Three young girls are taken, against their will, to the Moore River Native Settlement far from their home with the Martu people in the Western Desert of northern Western Australia. Molly (aged 14), Daisy (aged 11) and Gracie (aged 8) have been removed by police in the 1930s and brought south because they are ‘muda-muda’ (their fathers are white). Molly’s father had come to Jigalong to work on the rabbit-proof fence. Throughout her childhood, he had shared his knowledge of it with her. The girls escape the Settlement and walk north, surviving on what they can catch and eat with help from kind adults, both Aboriginal people and white people. Their resourcefulness and dogged leadership from Molly ensures that they are not caught, and that they end up back with their families.
Doris Pilkington Garimara’s successful memoir, ‘Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence’ was first published in 1996. A best-selling book which was made into a movie in 2002, it details the journey of the three girls, with compelling historical context of the impact of colonial contact on the Aboriginal people of the West leading up to this event.
Garimara says in the Introduction to ‘Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence’: ‘The task of reconstructing the trek home from the [Moore River] Settlement has been both an exhausting and an interesting experience …. Molly, Daisy and Gracie were outside familiar territory so I found it necessary to become a 10-year-old girl again in order to draw on my own childhood memories of the countryside surrounding the settlement. In my mind I walk the same paths and called on my skills as a writer to describe the scenery and how it looked through their eyes.’
As the title change indicates, Garimara has not condensed the memoir but rewritten it as an epic adventure for young readers. Molly leads Gracie and Daisy away from their bad situation but their reactions to her bossing them can be easily related by young people. An early encounter with the ‘marlbu’ – a giant hairy man – personifies the very real dangers of pursuit and capture that they faced. Their trek of 2,414 kilometres (1,500 miles) for nine weeks is the longest recorded walk by unaccompanied children in Australia’s history.
A list of Mardujara words is provided, but no pronunciation guide. Within the text, the first time that a word appears in language, the English translation is provided in brackets. A map of Western Australia is provided showing the girls’ routes south to Moore River and then north to home. The Rabbit-Proof Fence is not shown on the map.
Doris Pilkington Garimara was a Martu woman. Illustrator Janice Lyndon is a Noongar woman.
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
