National Network for Equitable Library Service

In the 1890s when most women were content to marry well, Daisy Bates, an Irish-born, former charity case orphan, reinvented herself from governess to heiress to anthropologist. She would become one of the best known, and most controversial anthropologists in history, and one of the first people to put Aboriginal culture on the map with her study of language and kinship ties. When she migrated to Australia, she was able to pass herself off as an heiress who taught for fun. Marriage followed, first to the young Breaker Morant, then to two other husbands with whom she was guilty of bigamy. But her lack of convention went deeper than her private life; at a time when white Australia mostly turned its back on Aboriginal life, Daisy set out to live among West Australian tribes and document their culture.