In 1941, she married Perth-based public servant Frank Ellis Gare, who then left to serve on the Queen Mary during World War II.

Nene suffered a persistent cough so the family moved to Carnarvon in the northwest of Western Australia, where they managed a banana plantation and where their fourth child, daughter Helen, was born.

Using modest government funding, Frank Gare was charged with meeting basic needs (ablutions, water, shelter and power) in Aboriginal reserves throughout the area.

Nene came to know several Aboriginal families living in a camp known as the Snake Pit, a collection of tin and hessian shacks with dirt floors and no running water or electricity, just outside Geraldton, with these friendships later inspiring The Fringe Dwellers.

Gare told editor Christobel Mattingley that because she felt second-class, and was affected by family hardships during the Depression, she had empathy for the Aboriginal people in Western Australia, on whom her most famous novel was based.

She donated most of the proceeds from her art to charities, including Amnesty International, WA AIDS Council, the local dogs' home and a woman lawyer assisting Aboriginal women and children.