In November 1882, Dwyer—who by then had changed her first name to Daisy May—emigrated to Australia aboard the as part of a Queensland government-assisted immigration scheme. Dwyer said that she left Ireland for "health reasons", which was repeated by some sources, but biographer Julia Blackburn discovered that after getting her first job as a governess in Dublin at age 18, there was a scandal, presumably sexual in nature, which resulted in the young man of the house taking his own life. This story has never been verified, but if true, could have spurred Dwyer to leave Ireland and reinvent her history, setting a pattern for the rest of her life. It was not until long after her death that facts about her early life emerged, and even recent biographers disagree in their accounts of her life and work.