Doris Blackwell

But we knew that civilisation was ahead of us, for we followed the slender iron poles supporting the two wires of the Overland Telegraph line - the reason for our journey.

[4] Because there was no established school in the area, her mother employed a governess and set up a schoolroom next door to the staff dining room which doubled as a courtroom, her father acting as the local magistrate.

The family also employed a number of Aboriginal Australians within their household, with Blackwell recalling: The native staff included a rather elastic number of houseboys, shepherds, cows and sheep, hewers of wood and carriers of water, scullery maids for the staff kitchen, two housemaids and a nurse girl in our home.

[4]One significant figure in this time was Amelia Kunoth, the grandmother of Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, who worked as a companion and nurse for the children.

In 1922 she married Alex Blackwell, a World War I veteran who had served as a stretcher-bearer in Europe alongside her brother, Mort.