Hughes was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, was a pilot in the First World War, with later careers as a solicitor and company director. He died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12.

Hughes met his first wife, Danne Emerson, in London in 1967. Together they became involved in the counterculture of the 1960s, exploring drug use and sexual freedom. They divorced in 1981; she died of a brain tumor in 2003. Their son, Danton, Hughes's only child, was named after the French revolutionary Georges Danton. Danton Hughes, a sculptor, committed suicide in April 2001. He had been in a long term relationship with fashion designer Jenny Kee, who found his body on 15 April. Robert Hughes later wrote: "I miss Danton and always will, although we had been miserably estranged for years and the pain of his loss has been somewhat blunted by the passage of time".  Hughes was married to his second wife, Victoria Whistler, a housewife from California, from 1981 until a divorce in 1996.  In 1999, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal car accident south of Broome, Western Australia. He was returning from a fishing trip and driving on the wrong side of the road when he collided head on with another car carrying three occupants. He was trapped in the car for three hours before being airlifted to Perth in critical condition. Hughes was in a coma for five weeks after the crash. In a 2000 court hearing, Hughes's defence barrister alleged that the occupants of the other car had been transporting illicit drugs at the time of the accident and were at fault. In 2003 Hughes pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm and was fined A$2,500. He also allegedly described the crown prosecutor, Lloyd Rayney, as a "curry muncher", which resulted in a defamation action and out-of-court settlement. Hughes recounts the story of the accident and his recovery in the first chapter of his 2006 memoir Things I Didn't Know.  In 2001, Hughes wed his third wife, the American artist and art director Doris Downes. "Apart from being a talented painter, she saved my life, my emotional stability, such as it is", he said.

Answer the following question by taking a quote from the article: Was he injured?
He was trapped in the car for three hours before being airlifted to Perth in critical condition.