Mary Montgomerie Bennett

Mary Montgomerie Bennett (1881-1961), teacher, was born at Pimlico, London, on 8 July 1881, eldest of three children of Mary (born Goodsall) and Robert Christison, wealthy Queensland pastoralist and meatworks owner. Christison's first wife had died at 'Lammermoor' from malaria. Mary disliked living there and finally moved the family to London, where the younger Mary studied at the Royal Academy of the Arts from 1903-08. She accompanied her father to Queensland in 1910 when he sold his Australian interests, then returned to England where, on 18 August 1914, she married Charles Douglas Bennett, ship's captain. They lived in London.

In 1927 Mary published Christison of Lammermoor, a biography of her father. Though she was later to say that she knew squatters and they could not be trusted to treat Aborigines fairly, her father had established good relationships with the Dalleburra and had employed some at 'Lammermoor'. Widowed in 1927, Mary began preparing herself to be a teacher to Aborigines. She believed instruction should be in English but with craft as a medium: she learnt spinning and weaving before leaving for Perth, where she arrived in October 1930.

Mrs Bennett travelled slowly through areas where Aboriginal populations were concentrated, observing material conditions. From 1933 she lived at Mt Margaret Mission, near Laverton, then managed by Pastor R. M. Schenk, and there she applied her unorthodox teaching methods, encouraging the women in craft and rewarding the children with titbits of food. She was a charismatic teacher, inspiring confidence in pupils.

She published in London in 1930 The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being, a plea for the Commonwealth to become responsible for Aboriginal affairs, and she used her London connections to publicise internationally the exploitation of Aboriginal pastoral workers. Under Western Australian law no wage was required to be paid to Aboriginal stockmen and it was unlawful for an Aborigine to leave a place of employment without the employer's permission. She opposed the government policy of taking Aboriginal children from their mothers. She approached the Women's Service Guild in Perth and the Country Women's Association to put further pressure on the government, and was largely responsible for the appointment of a royal commission (H. D. Moseley) in 1934.

Mrs Bennett had an independent income from her father's estate and a life interest in her husband's. She donated a hospital to the Mt Margaret Mission in 1934 and published Teaching the Aborigines: Data from Mount Margaret Mission, W.A. in 1935. She subscribed to Child Education and a Practical Infant Teaching series and became an advocate of the appointment of trained teachers to Aboriginal settlement schools. She was in Sydney in 1938 to participate in the Day of Mourning organised by New South Wales Aborigines in protest at the celebration of the arrival of Europeans in Australia. In 1940 she returned to London intending to undertake formal teacher training. She matriculated at the University of London in 1944 but there is no record of other qualification.

On her return to Western Australia she went for a short time to Cundeelee Mission, 200 km east of Kalgoorlie on the very edge of Wankatja country, before 'retiring' to Kalgoorlie. There she became well-known at the court, offering assistance to Aborigines brought before it. She published Hunt or Die (1950) and Human Rights for Australian Aborigines (1957) and in 1961 gave evidence to the Select Committee for Aboriginal Voting Rights. She died at Kalgoorlie on 6 October 1961.

Heather Radi

Kay Daniels and others Women in Australia: an Annotated Guide to Records 1977 vol 1 entry no 230.