[Reece, Bob, 2007, Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Chapter 1]
CHAPTER ONE
The Making of Daisy May O’Dwyer, 1859-1904
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From 1902 she was determined to make a living from freelance journalism and the sale of postcards printed from photographs she had taken with her own camera up north. This was an idea she had after sending a souvenir album of her photographs to the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York. On the strength of her article about Port Hedland to Carnarvon trip, she was commissioned by the Western Australian Government to write about the planned Trans-Australian Railway. She also wrote an account of the opening of the Mundaring-Coolgardie Pipeline. The well-disposed Bishop Gibney could not offer her full-time employment at The Western Australian Catholic Record, but let her run her own page until May 1903.
In December The Western Mail commissioned her to write a series of articles about mining at Peak Hill, Meekatharra, Nannine and other parts of the Murchison. The expedition by train, bullock wagon, horse, buggy and spring cart took her to a mining and pastoral frontier that had been overshadowed by the bonanza of the Kalgoorlie goldfields.
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