Pink, Olive Muriel (1884 - 1975)

Olive Pink was a botanical artist and anthropologist who campaigned for the rights of Aboriginal people. She was one of few women anthropologists working in a male dominated field in the 1930s and 1940s. Pink positioned herself as an expert on Aboriginal people and campaigned from this basis in her criticism of government officials, missionaries and pastoralists.

Educated in art at Hobart Technical College. Pink worked at the Public Works Department and later the Railways Commission of New South Wales. She studied anthropology at Sydney University with the Workers' Educational Association and became secretary to the Anthropological Society of NSW. In 1926 & 1927 she travelled to Ooldea on the Transcontinental Line, SA. There she created many of her early drawings of desert flora.

Pink spent much time in the Northern Territory, living first with Arrernte and Warlpiri people and settling eventually in Alice Springs. She was a prolific correspondent, writing many letters to government departments and the press, particularly to represent her beliefs about Aboriginal people and her views on their better treatment by the government. Historian Julie Marcus suggests that Pink eventually lost faith in the potential of Anthropology to assist Aboriginal people, and abandoned the discipline later in life.

In 1955 she applied for the reservation of an area of land on the eastern bank of the Todd River as a flora reserve. In 1956 the Australian Arid Regions Flora Reserve of 20 hectares was gazetted. Pink and her gardener Johnny Jambijimba Yannarilyi developed the garden, where Pink lived until her death. The garden was then renamed the Olive Pink Flora Reserve, and now contains over 300 of Central Australia's plant species.

Related Corporate Bodies

• Olive Pink Society (1988 - )

  [1988 - ]

Related Places

• Olive Pink Botanic Garden, Formerly Australian Arid Regions Native Flora Reserve and The Olive Pink Flora Reserve (1956 - )

Book Sections

• Marcus, Julie, 'Pink, Olive Muriel (1884-1975)', in Ritchie, John and Langmore, Diane (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 16, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2002, pp. 4-5. [ Details... ]

Journal Articles

• Olive Pink, 'Spirit Ancestors in a Northern Aranda Horde Country', Oceania, 1933. [ Details... ]
• Olive Pink, 'The Landowners in the Northern Division of the Aranda Tribe', Oceania, 1936. [ Details... ]

Online Resources

• Significant Tasmanian Women: Olive Pink (1884-1975), Early Anthropologist, Aboriginal Rights Activist and Botanical Artist, 2001, http://www.women.tas.gov.au/significantwomen/search/olivepink.html. [ Details... ]

See also

• Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, 2006, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au. [ Details... ]
• Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, 'Where are the Women in Australian science?', 22 August 2003, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/wisa/wisa.html. [ Details... ]
• Julie Marcus, Yours truly, Olive M. Pink, Olive Pink Society, Canberra, 1991c, 24 pp. [ Details... ]
• Marcus, Julie, 'The Beauty, Simplicity and Honour of Truth: Olive Pink in the 1940s', in Marcus, Julie (ed.), First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, Melbourne University Press, 1993. [ Details... ]
• Marcus, Julie, The Indomitable Miss Pink: A Life in Anthropology, UNSW Press, 2001. [ Details... ]
• Marcus, Julie; Lepervanche, Marie de; McBryde, Isabel; Prior, Mary Ellen Murray; White, Isobel; Morris, Miranda; O'Gorman, Anne; Marcus, Julie and Cheater, Christine, First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1993. [ Details... ]
• Moreton-Robinson, Aileen, Talkin' up to the white woman : Aboriginal women and feminism, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2000, xxv, 234 pp. [ Details... ]
• Papers of E.W.P. (Ernest William Pearson) Chinnery (1887-1972), National Library of Australia, http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/0766.html. [ Details... ]
• Papers of Sir Paul Hasluck (1905- ), National Library of Australia, 2001, http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/5274.html. [ Details... ]
• Olive Pink Society and Research Centre for Women's Studies, University of Adelaide (eds), Bulletin of the Olive Pink Society, 1989-1999. [ Details... ]
• Radi, Heather (ed.), 200 Australian Women: A Redress Anthology, Women's Redress Press, Sydney, 1988, 258 pp. (Also available at http://www.200australianwomen.com/) [ Details... ]
• Russell McGregor, Imagined destinies : Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880-1939, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic, 1997, xiii, 313 pp. [ Details... ]
• South Australian Museum, 'Guide to the Norman B. Tindale Archives:', in Series 338/4 - Copies of Journals, 2000, http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindale/HDMS/338-4.htm. [ Details... ]