Person

Bates, Daisy May (1863 - 1951)

CBE

Born
16 October 1863
Tipperary, Ireland
Died
18 April 1951
Prospect, South Australia, Australia
Occupation
Anthropologist
Alternative Names
  • O'Dwyer, Daisy May (maiden name)

Summary

Daisy Bates worked for many years as a welfare worker amongst the Aboriginal tribes of Western Australia and through this she built up an extensive anthropological knowledge of Aboriginal cultures which she recorded in numerous articles and her autobiography. The Aboriginals gave her the affectionate name of "Kabbarli", meaning grandmotherly person. Her place in Australian folk-lore has been formalised by the opera, "The young Kabbarlie", written by Lady Casey to music by Margaret Sutherland.

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Details

Chronology

1884
Life event - Arrived in Australia
1884 - 1885
Career position - Governess at Berry, New South Wales
1894 - 1899
Career position - Study of journalism on the Review of Reviews, London
1899 - 1900
Career position - Trappist mission to Beagle Bay in the north of Broome
1904
Career position - Appointed by the Western Australian Government to research the tribes of the State
1910
Career position - Member of an expedition led by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (q.v.) to study the social anthropology of Aboriginals of the north-west
1912 - 1914
Career position - Camped at Eucla
1915 - 1918
Career position - Camped at Eucla
1918 - 1934
Career position - Aboriginal welfare work at Ooldea
1934
Award - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
1935 - 1940
Career position - Wrote her autobiography My natives and I, in a tent at Pyap
1941 - 1945
Career position - Lived in Wynbring, east of Ooldea
1945 - 1951
Career position - Lived in Adelaide

Archival resources

Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1900 - 1951, SR 572.994 B32t; Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide. Details

Fryer Library and Department of Special Collections, University of Queensland

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1930 - 1951; Fryer Library and Department of Special Collections, University of Queensland. Details

JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1904 - 1911, ACC 1023; JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia. Details
  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1922 - 1935, ACC 856A; JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia. Details
  • Daisy May Bates - Records, ACC 1212A; JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia. Details

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1900 - 1951; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1900 - 1951, MN 1406; National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection. Details

South Australian Museum Archives

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1900 - 1951, AA23; South Australian Museum Archives. Details

State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1900 - 1950, PRG 878; State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana. Details

State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection

  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1905 - 1913, MS 9290; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details
  • Daisy May Bates - Records, 1918 - 1946, MS 7987; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

  • McCarthy, Gavan; Morgan, Helen; Smith, Ailie; van den Bosch, Alan, Where are the Women in Australian Science?, Exhibition of the Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, First published 2003 with lists updated regulary edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, 2003, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/wisa/wisa.html. Details

Books

  • Bates, Daisy, The Passing of the Aborigines: a Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia (London: Murray, 1938), 258 pp. Details
  • Bates, Daisy, Nullabor Aboriginal vocabularies and ethnographic notes (Carlisle, W.A.: Hesperian Press, 2019), 16 pp. Details
  • Bates, Daisy; edited by Isobel White, The Native Tribes of Western Australia (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1985), 387 pp. Details
  • Blackburn, Julia, Daisy Bates in the Desert (London: Secker and Warburg, 1994), 232 pp. Details
  • De Vries, Susanna, Desert queen: the many lives of Daisy Bates (Pymble, N.S.W.: HarperCollins, 2008), 294 pp. Details
  • Hill, Ernestine, Kabbarli: a personal memoir Daisy Bates (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973), 173 pp. Details
  • Hogan, Eleanor, Into the loneliness: the unholy alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2021), 426 pp. Details
  • Marcus, Julie, First in their field: women and Australian anthropology (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1989), 205 pp. Details
  • Reece, Bob, Daisy Bates: grand dame of the desert (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2007), 204 pp. Details
  • Salter, Elizabeth, Daisy Bates: "the Great White Queen of the Never Never" (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1971), 266 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Mulvaney, D. J., 'Daisy May Bates, 1859-1951' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
  • Standish, Ann, '"Devoted Service to a Dying Race"?: Daisy Bates and the Passing of the Aborigines' in Citizenship, Women and Social Justice: International Historical Perspectives, Joy Damousi and Katherine Ellinghaus, eds (Melbourne: Department of History, University of Melbourne, 1999). Details
  • Thieberger, Nick, 'Daisy Bates in the digital world' in Language, land and song: studies in honour of Luise Hercus, Austin, Peter K., Koch, Harold and Simpson, Jane, eds (London: EL Publishing, 2017), pp. 102-14. http://www.elpublishing.org.PID.2008. Details
  • White, Isobel, 'Daisy Bates: Legend and Reality' in First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, Julie Marcus, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993). Details
  • Wright, R. V. S., 'Bates, Daisy May (1863-1951), welfare worker among Aboriginals and anthropologist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 7: 1891 - 1939 A-Ch, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979), pp. 208-209. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070209b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

  • Barrington, Robin, 'Unravelling the Yamaji imaginings of Alexander Morton and Daisy Bates', Aboriginal history, 39 (2015), 26-61. Details
  • Bates, Daisy M., 'Aborigines of the west coast of South Australia : vocabularies and ethnographic notes', Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, 42 (1918), 152-67. Details
  • Hiatt, L., 'The Rise and Fall of Daisy O'Dwyer', Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2 (2006), 111-115. Details
  • McGregor, William, 'Daisy Bates' documentations of Kimberley languages', Language and history, 55 (2) (2012), 79-101. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

Reviews

  • Hogan, Eleanor, Into the loneliness: the unholy alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates (2021)
    Brock, Peggy, Aboriginal history, 45, (2021), 205-8. Details
  • Hogan, Eleanor, Into the loneliness: the unholy alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates (2021)
    Coote, Anne, Historical Records of Australian Science, 33 (1), (2022), 73, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR22902. Details
  • Hogan, Eleanor, Into the loneliness: the unholy alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates (2021)
    Gall, Adam, Australian historical studies, 53 (2), (2022), 358-9. Details

See also

  • Alexander, John A. ed., Who's who in Australia 1944 (Melbourne, Victoria: The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, 1944), 906 pp. Details
  • Clarke, Philip A., 'The Aboriginal Australian cosmic landscape, part 2: plant connections with the skyworld', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 18 (1) (2015), 23-37. Details
  • Leaman, Trevor M.; and Hamacher, Duane W., 'Aboriginal Astronomical Traditions From Ooldea, South Australia, Part 1: Nyeerund and "The Orion Story"', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 17 (2) (2014), 180-94. Details

McCarthy, G.J.

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 26 February 2018

EOAS ID: biogs/P000975b.htm

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