Coo-ee is a regular column highlighting events in Benalla’s history.
When Breaker Morant left for South Africa in 1900, he left behind a wife who became famous in her own right.
Margaret Dwyer was born in County Tipperary, Ireland in 1859.
At the age of 23, amid a sexual scandal, she emigrated to Australia and re-invented herself as Daisy.
Two years later, in Charters Towers in 1884, Daisy married Breaker Morant, a man with his own secrets.
The marriage lasted barely 12 months before Daisy left the Breaker.
She re-located to Bathurst, in NSW and re-invented herself.
Shortly afterward, in 1885, Daisy married Jack Bates, while still married to Morant.
Bates was also a wanderer and this second “marriage” was no happier than the first.
Daisy Bates “married” another man, Ernest Baglehole, in Sydney, also in 1885.
Daisy had a son, Arnold, in 1886. She claimed Bates was the boy’s father.
In 1894, she took a ship to Britain, leaving behind all three husbands and son.
There, arriving penniless, Daisy re-invented herself again and gained work as a journalist for the Review of Reviews.
It, at that time, specialised in investigative campaigns into working-class conditions.
Gradually, Daisy developed connections in London’s intellectual milieu.
In 1899, The Times published a letter about atrocities against Aboriginals in Western Australia. Daisy offered to investigate the truth of the story for the publication.
The Times accepted her offer and Daisy sailed back to Australia in August 1899.
Daisy travelled around the interior of Western Australia ascertaining conditions and writing articles.
She re-united with, and finally separated from, Jack Bates in 1902 after a droving expedition they undertook together.
For the next 40 years, she travelled around Australia’s interior, studying indigenous culture, languages and customs.
She earned a meagre living from more than 270 newspaper articles, and by providing expert information on indigenous affairs to state governments.
Dressed always in her Edwardian lady’s costume and armed only with an umbrella, Daisy lived alone with several tribal groups, but primarily at Ooldea at the edge of the Nullarbor.
The first Western Australian survey expedition that travelled to the Kimberley at this time was armed like a military expedition.
Daisy published scientific and anthropological papers regularly.
Many of her papers were read at learned societies like the Royal Society.
She attended scientific conferences on occasion and gave talks. Her books and papers provided a structure for later research.
As time went on, Daisy also became an forceful, if patronising, advocate for aboriginals.
Daisy lived with tribal groups and continued her work until prevented by failing health in 1945.
She died in Adelaide in 1951 at the age of 91. Daisy was awarded a CBE in 1934.
There is one final connection with Morant.
His lawyer, James Thomas, conducted a 15-year long correspondence with Daisy.
The correspondence was mainly about indigenous matters, but personal matters intruded from time to time.
Thomas never knew that Daisy, the woman he so admired, was the polyandrous wife of his former client.
– John Barry, Coo-ee