She was hyped as this year's comeback queen.
But the only work model Gemma Ward will be doing at the end of the year is changing nappies.
Insider can reveal the 25-year-old former catwalk superstar is six months pregnant.
The elusive model is expecting with long-time boyfriend David Letts, a 27-year-old model who hails from Sydney's Northern Beaches.
It's understood the pair has had an on-again-off-again relationship for a number of years and are now living near Perth.
The couple have also been spending some time in Sydney.
Our sources had spotted Ward and Letts on Tuesday night having dinner in a restaurant near her home in Western Australia.
Gemma Ward was named by Forbes as one of the world's top-earning supermodels in 2007 but retired from the runway that year amid talk she had gained too much weight.
She appeared in critically-acclaimed film The Black Balloon in 2008 and later made cameos in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.
Late last year, Ward signed with IMG Model's new Australian arm and was being groomed by agent Danielle Ragenard for a major comeback.
But not long after, she pulled out of a Vogue Australia magazine shoot as well as two public appearances in Sydney - the 2nd annual AACTA Awards in January and a Christian Dior store opening, no doubt to shield her pregnancy.
While always media-shy, it was the death of her former boyfriend Heath Ledger in 2008 that seemed to be the catalyst for Ward's disappearing act.
At the time of his death she said: "There was no one like him and no one will ever be like him."
Source: dailytelegraph.com.au