Meehan, Betty

Betty Francis Meehan was born in Bourke, New South Wales, Australia, in 1933 and grew up there, the elder daughter of Francis Owen and Olive Jane Meehan. After completing high school in Bourke, she trained as a specialist infants teacher at Bathurst Teachers College and later taught in Sydney, Bourke, Darwin, and Canberra. In 1958, she travelled to Arnhem Land in northern Australia, accompanying her first husband, the late Lester Richard Hiatt, on fieldwork for his anthropology Ph.D. There she set up the first school for Aboriginal children at Maningrida. She went on to study at the University of Sydney and gained a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and Master of Arts (Hons) in anthropology. In 1972, she enrolled in a Ph.D. in the Department of Prehistory and Anthropology at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and returned to Arnhem Land for her fieldwork with her second husband, collaborator, and colleague, the late Rh ...