Upon Mr Whitlam's ascension to the prime ministership, Mrs Whitlam quickly became known as an outspoken advocate for issues including women's rights and conservation.
Despite public criticism she refused to limit herself to traditional preconceptions of what a prime minister's wife should do, continuing the active role in the media that she had built during Mr Whitlam's time as opposition leader.
"What am I to do? Stay in a cage - wide open to view, of course - and say nothing? That's not on, but if I can do some good I'll certainly try," she wrote in her diary in December 1972.
She was a regular guest speaker on radio and television, and wrote a column for the magazine Woman's Day where she offered an insight into the life of a prime minister's wife.
Mrs Whitlam was outspoken about the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975, saying she told Mr Whitlam he should have torn up the letter from then governor general John Kerr.
"He said something about he'd given him a note sacking him. I said, 'Why didn't you tear it up?' he said 'oh, I couldn't do that'. Silly man, I'd have torn it up; who was to know he'd been given anything," she said in a 1993 interview.
She also spoke of her anger at John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser's role in the dismissal.
"I've always regarded people like John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser with scorn - scorn for what they did, scorn for what they didn't do," she said.
"In a way it wasn't so much what they did, but the way that they did it that was so wrong.
"And I just couldn't understand them, I couldn't forgive them, I can't forgive them."
ABC Obituary
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