Doris Pilkington Garimara, famously known as Doris Pilkington, was an Australian author. She was born on 1 July 1937 and died of ovarian cancer on 10 April 2014. She was 76 years.
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Doris was born at Balfour Downs Station, near the north Western Australian settlement of Jigalong. Her father is unknown.
She was named Nugi Garimara by her mother, Molly Craig.
Was Doris Pilkington Garimara Married?
Doris was married to a man known as Mr. Pilkington.
In an interview with Hecate, an Australian feminist journal, Doris described her husband as a very hard man.
Image Source: Rex Features
She said:
“My husband was a very, very hard man.”
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“He could be warm and loving when he wanted to be, but that side I didn’t see much.”
Who Is Doris Pilkington Garimara?
Doris Pilkington Garimara, famously known as Doris Pilkington, was an Australian author.
Born Nugi Garimara, she was ‘renamed’ Doris by Mary Dunnet, Molly’s employer at the station who regarded Nugi as “a stupid name”.
When she was three and a half years old, she was taken from her mother to be raised at the Moore River mission.
She has a younger sister, Annabelle, who was also taken and was told she was an orphan, and over the years distanced herself from her Aboriginal heritage.
Doris was reunited with her mother 21 years later.
Doris was born on 1 July 1937 and died of ovarian cancer on 10 April 2014 at age 76.
She was posthumously inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame in 2022, 8 years after her passing.
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