When Doris was aged three and a half, she was taken from her mother to be raised at the Moore River mission. Doris’s birth was unregistered, and her birthday was recorded as being 1 July 1937 by the Department of Native Affairs.
Her mother Molly named her Nugi Garimara, but Molly’s employer Mary Dunnet insisted on calling her Doris. ‘These adults who conditioned and indoctrinated the Aboriginal children in their care were confident that the children would lose all memories of their actual families and thus their Aboriginal heritage.’ĭoris Pilkington was born at Balfour Downs Station, near the north Western Australian settlement of Jigalong in 1937. Like ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’, it illustrates how young lives can be damaged, even with the best of (misguided) intentions.
‘Under the Wintamarra Tree’ is the story of Doris Pilkington, the daughter of Molly whose heroic trek was the subject of the book ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’, made into a film by Phillip Noyce in 2002. ‘When the sun was high and the heat uncomfortable, the Mardudjara women returned to camp, their wirnis filled with wamula.
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