AustLit

'Daisy Bates, the letter's author, was more than a day's travel from where Hill had first met her, camping on the rim of the Nullarbor. A self-taught ethnologist, she had pitched her tents near Ooldea siding on the east-west railway line to observe the Aboriginal people who gathered at Yuldilgabbi, a nearby soak. For centuries they'd travelled there from Kalgoorlie, Oodnadatta, the MacDonnell ranges and beyond for water, trade and ceremony. Now it was 'Orphan water, all its people dead: explorer after explorer, then the railway's engineers had drained it. But the legend persists and the blacks still come from 400 and 600 miles away, to find that the Yuldilgabbi is a thing of the past'. They drifted down to sidings on the line to beg passengers for food' (Introduction)