The last of the girls who followed the rabbit-proof fence

When she was eight years Daisy

old, Daisy Kadibil was Kadibil

forcibly removed from her 1923-2018

Aboriginal mother and sent – with her half-sister Molly, 14, and their cousin Gracie, ten – to live in a bleak government institution hundreds of miles away, where they were to be trained for a life in domestic service. The story of how the girls escaped and made their way home – following a fence that had been built north-to-south across the continent, to stop rabbits spreading from the east to the farmlands of western Australia – inspired the acclaimed film Rabbit-proof Fence, said The Daily Telegraph. Released in 2002, it shone a light on a shameful (and for years shamefully little-known) period in Australian history, when the government separated thousands of mixed-race children from their parents in an effort to “integrate” them into white society. This brutal practice went on until the 1970s; its victims are known as the “stolen generations”.

Daisy Kadibil, who has died aged 95, was removed in July 1931 from her home in Jigalong, where her Martu people had recently moved to from the desert, said The Sydney Morning Herald. It was here that a maintenance depot for the fence was based. She and Molly were the daughters of Thomas Craig, a fence inspector. Gracie also had a white father, which is what brought the trio to the attention of A.O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia (played by Kenneth Branagh in the film). He was of the view that mixed-race children should be forced to live in white communities, so that they would meet and marry white people and have white children. In this way, their “race”, and its culture, would disappear. As he put it in 1937: “Are we going to have a population of one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there ever were any Aborigines in Australia?” Daisy would recall the white men coming, being bundled into a car – the first she had seen – and looking back to see her mother beating her head against a rock in despair.

The girls were taken to the Moore River settlement, a dismal, run-down camp north of Perth. Molly took one look at it and decided they would not stay. She figured that if they walked east, they would come to the fence, which they could follow to take them home. After one night, they set off, with no compass or map, and only their bush skills to rely on. In a remarkable feat of courage and endurance, they walked more than 1,000 miles in nine weeks – a journey that took them across grassland, farmland and salt lakes, with trackers in pursuit. Gracie peeled away from the others when she heard that her mother had moved, only to be caught and taken back to Moore River to complete her “education”. She worked as a servant until she married, and died in 1983, having never returned to Jigalong nor seen her cousins again. Molly and Daisy made it home, where they were tearfully reunited with their families and then hidden in the desert.

Nine years later, Molly was captured and transported back to Moore River, with her own daughters, Doris, four, and Annabelle, 18 months. Again, after a year, she managed to escape. She had to leave Doris behind, but managed to carry Annabelle home, only to have her forcibly removed in 1943. She never saw her again. But in the 1960s she was reunited with Doris, who in 1996 published the book on which the film is based. The last surviving member of the trio, Daisy spent the rest of her life in Jigalong. The policy of forcible removals was barely discussed in Australia until the mid-1990s, when it was the subject of an official report. White Australians were appalled, but many Aborigines felt it only scratched the surface of the injustice perpetrated against them.