Daisy Bates in the Desert

By Julia Blackburn

Published Feb 2004

In 1913, when she was fifty-four years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. And there she stayed, with occasional interruptions, for almost thirty years. She left a detailed record of her life in her letters, her articles, her book The Passing of the Aborigines, and in notes scribbled on paper bags, old railway timetables an even scraps of newspaper.

In Daisy Bates in the Desert Julia Blackburn explores the ancient and desolate landscape where Ms Bates says she was most happy. She fuses her own imagination and experience with that of Daisy Bates, until she seems to be recalling this other life as if it were her own.

Brilliant…enchanting.

Jan Morris

Full of vivid, astonishing images…This is the story of a remarkable individual life.

The Times