1 66 Australian Life 



throughout Australia afforded little justification 

 for the fears entertained by those who opposed 

 the granting of woman's suffrage. For the pres- 

 ent, the Australian woman is content to be guided 

 in the main by the political opinions of her hus- 

 band or brother. 



It is one of the accepted doctrines of the Aus- 

 tralian bushman that ' ' the bush is no place for a 

 woman," but it frequently happens that the same 

 bushman marries and settles down to make a 

 home in the bush. The settler's life presses more 

 hardly upon the woman than the man, with the 

 result that the first impression gained of the wo- 

 men of the bush is one of sallow complexions de- 

 prived of all their freshness by the burning sun, 

 and of worn faces marked with premature lines 

 by care and waiting. More lasting, however, is 

 the remembrance of their simple goodwill and 

 kindly hospitality to strangers, their mutual help- 

 fulness at all times, and their courage and re- 

 sourcefulness in the desperate expedients to which 

 they are sometimes turned by the loneliness and 

 isolation of bush life. Every little settlement has 

 its tale of woman's heroism, told, and then quite 

 as a matter of course, only in response to the most 

 persistent questioning. The story of the woman 

 who maintains and keeps together the little bush 

 home when necessity forces the man to seek em- 

 ployment somewhere in the wide emptiness of 

 pastoral Australia, is but an everyday incident, 

 for there is no finer thing in all Australia than 



