Dorothy Butler (née English; 12 September 1911 – 21 February 2008)[2][3] —better known as Dot Butler—was an Australian bushwalker, mountaineer and conservationist.

[4] One of five children, she was an active child[5] later recalling that "all our childhood entertainment was climbing – brick kilns, chimneys, telegraph poles – anything off the horizontal, and always barefoot of course".

[3] She recounted that the "prize" climb, for the English children, was the giant crane used to lift locomotives at the Chullora railway yards.

[9] With money earned in her first job as a stenographer, English, who never saw being a woman as an obstacle to any undertaking, cycled around Tasmania, on her own, barefoot and wearing shorts.

English told the reporter how, as a young woman travelling alone, she would often camp in cemeteries, so as not to attract unwelcome attention, and how she had fed herself cheaply during the trip.

[11] Bushwalking became a popular pastime in the 1930s, as the Great Depression in Australia led people to seek enjoyable recreation at low cost.

The Tigers were an informal grouping within SBW, renowned for covering long distances over rugged and often uncharted terrain, at a very rapid pace.

After camping overnight, by following the Grose River, they reached Richmond by the end of Sunday, covering 50 miles (80 kilometres) in a day and a half, through tough terrain.

[9] English later recalled that "Marie lent me mountaineering books which fired my imagination—the reconnaissance of Everest by Shipton and Tilman, polar exploration, both Arctic and Antarctic, adventuring in Greenland and Iceland.

"[13] In 1936, English and Dr Eric Dark were the first to climb Crater Bluff in the Warrumbungles,[14] which was then known by its older name of Split Rock.

[18] English was, as were many bushwalkers of the time, an Honorary Ranger carrying a warrant card that allowed her to arrest individuals who were breaking early N.S.W.

[1] While English was working as a secretary in the early 1930s, her boss Walter Trinick—the Sydney manager for the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus—had recognised that the law allowed any N.S.W.

Working with Trinick, Dot established the Rangers’ League, by writing to the house journals of public service departments in N.S.W.

[11][22] She used the publicity created by the walking challenge to advance the involvement of women in bushwalking, posing in a swimsuit for a newspaper article in the Daily Telegraph (Sydney) "to prove that strenuous exercise such as long-distance hiking does not result in muscles or masculinity".

[13][14] In 1969, Butler organised the purchase by SBW and others of a piece of land in the Kangaroo Valley, which became known as "Coolana" (said to mean "Happy Meeting Place").

[27] In June 1975, Butler and her daughter Rona were in a group that canoed the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson City, a four-week trip of 640 kilometres.

[9] In the 1980s, she was involved in the campaign to save the last piece of lowland tropical rainforest inland from Cape Tribulation,[29] which became a World Heritage Site in 1988.

[30] After initially living at Coogee, the Butlers found a large piece of land at 28-30 Boundary Road, Wahroonga—then still covered in native vegetation and near to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park—and built a house there.

Dot and Ira Butler had four children, daughters Rona and Wendy, and twin brothers Norman and Wade.

[14] Butler's other son, Wade, was on a six-day solo expedition in the area around Precipitous Bluff, Tasmania, when he disappeared in November 1995.

[34] In 2008, at the age of 96, Butler's very full life of adventure ended, at Franklin in Tasmania where her daughter Rona was living.