Setting off into the remotest corners of the outback in her campervan, Eleanor Hogan retraces the journeys of controversial self-styled ethnologist Daisy Bates and gung-ho journalist Ernestine Hill, investigating the contested dynamic of their writing collaboration on the 1938 international bestseller, The Passing of the Aborigines. 

From today’s perspective, many of their ideas seem racist or sentimental. They were certainly an odd couple, not just in their age difference and backgrounds; but their interest in Aboriginal culture was genuine, if misconceived and often prone to sensationalism.

In her riveting and sensitive biography, Into the Loneliness, Hogan puts together the puzzle of their lives and explores Daisy and Ernestine’s legacies as intrepid, eccentric, fearless outliers.

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