Honestly, most people know the story of the three girls who walked across Western Australia because of the 2002 movie. You know the one—sweeping shots of the desert, an ominous Kenneth Branagh as A.O. Neville, and that haunting Peter Gabriel soundtrack. But behind the Hollywood production is a much grittier, more complex reality written by Doris Pilkington Garimara. Her book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, isn’t just a "based on a true story" memoir; it’s a daughter’s painstaking attempt to reconstruct a history that the Australian government tried very hard to erase.
Doris didn't even know her mother’s full story for decades. Think about that. She grew up in the same mission system that her mother, Molly Craig, had escaped from years earlier. It wasn’t until 1985, when her Aunt Daisy started talking, that Doris realized the epic scale of what had happened in 1931.
The 1,600-Kilometer Walk No One Was Supposed to Survive
In 1931, three girls—Molly (14), Gracie (11), and Daisy (8)—were snatched from their home in Jigalong. They were "half-caste" children, a term used by the state to justify the forced removal of Aboriginal children with white parentage. They were shipped over 1,600 kilometers south to the Moore River Native Settlement.
They stayed exactly one night.
Molly, the leader, saw a rainstorm coming and knew it would wash away their tracks. They bolted. Most people can't imagine walking to the grocery store in the heat, let alone trekking across a continent with no shoes, no maps, and a government tracker on their tail.
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Why the Fence?
The rabbit-proof fence itself is a bit of a tragic irony. Built between 1901 and 1907, it was supposed to stop a plague of rabbits from destroying Western Australian crops. It failed miserably at that. But for Molly, the fence was a landmark. She knew the fence passed through Jigalong. Basically, if they found the wire, they found their way home.
The journey took nine weeks. Nine weeks of:
- Sleeping in rabbit burrows to stay warm.
- Scavenging for emu eggs and damper.
- Molly carrying the younger girls on her back when their feet gave out.
- Evading the "native tracker" Riggs, who was famous for never losing a trail.
Doris Pilkington: The Woman Who Reclaimed the Narrative
Doris Pilkington Garimara (born Nugi Garimara) was a powerhouse. But her own life was just as shaped by the Stolen Generations as her mother's. When Doris was only three and a half, she was taken to Moore River too. In a heartbreaking twist of history, Molly had returned to the settlement later in life with her own children, only to escape again—this time carrying her infant daughter Annabelle, but forced to leave Doris behind.
Doris grew up being told she was an orphan. She was trained as a nursing aide and told to forget her "heathen" ways. It’s wild to think that the woman who gave Australia its most famous account of Indigenous resistance was once a product of the very system designed to break that resistance.
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She didn't just write one book. She wrote a trilogy:
- Caprice: A Stockman’s Daughter
- Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
- Under the Wintamarra Tree
The middle book is the one that caught the world's eye, but the third one, Under the Wintamarra Tree, is where she lays out her own trauma. It’s a heavy read. She talks about the "racist culture of an institutional upbringing" and the massive effort it took to find her family again when she was 21.
What the Movie Got Wrong (and Right)
Phillip Noyce’s film is great cinema, but Doris’s book is more "human." In the movie, the girls' escape feels like a high-stakes thriller. In the book, Doris uses actual government documents—letters from the "Chief Protector" A.O. Neville—to show the cold, bureaucratic cruelty of the era.
The Ending Reality Check
The movie ends on a high note, with Molly and Daisy safe in the desert. But the real history is much darker. Gracie, the cousin, was actually recaptured during the journey because she was tricked into thinking her mother was at a different station. She never made it back to Jigalong with the others.
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And as mentioned before, Molly was eventually taken back to Moore River years later. The "happy ending" was only a temporary reprieve in a lifelong battle against state control.
Why This Still Matters in 2026
We’re still talking about Doris Pilkington and the Rabbit-Proof Fence because it’s not just "history." The legacy of the Stolen Generations is alive in the families still searching for their kin. Doris’s work shifted the national conversation in Australia, contributing to the momentum that led to the 2008 National Apology.
If you’re looking to understand this story deeply, don’t just watch the DVD. Read the prose. Look at the maps Doris included. She wanted people to see the physical distance—the sheer impossibility of three children outsmarting an empire on foot.
Actionable Insights for Readers
- Read the Source Material: Pick up Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. The movie is a 90-minute dramatization; the book is a 100-year history.
- Research the Stolen Generations: Look into the Bringing Them Home report (1997). It provides the legal and social context that Doris was writing against.
- Support Indigenous Literacy: Look for the University of Queensland Press (UQP) Black Writing series, which Doris helped champion.
- Visit the Sites: If you're ever in Western Australia, the Moore River settlement site still stands as a memorial. It’s a sobering place that puts the scale of the "walk" into perspective.
Doris died in 2014, but she left behind a roadmap—not just for the girls to get home, but for a whole country to find its way toward the truth.