Doris Pilkington Garimara Obituary, Funeral

Doris Pilkington Garimara, best known as Doris Pilkington, was an Australian author. She was born on July 1, 1937 and died on 10 April 2014. She was 76 years.

She died in Perth, Western Australia of ovarian cancer.

Doris was born at Balfour Downs Station, near the north Western Australian settlement of Jigalong to her parents. Her father’s name is unknown.

She was named Nugi Garimara by her Molly Craig.

However, she was ‘renamed’ Doris after by Mary Dunnet, her mother’s employer at the station who thought Nugi was “a stupid name”.

She was taken from her mother to be raised at the Moore River mission when she was three and a half years old.

She reunited with her mother 21 years later.

Pilkington wrote Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996), a story about the stolen generation, and based on three Aboriginal girls.

Among the girls was her mother, Molly Craig, who escaped from the Moore River Native Settlement in Western Australia and travelled 2,414 km (1,500 miles) for nine weeks to return to their family.

She also authored: Under the Wintamarra Tree, Caprice, a Stockman’s Daughter and Home to Mother.

She was posthumously inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame in 2022.