Daisy Bates in the Desert

by Julia Blackburn

In 1913, when she was 54 years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. And there she stayed, with occasional interruptions, for almost 30 years.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, unitl she seems to be recalling this other life as it it were her own.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Australia, History, Travel, Biography Memoir, International

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 1994

About the author

Julia Blackburn is the author of several other works of nonfiction, including Charles Waterton and The Emperor’s Last Island, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her most recent book, Old Man Goya, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Blackburn lives in England and Italy.

Reviews

[Kimber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julia Blackburn is in my opinion one of the most innovative mixers of fact and fiction. Her non-fiction books are her narritive of putting the puzzle together. Because she makes her voice present, it allows the reader to consider their own voice in the story.

The women in this book reminds me a little of my grandmother, a women who has always found interesting ways to ficitionalize her life so that it becomes larger than life.

I don't often read books twice and this one I try to read once a year.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truth and fiction seem to be scattered through the narrative, a biography of Daisy Bates who spent much of her life living in Australia and with or near the native peoples. Blackburn uses source materials, interviews and personal histories to try and discern the details of Bates' life. Bates held on to her independence against almost overwhelming challenges of governmental regulations, societal expectations and financial insecurity. Perhaps she was mad, or made mad by her experiences and lifestyle choices. A good read

--Ashland Mystery

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are people who did worse things to the First People of Australia - but what she did was bad enough. Her sensationalising portrayals of the people who looked after her during her self-exile in the desert reinforced all the popular prejudices about them. She used them to prop up her own fragile ego.

Blackburn does her best to make an interesting story emerge from the mish-mash of lies, half-truths and concealments that Bates left behind her. It reads well, but leaves the real life ungraspable.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daisy Bates must have been quite a woman. Had not heard of her before the book title caught my eye. Julia Blackburn does a good job with the material and maybe catches her essence a time or two. Daisy spent long years living with and among aborigines, cataloging their language, healing methids, their communal ways with nature (cannot live in houses as they cannot see the stars) and is considered by them to be somewhat of a magical grandmother from the dreamtime.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book, to be savored, IMO, by anyone who appreciates learning about an indomitable woman who lived her life her own way, as well as anyone with an interest in the Aboriginals of Australia - and what happened to them.

[Thalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book about a very remarkable woman. I enjoyed the author's voice and the way she could describe events in a brief but still evocative manner. For someone who is interested in a biography or travelogue, but not something that is 700 pages, I would recommend this book.

[Susan Schefflein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at those years in Australia.

[Siffy Torkildson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! What a fascinating person, and a good writer.

[MaryL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nice and interesting story about Daisy Bates who lived a very unusual life Amon the Aborigine people of Australia. At first I was a little bothered about how the author may have taken creative license to make up Daisy Bates' thoughts and experiences. As I read further, I realized how the author had to create what she could from Mrs. Bates' diaries and other writing. The author clearly states at the beginning of the book that Daisy was not truthful about her life and often created stories that made her life seem more exciting than it really was particularly when it came to how wealthy (not) she was. I enjoyed how lyrical and dreamy the language was. I came to believe that Daisy had some kind of mental or emotional instability. Was it a messiah complex? Yes, definitely. Was it grandiosity? Yes. It was very interesting how she cut herself off from her son and from her husband. Yet she seemed to yearn for her son to come back to her. This was a very good book.

[JKC · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tale of a woman famous in Australia as having lived with and advocated for the Aborigines during the time of White colonization in the 1800s. Part legend, part history, part Daisy's own made up stories, and part the invention of the author, who scrupulously went through Daisy's journals and whatever was available, including visiting sites related to Daisy's life. The author acknowledges she has put a personal spin on the story, weaving in some of her own memories, and fancifying to a degree what could have happened; still heftily supplemented with the available documentation on Daisy, a remarkable woman, or at least a unique one, a stranger among her own people, who felt at home only with the original people of Australia, who called her Kabbarli, white grandmother. An education on a not often considered part of history and a reminder of the insidious plague of racism, clannish behavior, religious bigotry, and patriarchal exploitation.

[JL Salty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating : pg for descriptions of aboriginal life, frank understanding that sex exists in the world, in positive and negative ways.
Recommend: biography readers - this one is pretty brilliantly laid out. And anyone curious about native Australian life. Hs and up.

The author uses the first 1/3 of the book to lay out the truth of daisy bates’s life, the middle section to speak in daisy’s own voice, and the last section to share stories from those who knew daisy in the last years of her life.

What a fascinating book, both for the woman herself - was she just insane? But the work she tried to do? Wow - and for the culture that she worked so hard to help, to save, to protect.

Publication date 1994, it reads a little like a classic, but it’s definitely worth the time.

[Phyllis Fredericksen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally enjoy memoirs of women who have travelled to exotic locales in the 19th or 20th century. This seemed to fit the bill....but it was confusing to say the least. Daisy Bates lived with the Aborigines in Australia for most of her adult life. She wrote about her experiences; however, most of what she wrote was untrue.. at least it could not be substantiated. The author states that she travelled in Daisy's footsteps and talked to people who might have known her. But the result is s book filled with Daisy's dream of her life. She was a real person and she did live with the Aborigines. Nothing else is known definitively about her life. An okay read.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, fiction but sometimes almost non fiction. I think it is a fictional account but the sources for what is being said are openly explored as they are explained.

Bates comes across as a Mother Theresa type, the European woman who clings to another culture and brings some comfort but much destruction and emerges with her own reputation enhanced. And with never a doubt that she was right and knew better than anyone else.

It is a lovely picture of the red soil land around Ooldea. I have only a faint impression of how Daisy Bates clung to existence in the desert with few resources or sustenance. It all seems precarious.

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautifully written and with such a delicate touch. The sources of the imagined details of Daisy Bates life were made clear through perfectly integrated references to letters, objects, places and photos. The way Daisy fabricated memories was brilliantly evoked, including an evocation of her feverish state when ill and under nourished. The tragic history of the time was clearly shown without sensationalism, polemic or extreme emotion.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Language and Vocabulary The language used in this book is formal and demonstrates a wide range of vocabulary. The sentences are well-constructed and follow standard grammatical rules. This makes the reading process smooth and professional. You can view the full glossary of terms at the following link. >>> https://script.google.com/macros/s/AK...

[Deedee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is Fiction. I'm giving it one star because it is marketed as Non-Fiction.

The thinking goes like this: Daisy Bates lies about her past. In some cases, she just makes things up that are demonstrably untrue. Julie Blackburn debunks (some) of those items. Then, Julie Blackburn makes things up about Daisy Bates life, and that forms the basis of this book.

Not for me.

[Jane E · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fictionalization of Daisy Bates doesn't work particularly well because the stories are based on records from the subject herself and others whose paths intersected with hers so it isn't really fiction. It also seemed a bit thin. Perhaps there wasn't really much to say that hadn't already been said in non-fiction form. (Purchased secondhand at the Strand Bookshop, NYC)

[Natira]

Ich hatte eine Biographie erwartet ... Nun weist die Autorin durchaus zu Beginnd arauf hin, dass sie sich Daisy Bates annähert. Aber aber dem 2. Teil wechselt die Erzählstimme dann von der Autorin zu Daisy Bates und da habe ich das Buch dann abgebrochen, weil hier für mich zu sehr verschwimmt, ob bzw. was tatsächlich faktenbasiert ist.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not alot is known about Daisy Bates life. We know she lied alot and may have been commissioned to live with the aborigines as a writer. This book felt disjointed. The author gave few real facts and mostly imagined what she thought happened. Historical fiction wrapped around moments of truth.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK partly fictional biography of a Victorian lady who lived among the aborigines in Southern Australia from early 1900s to about 1950 or so. Not much is known so author makes up things, but it is very well done. A lost woman among a lost people.

[Travelmaven · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is clearly well researched, and the author has passion for what she's writing. I'm not sure if it's the writing style, or that I wasn't expecting it to be the way it was...it just wasn't what I was in the mood for or could embrace. I wanted more of the Aboriginal culture, too.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an almost interesting book about a mentally strange woman who lived a life almost no one would want. Not sure how much is true but it appears she really lived in a shack?/tent for years. Weird.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loved "These is My Words" and thought this might be similar, but I just couldn't get into the book at all, I did not like the style of writing, and cannot recommend this.

[Kristine · Rating 2 out of 5]

She seemed like an interesting enough lady, but I just wasn't really able to relate, or cared to relate to her. She didn't keep my interest.

[Jeff Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a woman.. stoic and determined, way ahead of her time.. enlightening read

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago and it sticks in my mind as having been a great read, though I don't recall many of the details of Daisy Bates's life.

[Carol Maiocco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aborigine Interactions

Sympathetic views of Aborigines interacting with a white woman in the 20th century. A knowledgeable and credible tellingly the story.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lyrical evocation of the Australian Outback and the eccentric Irish woman who inhabited it for 30 years.

[Gerard de Bruin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briljant. Ik ontdek nu dat die typische Blackburnstijl, waarin de schrijfster voortdurend door het geschreven schemert, en soms even in het verhaal stapt, er al vanaf het eerste begin is geweest.
Haar aarzelingen, overdenkingen, maar ook de poëtische vertelwijze zijn hier al prominent aanwezig. Daisy Bates wordt puntgaaf geportretteerd en is voortdurend 'sprekend' aanwezig. Maar ze spreekt met Julia Blackburn's stem.

Bij een boek als The Three of Us, een autobiografie, sprak dat vanzelf, maar inmiddels is mij duidelijk dat alles wat Blackburn schrijft tenminste óók autobiografisch is.

[Liralen · Rating 2 out of 5]

What an odd duck of a book. Daisy Bates was from Ireland originally but settled in Australia in her twenties. She married twice, though neither union sounds happy. And...eventually she moved to the Outback, where she remained for nearly thirty years, to live among Aborigines.

Bates sounds like a fascinating character, although information about her seems to be limited -- her accounts, according to Blackburn, were often contradictory and could not really be trusted. It sounds as though she may have been dissatisfied with her childhood and have come up with a version that suited her better. But the bigger story is that of her time in Australia, and of that...well, it's hard to tell what's real and what's not, and that troubles me. The back of the book describes Blackburn's retelling as a 'triumphant work of investigation and imagination', but it is imagination that seems to take root most strongly. A huge chunk of the book (120-odd pages) is written as though from the perspective of Bates, such that it is impossible to know how much Blackburn uncovered in her research and how much she just...imagined.

I admit to having put myself at a disadvantage here: I put my reading of the book on hold for a couple of weeks to read library books while on holiday, and my stopping point happened to come right before this shift into first-person 'Bates'. So I was perhaps a bit more discombobulated by it than I might have been otherwise. But honestly...I wanted more fact and less supposition; if there was a limited amount of information available on Bates, that's one thing, but I can't say that this work brought me a great deal of clarity.

Another reviewer described this as an 'experimental biography', which seems accurate. Would probably work quite well for many readers. Didn't work for me.