"He decided he wasn't going to postal vote. He decided he was going to go up in his wheelchair and vote - but he didn't get there," Ms d'Alpuget said.

In her first interview since the death of her husband, Blanche d'Alpuget told 7.30 on Thursday that Mr Hawke was otherwise ready to die, having reconciled with his great rival, Paul Keating, and made every contribution he felt he had to make to Australia.

"He said to me, 'I can't make any further contribution. I've got no contribution to make now,'" Ms d'Alpuget said.

Mr Hawke died on Thursday last week. He was 89. Before he died, Ms d'Alpuget said, Mr Keating was determined to see the man he replaced as prime minister in 1991.

"Paul really wanted to come over and see him, it was lovely," Ms d'Alpuget said. "And it was great. They sat and they yarned about old times. Paul came a few times."

Any rivalry between the pair had vanished, Ms d'Alpuget said.

In 1994, after his prime ministership was over, Mr Hawke separated from his first wife, Hazel Hawke, to whom he had been married since 1956. He married Ms d'Alpuget the next year.

Mr Hawke and Ms d'Alpuget had met decades earlier and started an intense affair, which stalled in 1978. In 1982 Ms d'Alpuget published a biography of Mr Hawke.

Ms d'Alpuget remembered the intense love she shared with her husband.

"We didn't have the joy of young love. He had that with Hazel. But we had the joy of mature love and then the love of old age," Ms d'Alpuget said.

Struggling not to cry, Ms d'Alpuget said it was there was something wonderful about looking after a dying loved one.

"Number one, [Bob Hawke] had no fear of death. Number two, he was determined he was going to die at home and not in hospital. So the difference is that there's a great deal of softness, there's a great deal of intimacy, there are no secrets, there are no pretences, you're getting the true human being on both sides," she said.

Mr Hawke was prime minister from 1983 to 1991 and the head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions before that. His government reformed the Australian economy, floated the dollar, introduced Medicare and played a significant role in freeing South African leader Nelson Mandela.

Ms d'Alpuget said Mr Hawke had been particularly proud of his role in helping free Mr Mandela and protecting Antarctica from mining.