Inside story of how Teal candidate Kate Hulett’s husband drowned trying to swim home from Rottnest Island and she did not report him missing until EIGHT days later: ‘Big blow up’

A leading Teal election candidate waited eight days to report her husband missing after he went for a drunken late-night swim following a row about his drinking, and never returned.

Kate Hulett, a Climate 200 candidate for the West Australian seat of Fremantle in next month’s election, lost her husband Matthew Bale during a holiday in 2016 when he tried to swim from Rottnest Island to Perth, but was never seen again.

A coronial inquest found Mr Bale, then 38, had disappeared by misadventure on March 21 that year, following a late afternoon argument with his wife about his drinking problem when she smelt vodka on his breath.

He left their holiday accommodation after an argument, taking a ferry ticket with him, but missed the last ferry and attempted to swim the 20 kilometres back to Fremantle at night.

Ms Hulett and Mr Bale’s British parents Alan and Brenda Bale stayed on Rottnest Island for three more days after he left, and it was only when they returned to Fremantle that they realised he was not there.

Ms Hulett waited until March 29 – eight days after she last saw him – to go to police and report him missing. 

WA Deputy state coroner Barry King handed down his inquest report into Mr Bale’s death in June 2019.

‘The deceased asked Ms Hulett for his telephone, his ferry ticket and some money,’ the inquest found. 

‘She gave him the ferry ticket since the ferries had stopped running for the day, but she did not give him his phone or any money. 

‘He left through the back door after punching the screen door.’

The inquest also noted Ms Hulett and her parents-in-law continued their holiday even after Mr Bale had disappeared.

‘When the deceased had not returned to the unit by the next morning, Ms Hulett and the deceased’s parents assumed that he had caught the ferry back to Fremantle,’ it said.

‘They decided to stay on Rottnest Island for the remainder of their booked holiday.

‘When they returned to Fremantle on March 24, 2016, it became apparent that something was wrong. 

‘There was no sign of the deceased at home or work, and his bank account had not been used.’

But after returning home to Fremantle, Ms Hulett waited another five days to report him missing to the police. 

‘On 29 March 2016 Ms Hulett and the deceased’s mother went to the Fremantle police station to report that he was missing,’ the coronial report said.

Ms Hulett addressed her husband’s disappearance from Rottnest Island on in a campaign podcast video made last week.

‘To come to the dramatic end, his mum and dad were over one time from the UK and we were in Rotto and basically he went missing one night,’ she told her ‘A Piece of Kate’ Podcast.

‘There was this big blow-up where he was kind of trying, like, poke his mum and dad, snapping at him, saying, “You’re a horrible son”.

‘He was just trying to get something, don’t know what, and he just stormed off and he didn’t come home and I was, “Fine, he’ll just be sleeping on the beach or something”.’

But Ms Hulett realised days later that her husband had not caught a ferry back to Perth when she arrived at their Fremantle home. 

‘And then, next night, I was like, “He’s going to come back” and then I was like – “He would have just get on the ferry and come back (to Fremantle)”,’ she said.

‘And then we got back and he wasn’t here and I was like, “We’ve got to go to the cops, I guess, because he’s got no money, he’s a missing person” but I just assumed he was on the ferry.

‘It was another pretty horrific time because he’d gone missing and he was an alcoholic.

‘Initially the police were like, “We’re not going to spend a second on this”.’

She later organised a search of Rottnest Island after the State Emergency Service decided it had been too long since he went missing to do a search.

‘SES wouldn’t do anything because it had been too long; they only spend time looking for potential missing, alive people,’ she said.

‘This is so nuts as well – I arranged a whole search of the island with grids and teams, a hundred people came over and literally walked the island looking for a dead body or a body or him or anything. Didn’t find anything then.’

Ms Hullet did not learn about her husband’s attempt to swim from Rottnest Island to Perth until a year later when two women who were on the island that night doing housekeeping had encountered her husband and shared some wine with him.

‘Maybe a year later, or a bit longer, I got a call from the police randomly saying, “We’ve just had a call from someone in Queensland who’s seen the missing persons ad in Queensland saying that they were on Rottnest the night that he went missing”,’ she said.

‘And they had a drink with him on the beach and then he said he was going to swim back.

‘That’s classic Matt; he would just be like, “I’m going to swim back to Freo, no worries … night time, I’ll just swim over”.’

Ms Hulett had met her husband in the UK in 2008, and they moved to Australia in 2013, buying a unit in Fremantle and setting up a hat shop before later running a cafe. 

The coronial inquest noted that Mr Bale, a former TV production editor in London, was physically fit and had previously competed in triathlons, with an ambition to complete the Rottnest Channel swim.

But he had also struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, resorting to using methylamphetamine to the point where Ms Hulett had to call the police on him when his behaviour became extreme.

‘Of course he was addicted and was losing his mind, like really publicly losing his mind,’ Ms Hulett told her podcast. 

‘And it got really, really bad to the point where I, like, I was calling the police on him and he was trashing the building. 

‘It was complete chaos and I was living through this hell.’

Her husband, who possibly had ADHD, developed a drug-induced psychosis and a psychiatrist prescribed him lurasidone, a medication used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

The inquest concluded he had died of misadventure as a result of having problems with drugs and alcohol.

‘While, on the basis of the limited evidence available to me, I am unable to form any considered view as to the deceased’s character, the impression I have is that he was a personable, vibrant man with a passionate approach to aspects of life which interested or challenged him, of which there were many,’ it said.

‘Unfortunately, the deceased was afflicted with depression and alcohol and drug addiction. 

‘Despite the opportunity afforded by extended rehabilitation and the ongoing support of his wife and family, he was unable to beat that addiction entirely and, as a result, made apparently impulsive choices which cost him his life.’

Ms Hulett almost won the state seat of Fremantle at Western Australia’s March state election, scoring a 26.4 per cent swing against Labor after she campaigned to ban billionaire Kerry Stokes from owning media outlets because of his oil and gas interests.

Industrial Relations Minister Simone McGurk held on with a bare 0.8 per cent margin.

At the May 3 federal election, she is one of 35 Climate 200 ‘Teal’ candidates backed by Melbourne-based multi-millionaire Simon Holmes a Court.