WORKED AS A MAN

Hokitika Guardian, 4 September 1929, Page 7

WORKED AS A MAN

YOUNG WOMAN’S SECRET. JSYD’NEY, August 22. The astounding adventures of a young woman who had dressed, worked, and acted, first as a boy and tkpi as a man., for 20 years, in all parts of eastern Australia and New Zealand, were revealed when police question a “labourer’* on a farm at Eastwood, Sydney, during the weekend.

Although only 29 years of age this woman has worked as a farmer, railway navvy, labourer, horse breaker, diover and hunter.

The discovery of her secret was the result • of a guess by her former employer, who disputed the payment of £39 in wugps for her work as a farm labourer. The .farmer told the police that ho believed his former employee, although she worked -well at ploughing and other heavy tasks, was a.

woman. A police sergeant visited the woman at her address at Eastuood, where she had obtained a situation as a labourer on a poultry run, and found that the (belief of her former employee was well founded. The woman told the police that she had worked throughout New . South Wales, Queensland, Northern' Territory, South Australia, Victoria and. New Zealand. She had filled scores of Positions as a man, and until the police arrived had kept her secret. RUN AWAY FROM HOME. She said she was bron in the United States of America, of English parents, and came to Melbourne with her parents at the age of seven. Her mother died a Short time afterwards and her father took to drink and treated her cruelly. .She stood it for a time and finally ran away to Bendigo and tried to get a job. Though she was then only ten years of age she was exceptionally well developed, and looked nearly fifteen years of age. As a girl she found that to obtain a job was impossibly, so she decided to change her clothes and seek work as a hoy. Her scheme proved successful arid she secured a billet on a farm.' ,

In her first job she received no wages, working for her keep only and a i F ew articlesl of clothfng. 'She worked ten hours a day. She remained in this position for several years, but .then came to New South Wales, wliere she detained a situation on a dairy farm on the Richmond River. Though only fifteen years of age, sho had to plough, milk cows each morning and afternoon, and do odd jobs about the farm, during the day. She stayed at this iplace until she was seventeen, and had by then realised that she could not go back to wearing skirts again, as she had none of the accomplishments of a woman, and she had th;e awful choice of remaining a man at being cast aside, Next she wandered to Queensland, where her next job was on a mixed farm. Her day’s wortc there consisted of ploughing and cattle mustering. Then next she went to North-west Queensland, into the heart of the cattle country. iShe was engaged by a firm of droving contractors, and. with other drovers, shy took great mobs of cattle across Northern Queensland from the stations near the borders of the Northern Territory, to tho meatworks near the railheads of O ween si and.

“No one suspected mo.’’ the woman told the police. “The drovers arc a fine type, generous, friendly, and hard working.” She said that she was in the saddle day and night, and in flood times often worked 24 hours without a break. WORKED IN NEW ZEALAND. Mjore droving jobs followed, and then she went back to farming work. Her next move was to New Zealand, but she disliked tho New Zealand winter, and returned, with £SOO which she hod saved to Queensland, where she took tip a selection of 851 acres of land in an unsettled part of the State. Miles from, the nearest town or railway, she performed enormous tasks of transporting all her requirements to her property by pack-horse. She also drove her own horses and cattle with which she stocked her selection.

iSotrie of her land was heavily timbered and to clear it and fence it

to argue with her any longer, hut fled.

Her next move was to the busli country of New South Wales, where she started out for liierself as a hunter of kangaroos and wallabies. She was an excellent shot with a rifle, and managed to earn on an average of £6 a week. She stayed in this country for a while, but tired of the isolation, and scoured a job as a navvy on a railway construction job. This work was ,particularly arduous, but the masquerader stuck to it and kept her secret even in the navvies’ camps.

Finally she worked her way to the city and finished up by securing a job in orchards and poultry farms in and around Sydney. She plans to go back on the land again in Queensland. Dressed in her best, she is a handsome figure. She wears a well-out grey worsted suit,

a felt hat and black shoes. Her taste in socks is outstanding, and she shows good taste in her selection of ties.

Asked by the police whether she would adopt women’s dress again, she said that she could not go back again now. “I ha Ye done no harm,”

she said in her statement. “I have always done a fair day’s work, and I can always make a living as a man.

I don’t drink or gamble, and though I swear a little it is not harmful, and it relieves one’s feelings. I couldn’t

get into dresses again, for if I did I could never earn a living.”