Daisy Bates (Australia) - Australia

Australia

On 22 November 1882, aged 23, she emigrated to Australia on the R.M.S. Almora, by which time she had changed her name to Daisy May O'Dwyer. Some accounts (based on Bates's own claims) say that she left Ireland for 'health reasons', but Bates's biographer Julia Blackburn discovered that, after getting her first job as a governess in Dublin at age 18, there was a scandal, presumably sexual in nature, which resulted in the young man of the house taking his own life. Bates was forced to leave Ireland and, keen to cover up her sordid past, she re-invented her history, setting a pattern for the rest of her life. It was not until long after her death that the true facts of her early life emerged.

Bates settled first at Townsville, Queensland allegedly staying first at the home of the Bishop of North Queensland and later with family friends who had migrated earlier. Bates had travelled with Ernest C. Baglehole and James C. Hann, amongst others, on the later stage of her journey. Both Baglehole and Hann had boarded at Batavia for the journey to Australia. Hann's family, through William Hann's donation of £1000, had been very generous to the construction of St James Church of England some few years before Bishop Stanton had arrived at Townsville. Bates found temporary accommodation with the Bishop. She subsequently found employment as a governess on Fanning Downs Station.

Records show that she married poet and horseman Breaker Morant (Harry Morant aka Edwin Murrant) on 13 March 1884 in Charters Towers; the union lasted only a short time and Bates reputedly threw Morant out because he failed to pay for the wedding and stole some livestock. Significantly, they were never divorced. Morant's biographer Nick Bleszynski suggests that Bates played a more important role in Morant's life than has been previously thought, and that it was she who convinced him to change his name from Edwin Murrant to Harry Harbord Morant.

Soon after her failed marriage to Morant, Bates moved to New South Wales. She said that she became engaged to Philip Gipps but he died before they could marry. This is probably fantasy. She then met John (Jack) Bates and they married on 17 February 1885; like Morant, he was a breaker of wild horses, bushman and drover. The bigamous nature of their marriage was kept secret during Bates's lifetime. She also found time to marry Ernest C. Baglehole on 10 June 1885 at St Stephen's Anglican Church, Newtown, Sydney. Although he is shown as being a seaman he was the son of a wealthy London family and had become a ship's officer after completing an apprenticeship and this might have been an attraction for Daisy. She first met Baglehole when he was one of 6 passengers who came aboard "The Almora" at Batavia and presumably he had left his ship there and was on his way to join another in Australia.

Their only child, Arnold Hamilton Bates, was born in Bathurst, New South Wales on 26 August 1886. The marriage was not a happy one, probably because Jack, being a drover and bushman, was away for long periods. In February 1894, Bates returned to England, telling Jack that she would only return when he had a home established for her. She arrived in England penniless but eventually found a job as a journalist. It was not until 1899 that she heard from her husband again, who wrote saying that he was looking for a property in Western Australia.