[“News and Notes”, The West Australian, Friday 28 April 1911, page 4]
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Mrs. Bates and the Aborigines.—Mrs. Daisy M. Bates, F.R.A.S., left Perth for Meekatharra last evening. It is her intention to work the Wiluna, Lake Way, Peak Hill, and Thaduna districts, where she is well known among the natives. Special attention will be paid by Mrs. Bates to the totemism and social organisation of these people, as her previous trip was too short to allow her to de vote the necessary time to those subjects, Since then Mrs. Bates has acquainted herself with several of the dialects of the natives in the districts mentioned, and she thus will be enabled to prosecute her inquiries with greater freedom. She is going alone on the trip, but her knowledge of the district will stand her in good stead. She is mindful of the fact that she will have to endure a few hardships, but declares that “it will not matter.” Mrs. Bates will act as Protector for the Aborigines during her stay in the Peak Hill district. She states that a factor in the favourable working of her system of inquiry among the aborigines is the release of the natives who were arrested some time ago in connection with the Laverton murders. Most of the offenders belonged to the Wiluna and Lake Way areas. By the advice of the committee Mr. A. R. Brown, M.A., is retaining Mrs. Bates’s services as a member of the Cambridge Ethnological Expedition during his residence in Australia. Mrs. Bates will be absent from Perth about six months.
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