Pat Lowe had a simple way of explaining why she devoted her life to the Kimberley. She had watched termites build their towers in the red earth long before roads crossed the region or companies proposed industrial projects along its rivers and coasts. These small creatures altered the soil and supported other forms of life, and Lowe believed that every part of the landscape mattered, even the parts most people overlooked.
Lowe, who died on July 2nd, 2026 at age 84, spent much of her life studying and defending the Kimberley in northern Western Australia. She was a psychologist, writer, editor, naturalist, and one of the region's most persistent environmental campaigners.
Her path to the Kimberley began far away. Born in England in 1942, she trained as a teacher, worked in East Africa, and later moved to Australia, where she became a psychologist in the prison system. At Fremantle Prison, she met Jimmy Pike, a Walmajarri man who had grown up in the Great Sandy Desert and would later become one of Australia's best-known Indigenous artists. After Pike's release, they lived together for three years at Kurlku, a remote desert camp. Pike taught her about his Country — the Indigenous Australian term for ancestral lands, waters, relationships, knowledge, and responsibilities. She learned Walmajarri words, listened to stories, and discovered that a patch of ground could contain food, history, and useful instructions all at once.
This experience shaped everything that followed. Lowe wrote about Pike and Walmajarri life, working to preserve Indigenous accounts that had seldom appeared in print. She studied boabs, mammals, desert plants, and the pindan woodlands around Broome, where red soil lies beneath pale grasses and scattered trees. She even wrote a book about termites after asking Aboriginal knowledge-holders what they knew, speaking with scientists, and reading widely.
By the 1990s, proposals affecting the Fitzroy River had brought conservationists together to form Environs Kimberley, and Lowe was among its founders. She chaired the organization, served on its board for decades, and edited its newsletter for 29 years. Under her steady hand, the group became one of the region's most persistent voices for protecting rivers, savannas, coasts, and wildlife.
Lowe was skeptical when governments and companies presented large developments as necessary or unavoidable. She argued that communities should be able to reject projects that would permanently damage their Country. "The value of such places could not be reduced to projected revenue or compensation," she wrote. She understood that the Kimberley was shaped by Indigenous law and knowledge, as well as by histories of displacement and resistance — and she believed protecting it meant respecting both.
Colleagues remembered her as direct, witty, and intellectually exacting, with little interest in ceremony or personal recognition. Her humor was dry, and her judgments could be sharp. But her work outlasted any single argument. The organization she helped build continues to defend the Kimberley today, carrying forward the belief that overlooked places deserve protection.