Mrs Whitiam rejects marriage rumours

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34129, 15 April 1976, Page 7

Mrs Whitiam rejects marriage rumours

fJV.Z. Press Assn —Copyright) SYDNEY. j Mrs Margaret Whitlam, the wife of Australian Labour Opposition leader (Mr Gough Whitlam) was quoted yesterday as saying she had agreed to a magazine in- ! terview “to nail all these rumours about our ■ marriage”. Mrs Whitiam, who became ; internationally known trav- j elling with her husband dur- i ing his three years as Prime ■ Minister ending last Decern- i ber, was quoted in an inter- I

view in the magazine “Australian Women's Weekly.” ; She said, according to the magazine: “Of course I’ve heard the rumours about Gough and me. You can pick your own version: that we're

Hiving apart, that I'm getting a divorce, that he beat me up and put me in hospital, I broke his nose and put him there. . . "He's supposed to have had affairs with everyone in>; sight. We both wish we knew how he'd find the ! time.” I Mrs Whitiam was quoted' as saying that some of the! “choicer stories” concerned i • one prominent but quite in-| ' nocent young woman. "They say she left her job, because she was pregnant to , Gough, that she had an; abortion in Singapore, that' ' she’s setting up a love nest' abroad for the two of them. “It would be funny if it; weren't so poisonous.” Mrs Whitiam said she had; been affected and offended by the rumours, and she.

“had never lost an opportunity to reject and refute; them.” Mrs Whitlam. a former; swimming star who was se- i lected to represent Australia; at the 1938 Commonwealth; Games, married Mr Whitlam; in 1942. They have three; sons and a daughter. Thanks offering.—- A; thanks-offering of nearly' $lOOO was collected at a din-1 ner and communion service to mark the closing of the Association of Presbyterian Women's conference in Auckland. The money will be sent to the Helen Coldie Hospital in the Solomon Is- ■ lands. Nearly 800 women> from throughout New Zealand attended the four-dayl conference on the theme “Where Your Treasure Is,! There Will Your Heart be! Also."