Dame Zara Bate DBE (10 March 1909 – 14 June 1989) was an Australian fashion designer and wife (later widow) of the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt.
Born Zara Kate Dickins in Kew, Victoria, Bate was educated at Ruyton Girls' School and Toorak College. In 1925, aged 16, she established her first dress shop in Little Collins Street. With a friend, she later opened a salon, called Magg, in Toorak Village. She won the 1961 Australian Gown of the Year award.
Her first husband was Colonel James Fell, by whom she had three sons, Nicholas (1937) and twins Sam and Andrew (1939). Their marriage broke down soon after the birth of the twins. After they divorced, in 1947 she married Harold Holt, a Liberal Party politician. He legally adopted her children and gave them his surname. Tom Frame's biography The Life and Death of Harold Holt reveals that Holt was the twins' biological father.
Harold Holt had been a member of Robert Menzies' Cabinet continuously since 1949, becoming deputy Liberal leader in 1956 and Treasurer in 1958. When Menzies retired in January 1966, Holt became Prime Minister. He was presumed drowned in December 1967.
Zara Holt was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 1968, for "devotion to the public interest". In 1968 Dame Zara published My Life and Harry: An autobiography.
On 22 March, 1969, Dame Zara Holt married Jeff Bate, a farmer and Liberal politician. She then became known as Dame Zara Bate. It was the third marriage for both of them.
After Jeff Bate's death in 1984, Dame Zara retired to the Gold Coast, where she died in 1989 at age 80.
Sources
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