True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack

Many, many years ago I read the book, Kings in Grass Castles, by Mary Durack - the story of the establishment of a pastoral dynasty in the Kimberley region of northern Australia.  In True North Brenda Niall provides us with the story of two members of the third generation of the Durack family in Australia, Mary (1913-1994) and Elizabeth (1915-2000).

Fortunately much of the family correspondence has been kept and the author had access to the family papers when writing her book. Much of the story is therefore told using excepts from this correspondence.

Mary Durack wrote two of a planned three family histories - Kings in Grass Castles (pub. 1959) and Sons in the Saddle (1983). Brenda Niall's book, through recording the stories of Mary and Elizabeth, to a large extent provides the final chapters of the involvement of the Durack family with the land. Their properties were sold in 1950.

The Durack family company owned four properties in northern Australia - Ivanhoe Station and Argyle Downs in Western Australia plus Auvergne and Newry in the Northern Territory.  Argle Downs was flooded as part of the Ord River Scheme and the creation of Lake Argyle. The Argyle Homestead Museum at Kununarra is a recreation of the Argle Downs homestead now under the lake.

In the early 1930s Mary and Elizabeth spent many months on the two Western Australian properties. It was during this time that they came to know the Aborigines working and living on the properties and established life long friendships with some of the Aboriginal women. It was at this time that Mary and Elizabeth began to work together producing children's books and, for one year, a comic strip in the Sydney Telegraph.

Over the years Mary devoted her life to writing books (fiction and non-fiction), plays and poetry as well as helping others with their writing. She had some success but always felt that her work may have been considered more credible if she had been a man and not the daughter of a well known pastoralist. Elizabeth continued to paint and sometimes write and overtime her experience of living with Aborigines began increasingly to influence her work. She also noted that Australian male artists were taken more seriously that female artists. It was a sign of the times in which these women lived.

Both Mary and Elizabeth were concerned with Aboriginal rights especially when many groups were told to leave the properties where they had spent most of their lives and to move to settlements in new towns.

True North is therefore the story of two talented women struggling to improve their craft and receive acknowledgement of thir work in a wider community. It is also the story of the treatment of Aboriginal communities in outback Australia plus their relationahips with some members of the white community. The book therefore covers many aspects of life in Australia during the twentieth century.

Further information:

Dame Mary Gertrude Durack - ADB

Dame Mary Durack - Gifted witer and patron of the arts - City of Nedlands

Elizabeth Durack - official website