The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Daisy Bindi was born probably around 1904 on the Western Australian edge of the Gibson Desert. She learned to do housework and to ride and manage horses while working on ‘Ethel Creek’ station from an early age. In the 1940s she organised a strike of Aboriginal workers on the stations near her, despite the threats by the police and Native Welfare Department that she would be removed from the area. Her initiative was largely responsible for spreading the strike to the further inland Pilbara stations; the strike changed the structure of labour relations in the north of the State. In the 1950s Daisy lived with others in a well-ordered collective, the Pindan Cooperative, the first Aboriginal cooperative formed in Western Australia. When she visited Perth for the first time in October 1959, she spent much time lobbying for a school for Pindan. Her later visit to Perth gave her the opportunity to associate with women who supported the Aboriginal cause at the Union of Australian Women.