Biographical entry Pink, Olive Muriel (1884 - 1975)

Summary

Olive Muriel Pink travelled on the railway between Quorn, South Australia and Alice Springs in June-December 1930, after a drought had broken, stopping to sketch flowers wherever railway workers reported them. She made further sketches around Alice Springs 1957-60.

Details

Educated in art at Hobart Technical College. Tracer, Public Works Department and later the Railways Commission of New South Wales. Studied anthropology with the Workers' Educational Association and became secretary to the Anthropological Society of New South Wales. Trips in 1926 & 1927 to Ooldea on the Transcontinental Line, SA. Many of her early drawings of desert flora were completed here. Retrenched in 1930 and moved to NT, living first with the Aboriginal people in the Tanami Desert and settling eventually in Alice Springs. In 1955 made application to the Assistant Administrator for reservation of an area of land on the eastern bank of the Todd as a flora reserve. In 1956 the Australian Arid Regions Flora Reserve of 20 hectares was gazetted. After her death it was renamed the Olive Pink Flora Reserve.

Archival resources

South Australian Museum Archives

• Olive Muriel Pink - Records, 1935 - 1938, A.D. 15; South Australian Museum Archives. Details

University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection

• Olive Muriel Pink - Records, 1930 - 1960, P.6; University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection. Details

Published resources

Books

• 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

Book Sections

• Marcus, Julie, 'Pink, Olive Muriel (1884-1975), Artist, Aboriginal-rights Activist, Anthropologist and Gardener', in John Ritchie and Diane Langmore (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 16, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002, pp. 4-5. Also available at http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160004b.htm. Details

Online Resources

• National Library of Australia, 'Pink, Olive M', Trove, National Library of Australia and the Australian National Maritime Museum Darling Harbour, 2009, http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-473797. Details