Silence of Harold Holt's secret lover, Marjorie Gillespie Marjorie Gillespie and daughter Vyner. THE nine line obituary in a metropolitan newspaper was appropriately understated. GILLESPIE, Marjorie Pamela. October 30, 2012. Died peacefully. Adored mother of Wayne (decd), Sheriden (decd) and Vyner. Loved mother-in-law of Kerry and John. Loving grandmother of Alexis, husband Ben and great-granddaughters Stella and Pippa. Privately Cremated. Her name may resonate with only a few today, but Marjorie Gillespie was once considered the most intriguing woman in the country. Harold Holt enjoying his passion of scuba diving. Mrs Gillespie was once the secret lover of Australian prime minister Harold Holt - or the alleged secret lover, as has frequently been recorded in the years following Holt's disappearance and prior to her own - as is reporting convention. Holt was Australia's answer to John F Kennedy during the sexually permissive 1960s. Spirited, charming, adventurous and, many said, handsome, the prime minister was, according to his widow Dame Zara, "having affairs everywhere" during the couple's 21 year marriage which ended only with his disappearance at a Victorian beach and a massive land and sea search that failed to turn up any trace of him. Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia (1966-1967). Mrs Gillespie and her daughter Vyner were on Cheviot Beach on the fateful day December 17, 1967, when 59-year-old Holt was swept out to sea never to be seen again. Like Holt, she too would have likely vanished without trace had it not been for Holt's remarkably forthright widow, who in 1985 set the record straight concerning her husband's relationship with the attractive mother of three. Marjorie Gillespie on the beach after Harold Holt disappeared. In a candid interview, Dame Zara confirmed the clandestine relationship saying she was "very aware" it had been taking place. "I felt like telling Marj about the other half dozen in the same position," Dame Zara told a documentary crew, rolling her eyes. Harold Holt with his wife Zara. He was a womaniser. He loved them. He loved them," she said. He was a charming man, for women. He didn't have any men friends, or many. He had friends, but he didn't have one great friend ... a man, but he had a lot of women. He was a menace," she recalled affectionately with a laugh. Dama Zara said Holt was an expert at hiding his many affairs from his wife. He was charming to me. He really hid them beautifully," she said. I might know, and I saw ... and I didn't see, for I knew if I saw I'd have to make a fuss and that'd be it and I'd have to leave him and have to bring up three children. The search for Harold Holt. Anyway I loved him. I had to make my mind up about that very early in my marriage and I decided alright, if that's it, I'll look the other way. Which I did. He was having affairs everywhere and he made a big thing of never having a guard anywhere near him. I know why. He should have had a guard with him. Few public photos exist of Mrs Gillespie. There is the black & white headshot of a pleasant looking woman with an open face and a pearl necklace that ran in the newspapers of the day when she was revealed as a police witness to the investigation. Reports state that Mrs Gillespie was staying next door to Holt's weekender at Portsea on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula on the weekend of his disappearance. On that Sunday, the Liberal Leader met the attractive brunette at her house at around 11am before the pair travelled to the beach in his Pontiac car, while a second vehicle, carrying three more beachgoers, travelled in convoy. With the local patrolled beach closed due to blustery conditions, the party headed on to Cheviot Beach, where neither the high tide nor rough swell could prevent the prime minister from embarking upon his final act of machismo. Mrs Gillespie's only surviving child, daughter Vyner, was 20 at the time. In her police statement, Vyner said: "I joined my mother who was standing on a lower rock ... and I saw that she was terribly distressed and I think she said something like, "He is gone, we can't see him"'. For the 45 years that followed Holt's disappearance, Mrs Gillespie became a ghost. She had good reason to do so. Like Holt, for the duration of their affair, she had a long-suffering spouse, husband Wilton. Then there was the simmering scandal and conspiracy theories that sprung up after Holt's disappearance. Some believed the PM was depressed and committed suicide, others speculated his judgment was clouded by morphine he was taking for a shoulder injury, while a third camp believes he slipped into a submarine and fled the country - all threatened the Gillespie family. As recently as 2005, a Victorian coroner was still investigating the mystery, ruling ultimately that the PM had died by accidental drowning. According to one who was aware of Mrs Gillespie's romantic and tragic past, friends knew to avoid conversation about Holt or his disappearance. Marjorie Gillespie, who watched her lover disappear in the boiling surf, spent her remaining years shunning the spotlight and living quietly in Sydney.