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If the decision to marry a man more than three times her age had confirmed Deborah Vernon Hackett as “an individualist from an early age”, she went on to confirm that description through a long and eventful life.

Acknowledged as a tireless supporter of worthy charities and movements, and for her work during two world wars, Lady Hackett’s interests were diverse – from penning a guide to running a successful household to pursuing rare minerals across desert landscapes.

Two years after the death of her husband, Lady Hackett remarried and began the next chapter of her life in South Australia as the wife of lawyer Frank Beaumont Moulden who she met while skiing at Mount Kosciusko. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes of her husband that as mayor, “encouraged by his wife, particularly during the Prince of Wales’s visit, he began a period of unique hospitality which had never been … imagined in South Australia’. Young, pretty and charming, Deborah Moulden welcomed her new social opportunities …” Sir Frank was knighted in 1922.

During the 1920s, Lady Moulden became interested in tantalite, a little known, rare Australian mineral found in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The Australian Dictionary of Biography records: “She visited the desolate areas in which it was found, chartering a small single-engine plane, trudging over sandy wastes in desert heat or bumping along in trucks, descending mines in a bosun’s chair.” In World War II her tantalum was used in developing radar.

Sir Frank died in 1932, the year the University honoured its benefactor’s widow by conferring on her the degree of Doctor of Letters, unfortunately in absentia, because of the recent death of her second husband.

In 1938 she married a barrister Basil Buller Murphy, several years her junior, and became known as Dr Buller Murphy. During the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne she prepared an alfresco Australian luncheon for 200: Darwin barramundi, Onslow oysters, Geraldton crayfish, wild turkey from Carnarvon and venison from the Victorian Alps.

In a slim volume entitled A Lady of Rare Metal by B. Buller Murphy (published in 1949, and available in the Scholars Centre of the Reid Library) the author observes: “From her earliest years she displayed a remarkable verve and versatility.” Typical of her intrepid nature was her discovery of the Lake Cave in Margaret River by “lowering herself by a rope strung from the limb of a huge tree towering above the rim of the giant cavity …”

The former Lady Hackett died in 1965 and was buried at Karrakatta. In 2000 a memorial ceremony was held at Winthrop Hackett’s newly restored grave. Several members of the family attended the ceremony at the Hackett memorial, including great-grandchild Kim Goss, whose son Matthew Goss travelled from his home in Zimbabwe to enrol at UWA this year. Matthew has been awarded a scholarship to study neuroscience and marketing, along with a residential scholarship to live at St George’s College.

Published in Uniview Vol. 31 No. 3 Spring 2012