Call number
AUS/520/01
Description
Women in the bush found time to write, in letters to friends and family far away, and in diaries to be kept for themselves. These writings provide a fascinating recreation of the past and a vital contribution to Australian social history.
Collection
Publication
McPhee Gribble / Penguin Books (1984), 284 pages
Subjects
Original publication date
1984
Local notes
Among the women whose accounts appear in this book is Janie MacGregor, who arrived in New South Wales from England as an emigrant with her husband. They lived on a sheep and cattle station at Clyde Hill, where Janie’s husband worked as the overseer. On the station, Mrs. MacGregor acted as cook for the employees but was shocked by the language and gambling indulged by the stockmen, and she and her husbanf both flatly refused to work on Sundays. Though initially troubled by interaction with the locals, whom she regarded as shiftless, Mrs. MacGregor later regretted that their lives had become blighted by the introduction of alcohol by Europeans. Janie MacGregor’s personal memoirs of this period were published by her daughter as "Report of an Australian Life: The Life of Janie MacGregor as told to her Daughter Mary Jane Brown," and are cited in No Place for a Nervous Lady.
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