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During her time in the Ilpirra country, she became very ill, and had to be assisted back to Mount Doreen
Station, some 350 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs, and eventually into Alice Springs and then to her home
to recuperate. She managed, during this trying time, to find fault with Paddy Tucker, the cameleer who had done a
great deal to assist her. At the 1935, Science Congress she gave a lecture entitled ‘Camouflage’ on culture contact
which, although not stating names, referred to a well-known station family as one of her illustrations of people who
were exploiting Aborigines. This did nothing to help her in her relationships in Central Australia for the station
people had gone out of their way to assist her in her studies of the Ilpirra and had used their vehicle to transport her
when she was very ill, to the point where she had stated that they had probably saved her life, and had at all times
been courteous and helpful.
As a result of her lecture and an appeal at the 1935 Science Congress, widespread support by scientists was
initially given to her proposal for a large reserve for the Warlpiri Aborigines. However, mining and cattle station
interests, and a strangely dismissive report by the linguist T G H Strehlow, caused the reserve to be put aside.
Olive Pink continued to fight for the reserve but, despite a degree of publicity until 1938, hers was eventually a
lone voice on behalf of the Warlpiri.
Her ‘landowners’ and ‘culture contact’ papers were to be followed by ‘further accounts’ of both her Aranda
and Ilpirra Warlpiri investigations, but these were never published. Her early enthusiasm was suddenly stilled,
almost certainly because she took a strong moral stance over the need for the Warlpiri reserve rather than that
she lost interest. Whatever the case, she cut her tics with the anthropological world after first clashing with many
who had formerly been supportive of her. As time passed her reputation was to suffer, not because of the actual
content of her papers or the nature of her studies, but because of wildly exaggerated and inaccurate accounts of
her Warlpiri investigations hedged around with more accurate accounts of her relationships with government and
other officials. Her fellow member of the Anthropological Society Committee wrote: ‘[She] became the bane of
patrol officers, especially when deciding to study Warlpiri tribal life which, while investigating their copulation
on a night of full moon, led her to be all but fatally clubbed. Thereafter, denied entry to government reserves, she
scrawled endless letters of abuse to Canberra, Professor Elkin and our committee.’
Miss Pink, as she was to be known to most people throughout her adult life, was as determined and intellectually
able as ever. If the government and other anthropologists abandoned the Warlpiri people, she did not. Throughout
most of the Second World War, she based herself approximately 450 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs at
Thompson’s Rockhole, doing her best to assist the Warlpiri of the area and generally appreciating the Tanami
Desert country. However, despite the remoteness of her locality, tensions developed with her nearest white
Australian neighbours; she was not on speaking terms with the miners 120 kilometres to the west or with the cattle
station men 300 kilometres east!
In 1946, with the Aborigines of the Tanami Desert and fringe country suffering malnutrition and other ailments
because of a severe drought and the inability of government agencies to service the various remote localities,
the majority of Aborigines were trucked in to the Yuendumu area 280 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs.
Miss Pink, with no reason now to stay at Thompson’s Rockhole, was also assisted in to Yuendumu and then to
Alice Springs. The Alice now became her home and, for the rest of her life, she exercised her rights as a citizen
in a democracy to the fullest. Her ability to achieve what she wanted was legendary, if at times at the expense
of the nerves of those who had to deal with her, including the police who called her ‘Public Nuisance Number
One’. Visitors whom she appreciated were treated with ‘graciousness and charm’, and she had the patience and
organising ability to draw support for worthy projects that included the establishment of a museum and also of the
Australian Arid Regions Native Flora Reserve. However, an unswerving adherence to her own perception of things
often alienated people and, in addition, the museum (which eventually closed) and the flora reserve were in many
ways ahead of their time. Her interest in native plants, for instance, which was the basis for the flora reserve, was
only casually shared by some people. On one occasion a man who had the job of driving her 1000 kilometres joked
about the appearance of some scraggly gums soon after leaving Alice Springs-, for the remaining 950 kilometres
Miss Pink averted her head and refused to talk to him.
She fought for the rights of Aborigines appearing in court when it was unfashionable to be interested in their
rights but, by interrupting court proceedings to indicate that the court was not taking sufficient account of tribal
law, drew the ire of presiding magistrates. She was fined for contempt of court on one occasion but decided to
make a stand and go to gaol instead; the head gaoler was so worried at the prospect of having her under his care
that he paid the fine—much to her chagrin. Another senior government official, legend has it, had frosted glass
erected and a back exit door especially constructed so that he could escape her attentions when she called—which
was often. She had a remarkable ability to get under the thickest of bureaucratic hides, partly by her extreme
persistence and partly by appealing to federal government officials in Canberra at the same time as appealing to
local officials, thus ensuring that her letters went on file and that pressure was exerted. Her correspondence on file
in Canberra is believed to be ‘feet thick’ and its diversity must be amazing. Although many of her comments and
criticisms were reasonable, they were not always so, and the more extreme and exaggerated accounts of her tend to
prevail. It was reasonable to request assistance from the Director of Animal Industry to help eradicate rabbits from
the flora reserve, but not necessary to write to the Minister for Territories in Canberra and the Administrator of the
Northern Territory beforehand. Some doubt must exist over the need to request the Minister for Territories for a
fence about the flora reserve, despite her animosity toward the chairman of the Northern Territory Reserves Board,
whom she considered a ‘lime-lighting squanderers of Government money’; and to have aeroplanes reroute their
flights on the basis that the pilots were voyeurs deliberately flying over her unroofed bathroom, or the Government
Resident acting on her behalf over the incorrect size of a bottle of sauce received in her weekly grocery order