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Desert Queen
- The Many Lives and Loves of Daisy Bates
- Narrated by: Beverley Dunn
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
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Editorial reviews
Susanna De Vries presents a complicated portrayal of Australia's beloved Daisy Bates. Born in Ireland to an alcoholic father and a mother who died from tuberculosis, Bates immigrated to Australia and gained notoriety for her ethnographic work with the Aborigines. But De Vries provokes controversy by looking into Bates' scandalous love life, starting with presumed misconduct that led to suicide while she was a governess in Ireland, and documenting her many marriages. Despite the more unsavory aspects of Bates' life, Beverley Dunn performs with a posh, stern strength that commands respect for one of Australia's most influential women.
Publisher's Summary
In the 1890s, when a woman's role was seen as marrying well and raising a family, Daisy Bates reinvented herself from humble governess to heiress-traveller and 'woman of science'. She would become one of the best-known and most controversial ethnologists in history, and one of the first people to put Aboriginal culture on the map. Born into tough circumstances, Daisy's prospects were dim; her father an alcoholic bootmaker, her mother dying of consumption when Daisy was only four years old. Through sheer strength of will, young Daisy overcame her miserable start, and in 1883 she migrated to Australia with a boatload of orphans, passing herself off as an heiress who taught for fun. Marriage followed – first with the young Breaker Morant, then bigamously with two other husbands. For decades she led a double life. But who was the real Daisy Bates? While other biographies have presented her as a saint, historian Susanna de Vries gives readers a more complex portrait of the 'Queen of the Never Never'.
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- Anonymous User
- 31-01-2019
Good but narrator's voice does not suit book
Interesting book although narrator's voice is annoying. Too English sounding for a book about Australia.
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