could be historically true. This is a bit of a departure from that, isn't it.
It's a complete departure, and it's very difficult for me. A murder mystery is totally different from a regular novel, historical or otherwise. And I had to learn by a series of mistakes and rewrites. I had to do seven drafts of this book before I got it right.
Yeah, what sort of patience does that require? How do you spend your day these I mean you have your been ill with COVID and the mainia twice, you've got long COVID? How do you spend your day these days?
I'm very busy Somehow.
Are you social?
Not very social? Because I like to be asleep by ten o'clock and I've never been a lady who lunches. So but I got heaps of friends and I spent three days a week I go to the gym, terrific gym, which is full of gay guys or covered in tattoos and very loud and pumping music. There's great big guys with you. Two call each other, she oh, she's going away, And I think I'm the oldest person there. I'm kind of the local pet.
It seems that that would be a safe environment for you though too.
It is. It's a very safe environment. I've got a very good trainer.
It's been so good speaking to you. I mean, I've been able to admire you from Afar and you know, observe your life up and down. You know, the controversies and the joys and the tragedies. So I hope the book goes well for you. I guess it's your for your own satisfaction that's been written. But you'd like some commercial success with it as well.
I'd imagine, Oh absolutely, I want to see this movie really well, of course it would make a good movie.
Blanch is thanks for time, good luck. Thank you, Blanche delpige with my guest, folks. The book is called The Bunny Club, but a popcorn press. I've never heard of that, Blanch popcorn press.
Yes, it's it's a new small indie.
Well, good luck with it The Bunny Clublands. Thanks for your time, Thank you, folks. Thank you for your time as well.