THE AUSTRALIAN GIRL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 79

THE AUSTRALIAN GIRL.

By F.V.C., in the Westminster GaSette.

After « prolonged stay in England^ among girls who cannot make their own ilothes, who do not like housekeeping, who do not caie for literature, and who have ,no cult save themselves, it is rather astonishing to look back upon the Australian girl and remember, all she is capable of and performs as ji ordinary eVeryday matter -of course. I mean in this no disparagement to th» English girl. She is, as we all ais, th« creature of her environment md c'rcumstances. Probably the AustraluM' yhl is ~a like product.- I would Wfce to -reafc to her in this place, marbs as -\ lint, perhaps as a reminder, re ler i>&ie fortunately placed sister overseas. '

To be«in -with, the Austral san •x\\\ \s an extraordinarily Trell-rs»d •pc •on v he ia not often highly educrtecL but ij: sviahly well read, and with an instimti* ? ■ —.ving for culture that exten-ds not tmij t<j ihosf things oarlaining to the mind and sw£

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but also to her lithe young body. Nature, for instance, bestows upon her at a start the obvious handicap of a high-pitched though usually sweet voice, and a horrible tendency to over-use ot her pretty nose as an organ of speech. But she remedies that with incredible care, by a thorough study of voice-production. Some of the loveliest speaking voices 1 ever heard belonged to friends of my own in the Antipodes. The Australian girl has to make her own dresses — indeed, everything she wears is of her own manufacture, from her hats down to her dainty lingerie. If she did not make these things for herself, she would have to want them, or pay such outrageous prices as only the multi-millionaire can afford. Often enough the Australian father is possessed of great , wealth, but neither he nor she would feel it a right or proper thing to spend lavishlj on things that can be made at home by industrious hands in the long, leisurely Australian days. j So she dressmakes, does her own millinery and "white work, ' with no otheT \ assistance than a sewing machine and 1 paper patterns. I have seen girls at the Government House balls whose frocks . would have- been a credit to " WoHh or Paquin, and which were conceived and carried out by "their wearers in little verandah workrooms in the bush. - I vrell remembei one dress, worn oy a tail, lovely * blonde. It was all rose and saffron and grey — a curious and arrestive arrangement of the draperies and colours made me inquire how she had arrived it them. _ "Ah !" she laugaed, "it all came of riding home in the dawn on a wet morning. These are cloud colours." Now, the English girl would have been struck by the colours, but they would never have carried her any suggestion for a successful ball toilette. She plays and sings more often than her English sister, because Australia is a country where voices abound — the climate makes them, as does Italy, it is so dry and rare. She rides like an' Amazon, and rides anything in the shape of horseflesh, and is a good shot ; she is courageous, spirited, and graceful in the saddle as she is on foot. The circumstances of hea* upbringing and life demand a thorough Knowledge of all household matters. The Australian girl may own thousands of acres and have the income of a lord — or such an income as one considers the lord ought to have, — but there is- nothing to be done in her house she cannot do herself, and possibly better than those she hires to do it. She can make and brew, she can cook, her cakes and sweets are things to remember, she pickles and preserves, 6he can. wash clothes, iron, and mend them. She can scrub floors : dust, make beds, polish and sweep. She is past-inistrefes, in fact, of everything the lady of the house ought to know, representing in' the Antipodes what tlie mistress of the English country house: used to be in times gone by. And now I come to -a special knowledge that will go far with Australia in days to come, and the lack of arbich will do more hurt US England as a nation than flam© or sword. The Australian girl is a devoted mother, and she knows all that a Toun.g mother ought to know about the babv — before it comes, and after. Her experience begins with her own little brothers and sisters, for she is her mother's right hand. She baths and dTesses them, she plays jvitb them, reads to them, amuses them, nurses them in sickness, and loves them always ; no woman on earth loves the child more than the Australian. When her own baby comes she takes it into h-er immediate, care frojn the first. She nurses it herself — she has made all the pretty little garments with her own hands ; with her own hands she clothes it, gives it its bath, feeds it, watches it,' tends it till she comes to that breathing space when it is old enough to leave from time to time. Not till then does she^go back to amusements and social duties. She puts everything aside, whatever it may be, for baby. Often euough, marriage means to the girl a departure from all sh© loves and values ; from luxury and plenty to the grey, wearing struggle of life ijt the bush, on some far-off, station in the "NeverNever," or, worse still, on a small selection in new country. In either case, she never sees another woman from one year's end till another, unless she journeys for that purpose or the other woman comes to her. All ihe joyful, terrible, awful j thins* that happen in life, and Lhat come I mercifully veiled to most of us, mercifully hidden, so that we cannot quite recognise their terror, come 'naked and with bare faces and unhidden limbs straight into the Australian's girl's presence. Life and death, love and fear, march full before her, through the Lowering boles of the ghostly gum trees. Her children are born to her in the little log-house she may have helped to build with her small hands ; and there is no other woman with her to perform those little tender acts fhat women need at such times; no sister's voice to cheer her in .he hour of agony, ot to take the little new life if she turns he" tired head and. the lashes droop over her weary eyes in the sleep that knows no breaking here. - Behind the log-house, or near it, there will be a small enclosure, planted with those flowers the Australian loves — tearose , loose-petalled and fragrant, mignonette, and heliotrope. JChey coyer the low mounds 'midst the grey Australian grasses, and it may be that she herself ha 6 helped to dig there and to cover up with breaking heart the child faith and love or the husband " of her heart. I know an Australian lady — sweet-voiced, gentle, delicate of limb and feature — who nursed her family through a terrible illness, and buried all her children with her own hands. All save one, and last of all her husband, whose dead hand she could hardly unclasp from her own, so worn was she with nursing and weakness. She buried him by the others, then lay down in the dark, in the silence jf the forest, , ♦ Ji» ainnA. A passing trav/J' — "••»« d

her and her surviving child. She told me this as a woman tells of the Io6« of happiness, of loved ones ; but not as if it were an unusual experience, or one : that marked her out as tragically grand ; above other women. ■ I believe it is not , an unusual thing that such stories are all ; too common in remote places where the j woman faces the struggle of life with none other by her save the husband of her > ! choice. ) I remembeT when I first came Home, the long, brave, heartrending, pathetic letters i that followed me from the Bush. Girls 1 I had never known wrote to me, telling ' me how great a boon it was to them to * have such a. correspondent in the world, | someone ,who kept them in touch with - life. .One .woman wrote to me saying all her children were boys, and she had not r spoken to, another woman of her own colour for seven years. She had no cert vant:- their station was 300 miles away J from the nearest, township- They were 1 very poor — iardly making ends mcct — and ' in debt to the bank ; she was cook, laun1 dress, tailor, dressmaker, dairymaid, what > not, and, her letter ended with a quotai tion from Plato — in the original! Said an Australian girl to me once— i apropos of this kind^ of thing: "Well, if 1 you marry a man and go to a life .of Jthat kind, full of % work, . why, you must i do it, that's all." That's all! It is the ! way she looks at it, you see. The i fragile, dainty, tender-looking exotic flower < of a girl, in her soft frills and airy • muslins ; with her- pretty hair all puffed 1 and curled in the latest fashion, and a ■ little determined line between the frank eyes under her pretty hat. She faces life • with her husband as women, all the world over ought to do — "bravely, joyfully, ready for all things, prepared by an expert's ' knowledge of what is necessary to her I dominion of the home. Her weapons are laid to her hand — that tireless, busy hand, ■ so small and delicately made. The scheme shall not fall through through lack of skill on her part. Sometimes great riches come to her ; great success to her husband. Then she takes the smooth as she took the rough, as a matter of course a,nd a thing expected.