Pioneer in the Desert: Captain Hillier’s Wife
- Sergio Volpi
- Aug 7
- 2 min read
From the beginning of this series of posts, I have had doubts about whether I should include Mrs. Hillier, who often led travelers—including female travelers—to Siwa, personally driving one of the cars.
The problem is that, unlike the others, she left behind neither writings nor photos, so there is a dramatic lack of information.
We don’t even know her name, when she married Captain Hillier, or since when she participated in the expeditions. This prevents me from stating whether she was the first, the second, or the third of the women travelers. What is certain is that she was the only one to visit Siwa many times and had the most
significant knowledge of the oasis.
Captain Hillier founded the “Libyan Oasis Association” after the English conquest of the oasis in 1917, but before starting the journeys he had to prepare the logistics, build two hotels—the first in Matrouh and the second in Siwa—and then acquire cars (various models of light Fords), so trips with clients definitely began some years later.
Captain Hillier’s Wife:
From the documents, it emerges that Captain Hillier’s wife was much more than a simple companion on journeys to the Siwa oasis; she was a protagonist, not only within their tourism enterprise but also in the logistical and operational management of the trips.
Mrs. Hillier personally drove the cars between Marsa Matruh and Siwa, crossing the difficult Western Egyptian Desert. Thus, she was not limited to purely representative roles but performed tasks that, even at the time, “many men would not have been able to accomplish.”
She was recognized as a leading figure in the small community of British pioneers engaged in desert tourism. Practical management, driving off-road vehicles, planning itineraries, coordinating personnel: all this was part of her everyday life, closely shared with her husband.
She also managed the family hotels, took care of welcoming international guests in the simple yet iconic structure of the “Prince Farouk Hotel” in Siwa, paying great attention and displaying a marked sense of Anglo-Saxon hospitality, adapted to the Siwan environment.
Her biography is truly limited. She was English, probably between thirty and thirty-five years old, petite and compact, usually wore men’s clothing—shirt, yellow bermuda shorts, hat—and kept her hair short in a rather modern style for the time, preferring practical attire suited to the arduous tasks of driving and handling logistics in the desert.
In conclusion, Mrs. Hillier represents one of the rare examples of Anglo-Saxon women who, between the two wars, lived and worked in the Egyptian desert not as mere “wives in tow” but as protagonists. Her lifestyle—practical, austere, yet at the same time elegant and determined—embodies the new female roles that, between the wars, emerged in the small colonial worlds scattered between Egypt and Libya.
PS: as explained above, we have neither writings nor photographs of her, but personally, I believe she appears in the video shot by Baroness Ullens in Siwa
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