OUR FORMIDABLE OLIVE
“ … Alice Springs is … a modern Sodom and Gomorrah …”
This was Olive Pink’s unbiased view of the outback town in the 1920s.
Tall, upright, with a sometimes hard and challenging gaze, Olive Pink was a strange and brilliant lady who once strode the streets of Alice Springs like a crusading knight, grimly opposed to injustice, cant and bureaucratic stupidity.
Her steely gaze melted the courage of strong men, and her eccentricities are, to this day, a subject for discussion and amusement. Quite obviously, the formidable Olive did not endure fools, not even with a modicum of politeness.
Olive Muriel Pink was born on March 17, 1884, into a Church of England family, in Hobart. During her formative years she studied Anthropology at the University of Sydney and was secretary of the Anthropological Society of New South Wales.
Under Benjamin Sheppard she studied art in Tasmania and later joined Julian Ashton’s art classes in Sydney.
In Perth (WA), in 1911-12, Olive Pink offered art lessons to young painters in her private studio.
As an admirer of earlier radical female spirits, Annie Lock and Daisy Bates, in the late 1920s, Olive Pink, aged in her mid-40s, travelled for the first time to Central Australia to sketch botanical specimens, returning in 1933 with a grant from the Australian National Research Council to undertake a desert expedition, her purpose being to observe the Aranda and Warlpiri tribal people. Her only companions were Aboriginal men and camels.
During these years of depression, she camped with her Aboriginal companions at Thompson’s Rockhole, west of the Granites goldfields. At this stage of her life she had rather radical attitudes towards the police and missionaries, claiming both should be barred from entering Aboriginal reserves. Her papers and magazine articles, written in a large, bold script, were printed in such publications as “Oceania,” (1936) and, a year earlier, one of her papers was read at a Melbourne Science Congress.
Olive Pink – now becoming renowned as a freelance anthropologist, activist and artist – established contact with anthropologist-author-minister, Professor Adolphus Peter Elkin, sometimes exchanging “13-page letters”, and berating the academic in one instance for “ringing the death knell of (the Aboriginal) race.” Elkin had suggested that unacceptable tribal customs might be supplanted with others less offensive to European-Christian sensibilities. Olive boldly ventured to challenge the morality of his science.
Closer to home, Olive was also crossing swords with such people as the acting manager of Wallis Fogarty’s store, Mr. A. Morgan, in Alice Springs. On September 12, 1942, she wrote: “On the Granites Track … I wish to draw your attention to yet further crookedness (of which I have witnesses). The bottle of “kerosene” (for use on journey) and marked KEROSENE – which you sent on (late) by Mr. Pat Chapman (in a wired butterbox) … would not light (lamp). It did not even smell, except faintly, of kerosene and when poured on fire (some of it) it did not flare up or smell of kerosene. It was evidently MOSTLY WATER. This was serious enough. And crooked. But what is criminal is that you, yourself, packed me 6 bottles of (alleged) PURE (Ship’s) lime juice – for which you said you “sent to Adelaide especially” – as I refused to have Lime Juice Cordial. As it was for my health. Yet you have sent Lime Juice Cordial, but WITH PAPER PASTED OVER THE WORD CORDIAL … Sheer fraud …”
Always a prolific letter writer, in 1933 Miss Pink (as she was respectfully addressed) wrote again to the Rev. Pro. Elkin, but this time in a more affable tone: “My camp (now at Oonmudgee) is in a rather beautiful spot between three white gums. But ‘dirty’ because naturally stony, and when stones cleared away it leaves a fine chocolate soil exposed which blows everywhere when there is any wind. My blouse (through its nightly wash so coloured) is turning from cream to cocoa coloured! And so (with the sun) is my face!”
However, the Pink-Elkin relationship rapidly deteriorated when she came to realise her colleague wanted her to document only women’s issues. She wrote to a friend: “It would be no use talking to the women about the things Dr. Elkin wants me to investigate … I am not fond of the company of my own sex for long …I like talking about ‘things’ – ideas – and beliefs, not food and babies and ornaments and love affairs and all the things a really womanly woman should …”
Pro. Elkin wrote of her in unflattering terms, noting: “Miss Pink was one of those crosses generous academics … had to endure … Sometimes mistaken … for Daisy Bates, she affected the same dust-dragging Edwardian skirts, starched shirt fronts, poke bonnet and, of course, a pink parasol. We were all much relieved when she took off …”
Miss Pink recorded her impressions of the Alice Springs township thus: “An hotel is a horrid place to stay at … but there is nothing any better. Drunkenness (or wife beating) everywhere almost in this town. I loathe Alice Springs and shall be thankful to be among natives again and under canvas among gum trees. This is a modern Sodom and Gomorrah … Alice Springs in a nauseating place – its social life (not the country). I feel I’d like to have (a spiritual) Turkish Bath …”
Somewhere out on the trackless wastes of the Tanami Desert in the 1930s, Miss Pink was noticed by a traveller “trudging along … with her food supply of watermelons slung over her shoulder.” She steadfastly refused a lift from the male motorist. When the driver became insistent, Olive threatened to assault him with her bag of watermelons.
In yet another story Olive told against herself, she liked to tell friends of the time she came across a lone man living by himself in the bush.
Confronting the stranger, she told him: “Look here, I’ve got a rifle, so don’t try any funny business.”
The bushman responded: “Don’t worry, lady, your face is your defence.”
United Church minister’s wife, Maisie McKenzie, in her book, “No Town Like Alice,” mentions meeting Olive Pink on an Alice Springs street soon after their arrival in town, describing her as “lean, with a patrician face and cultured voice … (wearing) a man’s fur felt hat, a long tailored suit, a collar and tie, and gloves.”
“Oh, so you are the new minister,” Miss Pink said. “ … What does your church mean by condoning bridal gowns for pregnant girls? It’s sheer hypocrisy to ask the couple ‘Will you?’ when they already have.”
Of officialdom in any form, she said: “Until we jetison camouflage and hypocrisy in our culture, we shall not be properly ‘civilized’ or fit to ‘civilize’ others. For instance, why don’t you doctors openly and publicly face the venereal disease question instead of camouflaging the apalling sexual morality there is (and among our own sex particularly) … We go to Central Australia ‘converting’ blacks, and teaching them the Ten Commandments, when it would seem a very large percentage of white men do not even bother to think of ‘thou shalt not commit adultery …”
A member of the Anthropological Society said: “She became the bane of patrol officers, especially when deciding to study Warlpiri tribal life which, while investigating their copulation on a night of full moon, led her to be all but fatally clubbed …”
In 1952, the Alice Springs journalist, Jim Bowditch, opened his door early one morning in response to loud knocking. As he tentatively opened the door to peer out, he sprang back in shock as 68-year-old Miss Pink brought down her umbrella on his head like a club.
The old lady snarled: “How dare you,” then stalked away without offering any explanation for the assault.
“This was only a few weeks after starting my first full-time job as a journalist … (on) ‘The Centralian Advocate’”, he recorded in his autobiography, “Whispers In The North.”
“The pages of every Advocate were carefully searched, but nothing was found that could reasonably, or unreasonably, have been … offensive to Miss Pink …When the lady next saw me … she was friendly …Not a word was mentioned about the brolly incident.”
Bowditch and Pink had another documented meeting. During an interview with the Administrator of the Northern Territory, Mick Driver, the two men were discussing governmental policies on Aboriginal matters when Olive Pink burst through the office door “brandishing a file of papers”. Following gingerly on her heels was a rather frightened public servant who was trying to curtail her angry rush. Miss Pink brusquely pushed aside the bureaucrat, leaned over the Administrator’s desk and smacked him twice across the face with her pile of papers.
She sneered: “Please read them, Mr Driver, you may learn something before you interfere in matters concerning Aboriginal people – matters about which you and your Canberra masters know absolutely nothing.”
In the 1950s Olive Pink purchased for “five pounds” ($10) a rough ex-army hut standing on the corner of Gregory Terrace and Todd Street, in Alice Springs. When her immediate neighbours, the local Fire Brigade, wearing only shorts, hosed each other on searing summer days, yelling and squealing in fun, Miss Pink, dressed conservatively from neck to toe, admonished them for their indecency. On other days, feeling more tolerant, she presented the men with oranges from her backyard tree.
At one time Olive Pink, in a prickly mood, complained to the Alice Springs aerodrome authorities that their pilots were flying over her roofless shower, trying to observe her nakedness. It was explained that her house was on the flight path of departing aircraft and they all altered direction in the vicinity of her hut; the pilots were entirely innocent and were not at all interested in her female charms. she was firmly assured.
Although she seemed to grudgingly accept the explanation, she was always noticed to glance suspiciously at any aeroplanes circling above her house.
An Alice Springs newspaper of January 8, 1954, carried a tongue-in-cheek report of an unnamed local woman who had aggravated local firemen to a point of staging a strike.
The woman’s “unceasing criticism” caused the entire brigade (six part-time men and two permanent officers) to resign en masse.
One part-timer said: “It might not sound much, but we get two shillings (40 cents) an hour … and I want that much a minute to put up with it. It just isn’t worth it …”
The disgruntled firemen informed the Northern Territory Administration (NTA) that if “a certain woman” was barred from the station premises, or was removed from her place of abode, or the fire station was shifted, they would return to work.
Firemen complained that the offensive woman was for ever making verbal personal attacks and complaining unjustly to the authorities about their “personal habits”: playing their radio at too high a volume, not dressing properly, entertaining women on the premises, etc.
It was explained that the Alice Springs fire brigade was manned seven nights per week by part-time firemen while permanent officers were on duty during the day but were on call 24 hours of each day.
Complaints of the woman appeared to be heeded by the NTA, the men said, while their own views were largely ignored.
Following intensive negotiations, an assurance was given to the strikers that “certain steps would be taken.” The firemen then agreed to return to their duties, thus ending one of the “strangest industrial disputes on record.”
An avowed advocate for Aboriginal rights, she regularly attended court proceedings in Alice Springs and openly argued with magistrates over tribal law and lore. When crusading, she wrote to government departments and other authorities demanding justice for her beloved underdogs.
A newspaper report mentions an occasion when the irrepressible Miss Pink, for reasons best known to herself, requested permission to look through His Majesty’s Gaol, near Billy Goat Hill, in Alice Springs. When the request was rejected by the officer-in-charge, Phil Muldoon, the angry anthropologist decided on another ploy: she entered an Aboriginal Reserve without an official permit and was summoned to court where she was proclaimed “guilty” and her penalty was to pay a fine or undertake a brief internment in “Muldoon’s Guest House.” When Olive Pink chose the latter option, Phil Muldoon, in a panic, “lost no time in racing down to the Court House to pay her fine” from his own pocket. Thwarted by yet another bureaucrat, Olive acidly referred to Phil Muldoon as “His Holiness the Pope,” and his precious gaol as “Vatican City.”
The police at Alice Springs called Olive Pink “Public Nuisance Number One.”
When the Australian Arid Regions Native Floral Reserve was gazetted in 1956, Olive Pink applied for a floral reserve area and, when successful, was its first curator. She was assisted by an Aboriginal helper, Johnny Tambbijinja Yannarilyi, who assisted the old lady for 12 years until his death. Her nature reserve cultivated flora from 200 kms around Alice Springs. Many of the plants were named after officials. If treated unfairly by that person, she deliberately neglected to water his namesake – thus venting her spite against the culprit.
On April 6, 1974, Miss Pink wrote to Dr. H. C. Coombs, seeking his support for her Floral Reserve, saying: “I love every inch of this 49 acres, and do want it preserved for posterity and Alice Springs … I ask you to do all in your power to find a Curator (a West Australian, if possible), a full-blood (Aboriginal) assistant, and, of course, a house for the Curator … I do so want to see this started before I die.”
Children of the era recall occasions when the irasible old lady armed herself with an air rifle – or slug gun – to guard herself against Alice Springs youngsters who came to taunt her in her isolated camp.
“We used to call her ‘Miss Blue’ and run,” one said. “She used to shoot at us with her air rifle. I can’t tell you how many times we had to go up to the hospital to get her lead pellets pulled out of our legs and backsides.”
When nursing staff enquired about the origin of their wounds, the kids said: “Miss Pink shot us.”
Throughout her long and colourful career in Central Australia, most people who knew Olive Pink seemed to instinctively assume her to be antagonistic towards all males. Following her death in 1975, news emerged of a possible love relationship she had as a young woman with a Captain Harold Southern, of Perth, who, at the age of 25, was killed at Gallipoli, only ten days after landing. The couple had originally met in Tasmania as fellow art students. Every year, on Anzac Day, a mysterious bunch of flowers was placed overnight on the Alice Springs cenotaph before other mourners had gathered. Early one morning, a sleepless observer, Les Penhall, noticed Miss Pink placing her floral tribute on the war memorial where she “stood with head bowed for several minutes.”
She sometimes confided to trusted triends that her “reason for living had died at Gallipoli.” A photograph of Captain Southern hung for years over Olive Pink’s bed, friends revealed after her passing.
Olive Pink was 91 years old when she died on Sunday, July 6, 1975. Her death certificate states that the cause of demise was due to (a) pneumonia, (b) senility, © atrial fibriliation. She was interred on July 9, 1975, by a John McAskill, and the minister present was a Quaker cleric, John Newland. It was her expressed wish that she be buried in the Aboriginal section of the cemetery in Memorial Drive, Alice Springs, her remains to be placed in an unmarked grave. Her wishes were ignored.
Reporting Miss Pink’s death on July 10, 1975, a Centralian Advocate journalist reminisced: “ … Miss Pink lived for some years in an old iron hut … Short of money and too proud to accept assistance, the septuagenarian lived under a tree for about a year. It was finally decided to sell her the iron hut … for one pound ($2). Sid Kinsman and Reg Harris made some minor improvements. They told the old lady that they were glad to help her, and did not want any payment. Nevertheless, Miss Pink spared no effort to check up on the cost of labour and materials and insisted on paying for the job. Despite her poverty, she was too proud to accept the old age pension.
‘I don’t want to be a burden to the country,’ she said.
“ … About two years ago she decided that she had ceased to live a useful life and prepared for her death. She dropped from sight, spending most of her days in her darkened room, eating very little and occasionally tending her plants. She gave away most of her furniture and lived as an ascetic hermit.”
Today – fittingly, it seems – Miss Pink’s grave, out of alignment with its neighbours, stubbornly faces Mt. Gillen and its perfectly beautiful sunsets.
-Story: B. Clark. Artwork: Ursula Burmeister.
Beautiful story but why can’t we print it, even if we have to make a donation to your organisation. I am sure most people would not mind to do so. Cheers Hank and keep up the good work!
You can quite easily copy-and-paste it, Hank. -The Boss.— Hank Claessen · 3 October 2007 · #
I enjoyed reading the article. My father George was the pilot Miss Pink, first complained about. I can remember Mum and Dad talking about the complaint.
— Maxine Cook (Taylor) · 19 March 2011 · #