Great Pioneer Women of the Outback by Susanna De Vries

From the 1800s to the onset of World War I, pioneers making their homes in outback Australia were joined by their wives, many of whom had no idea of the difficulties and dangers ahead.

These brave and resourceful women encountered conditions which would test their resilience and resourcefulness to the utmost: relentless heat, dust and isolaiton; and no doctors or pioneer women featured who faced the risk of dying from malaria, the scourge of tropical Australia. Many women lived in wooden huts or tin sheds with concrete floors, cooked on wood-fired stoves, and lacked any of the domestic appliances we take for granted today. Georgiana Molloy and the Brussell women tamed hectares of virgin bush with primitive implements. Myrtle White was trapped among sandhills, the fine grains invading her home and impeding her harrowing attempts to get her feverish baby son to the doctor before he died. White's predicament was quoted by the Revd John Flynn while raising funds for his Flying Doctor service.

The outback was indeed 'no place for a lady'. Yet many women with no previous experience of hardship rose to the challenge of creating homes, nursing farming - and keeping journals, which provided a startling vivid picture of the life they faced - part of the outback legend.

'Great Pioneer Women of the Outback' profiles ten female pioneers, from Jeannie Gunn, author of 'We of the Never Never' to equally remarkable but lesser known women, such as Emma Withnell in Western Australia and Evelyn Maunsell in Queensland. Building on the women's own records and her knowledge of Australian women's history, Susanna de Vries documents the extraordinary grit and determination it took to build lives that their grandchildren have difficulty in comprehending but some older Australians still remember.

'Great Pioneer Women of the Outback' features women pioneering in some of the harshest land in Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales.

Distributor: Harper Collins
Author: Susanna De Vries
ISBN: 0732276632
RRP: $29.95