Daisy Bates in the Desert: A Woman's Life Among the Aborigines

Blackburn ( The Emperor's Last Island ) here presents a biography of the extraordinarily determined and independent Daisy Bates who, in 1913, at age 54, removed herself from England to Australia's red desert outback as a self-appointed champion of the Aborigines. She remained there until her death in 1956. She not only shared the Aborigines way of life but so gained their confidence that she was made privy to the men's secret rites. The author traces Bates's steps and draws on her voluminous notebooks and letters, which reveal her as an acute observer of nature and a gifted writer whose works were imbued with dreams and hallucinations. Blackburn superbly fills in gaps with her own research and sympathetic imagination, while preserving the enchantment that Bates herself wove. (Aug.)