The Australian Bush-Woman

Abstract

The Government statistician estimated that at the end of 1887 there were in the colony of New South Wales about 471,000 women and girls, so that I suppose there were at that time, in various stages of growth, about 471,000 different kinds of woman. This is rather too large an assortment to be separately described in the Woman's Journal, unless you will place me on the staff as a life contributor. This suggestion can be considered at leisure. Meanwhile, for hasty purposes, my colonial sisters may be roughly sorted into three heaps—city women, country women, and bush-women, and it is of the last I will write; for it is of their grim, lonely, patient lives I know, their honest, hard-worked, silent, almost masculine lives. My experience lies chiefly among the women of New South Wales, but I think in the main, and as far as generalizations can describe a large number of units, my description will apply to the bush-women of all Australia