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Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence:
First Nations Classics (with an introduction by Tara June Winch)
by Doris (Nugi Garimara) Pilkington

A Stolen Generations story of astounding courage: three Aboriginal girls, taken from their mothers, escape barefoot back to their beloved homeland in East Pilbara.

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Overview

This is the true account of Nugi Garimara’s mother, Molly, made legendary by the film Rabbit-Proof Fence.

In 1931 Molly led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1600-kilometre walk across remote Western Australia. Aged eight, eleven and fourteen, they escaped the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, tracked by Native Police and search planes, the girls followed the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it would lead them home.

Their journey – longer than many of the celebrated treks of recognised explorers – reveals a past more cruel than we could ever imagine.

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Doris (Nugi Garimara) Pilkington

Nugi Garimara AM (1937–2014) is Doris Pilkington’s Aboriginal name. She was born on Balfour Downs Station in the East Pilbara. As a toddler she was removed by authorities from her home at the station, along with her mother Molly Craig and baby sister Anna, and committed to Moore River Native Settlement. This was the same institution Molly had escaped from ten years previously, the account of which is told in Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence.

At eighteen, Nugi left the mission system as the first of its members to qualify for the Royal Perth Hospital’s nursing aide training program. Following marriage and a family, she studied journalism and worked in film and video production. Caprice: A Stockman’s Daughter, originally published in 1991, was her first book and won the 1990 David Unaipon Award. Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence was first published in 1996, and was released internationally in 2002 as the film Rabbit-Proof Fence, directed by Phillip Noyce. Nugi’s own story is told in Under the Wintamarra Tree (UQP, 2002).