R¡yRllndate - University of Adelaide · 2017-06-02 · Abstract This thesis accompanies and is an exegesis of the poetry manuscript farurwoman- poetry that might be describ€d as

Thesis Titlq an exegeticaliouaey Ûo lùe nanuscrþt famwoman

Shrdent R¡yRllndate

StudentNr¡urben 1015336

Award: PhD (Cbeaúive Writind)

Faorlty: Hmnities & Soc¡Ðl Sciences

Supervison llrHeather Ken

For submission: 30 Augûsú ,IXt3

Table of Contents

by way of int¡rcduction I

part one: can the poetlie?... --------t5

part two: other poeb on the journeY --n

part three: same journey, different¡oad. ...39

part fouc fænrwomen on the move. ....58

Notes. -.80

Appendix --..9

Bibliography .88

t

Abstract

This thesis accompanies and is an exegesis of the poetry manuscript

farurwoman- poetry that might be describ€d as nes¡ writing. It descdbes the

physical, inætlectuat and imaginative journey I have rmdertaken towards the

creative work.

ln fotlowing my journey, I examine the role that imagination ptays in my

poetry, curious as to whether or not¡roetry mustbe autobiographical. I

observe what my contemporaries afe writing about $,ofnen in the bush, as

well as the bush poetny being wdúen by women living on the land-

Foltowing an explicit insight into my own poetic developnent I detail the

results of my r€search into the contemporary movementof political activism

by Australian women in agriculurrc. The end of this particularjourney is the

completion of the manuscript farmwoman.

Iil

This workcontains no nntertalwhichlus beenacceptedJor tlæ awardof any

orrør &gree or diplomainatry wúvusity or oths tqtiûÌ insliturìonmd totla best oÍ¡nyknowledge andbelief, contains ¡n ¡u¿terial previoutlypnbtistedor writtenby anotlær persoq excePt wltere due reJerence lus been

made in the teJat-

I gíve consent to this copy of my thesis, whendeposìted in the Uníversity

Lihrøy, be@ cnailahle for loan cmtt p lntanpying-

3-.(.o3

I acknowledge with thanks the University-funded mentorship of Canberra

poef Geoff Page in the preparation of themanuscriptfarmwomæ which

accompanies this thesis.

MtÁ. Style has been used for this essay, other than where citations would

intemrpt the flow of the hybrid genre.

lv

an exeget¡cal journey to the manuscript farnwoman

by way of introduction

I eat a lonely cloud

frshing the landscaPe for words

distilling driving thinking

lonely thinking as my Troopie ft¡mbers

sluggish ac¡oss tbe cotmtrY

as my body lumbers through the world

and my mind's slow thoughts weave and duck

*****

my thoughts weave and duck

ideas jumble and jostle almost as

the trees transform with the changiag soil

from saltbush ùo mallee

mallee to gidgee gdgee to pqperbark

back to saltbush balls of skeleton bluebush

tossing like my thougbts

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tossing in the wind that blows

blows across the plains I have to cross

to get anywhere in this country from Adelaide

journeying roads that crisscross the continent

like the thoughts jostling in my mind

all my creativity interconnected

a whole and Yet manY Parts

farmwoman to feminisur poetry to [anguage

working the lmd to crossing the cormtry

all points from Adelaide

Adetaide a long journey to ever¡rwhere

Plnnaroo to Ouyen Atice Springs to Boulia

Myrtleford to Mallacoota Yass to Bundanoon

Tamboutine Mountain to Border Ranges

hrnnulutu to Nitmiluk and beyond into the tiuhtpa l

into thelandscape into countr5r

searching out the people who inhabit it

*****

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fraveling alone across Australia

picking poøts from the curve of a hill

evening light casts shadows long and low

bringing out the kangaroos and wallabies

to graze the roadsides green from mnoff

shadowlines

the woman pauses

as the shadow lines elongale

acroos the winter-ravaged paddock

the sun a pale bæterl' hen's egg

nudging the horizon

backlighting the clump of scribbly gt¡ûts

pasted as an afterthougþt

onto the arid landscape

she pa:uses

hand to her eyes

as she squints to catch

the last drops of daylight

then sheflings her outback voice

to the shearing sheds to the rocþ

backdrop to the homestead

caning her lighÉoot children to their tea 3

*****

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time to camp before I catch some roadkill

my stomach recoils

find a wide barely-flowing river to camp by

there are not many Murray orMumrmbidgee

the Darling aftermin

river catchments sieving Centnal Australia

the water thick tle colour of latté

mud and saltin heavy suspension in no hurry to reach the sea

I'm in no hur4r

conferences and gatherings far removed

from my lazy travels

****+

academics have conferences scientists have symposia

farmwomen gather they're not an audience

or a congregation not participants nor delegates

not spectators they gather at Gatherings

specifrcally for rural womeû

having a break from their menfolk whoføm

these a¡e worneD who farm women in agriculture 3

farmwomen re gathering

4

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an academic conference

"sesing the Agenda for Rural'lilomen -

Research Directions" in Wagga \Mæga

commonly known as wo gga.

is not a gathering of farmwomen

though a few have made it he¡e mostly

the tertiary-educated at home on this

windy university campus named after

Charles Snrrt yet anothernineteenth cenhrry explorcr

who 'opened up' this country and paved the way

for the agriculture which is under discussion

****:F

*****

the oonference is about runal women having stipped

off the a;genoø.of governments

wornen only got onto the agenda at the end

of the twentieth cenhrry by dint of activism

by ordinary farmwomen and akeadY

not ten years later

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acknowledgeme,nt is waning

where to now?

the papers are enrdite and pertinent

the workshops lively and topical

I give one myself a

the farmwomen present might ask themselves

wltel's in it for us?

but researchers c:ome away invigorated

focusing on 'positive actionfor women' s

hurrying back to their various universities

and government departments and their

theoretical positions and grants

*t***

scientific symposia are funded

by multinational companies advocæing

GM crops to use monopoly pesticides

or herhicides or by farmers' federations

with an axe to gtod or by bureaucracies

wanting to charge for the water

which falls on the farm from the sþ

men's busìness

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farrrwomen are ûot lvelcome

but their discussions on internetfonrms

show a good grasp

of all the issues scientific social

and political if some of these women

were welcomed into symposia

farmers might have more say 6

***+*

Women on Farms Gatherings(WoFc)

Beechworth in winter Kyneton

in winter Yarram in winter usually winter

forthe slach period with no harvest.

usually cold shivering in student accommodation

faint whiff of old socks and banana skins

communalbathrooms communitycatering

wþ go?

writing poems about women

at the mome,nt it's women who live onfarms

othertimesit's women I love

Ìvomen who interest me not many men

7

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in my poems only when they impact on

lvomen's lives and their presence

is unavoidable for the meani¡g the direction drive

*****

**+**

farmwomen don't get time off

no annual leave like city women often

they work weekends as well except

for fundraising sausage sizzles

and footy matches endless footY

statewide Gr*lerings get them all together

lavethe men just once a year

two whole days offfarrr for fun and learning

sharing some of their hopes and terrors

sucoession planning newhi tech

domestic violence youth suicide and

lack of leadership lack of education

serious laugþter but thinking shared

is hurting halved

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and stories

these ìvomen tell good Yarns

ode to co.'ws

ccrns - tlwy're womenyou þnav,

they've got a gentle naûrre

generousto afault

withmilk/ butter cream cheese

aviolentkick

only whenmistreated

indians and chiefs

tike any ordered societY

cogitative cudding implies

Cartesian setfhood

the tip of the tail

afeminine ringlet

they're women you know I

old (farmers) wives' tales

ú

tall elegant and soignée io grey

her silverhair looped behind mother-of-pearl

filigree brooch at her silk scarf

squatocracy rounding her words

she tips back her head her mouth pursed

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in consideration and says

I nrøy lwve stopped tugging títs

but I'm rurt too okl to lnve

somethingto offer to my industr!'

tilhere is another

her voice all gravelly

from shoufing across paddocks

curly hair crimped by never-ending su¡r

soft handspun jumper with peads

at her nech and sensible shoes

on feet that have spent decades

iß boots she edges forward

laughingty tells me

a sheep will spend, a hfetime

working out dífferent ways to die!

üi/

thirty-something short-haired

neatand slim and trim as anY

n¡ornjaû addicted to the g¡rm

country+heckshirt tightjeans

higÞ-heeled boots and magenta lips

her hands on her hips she saYs

h¿ saful to m,e 'øe you iust afumer's wiþ

ordoyouwork?' e

10

*****

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so I travel

I set up camp

under a river red gum

clear away long dry leaves and strips

of curling bark apologizing to the bugs

I don'tlike sleeping on lumps

my arms don't reach even a quarter way

round the trunk of this big gum

its b¡anchestoohigþ I canhear

the white-browed honeyeater but see

only a brffgreen flitting persistent

call of the young denrandingfood

I putmy e¡r¡ {inner to cook

while I quickly erect my tent

words ¡oiling in my brain

can't wait to eat must get to my l4top

five pelicans float by in the dusk

dancing a swanlike parane

curtseying theirfleshy bills first one then the second

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the third then the fourth fifth first

rhythmiç sifting of the still water

sound only of water dripping as they raise

theirfull bills to st¡etch and eat

I t¡'pe and eat eât and type

ro the fhythm of theirfishing

ready words dripping in cadence

I love the bush

I usednfarm

farm language is companionably fasriliar

I still drive looking over my dght shoulder

eyeing off my neighbours' cto¡x

a habitual needing to know

farm knowledge quite different from academic

bone deep knowing of changing seasons

lww ii it differenr?

farmwomen know as much aboutthe land

as theirmen but are often unrecognized

know more aboutthe world

than their mer or see it differently

see itdifferently from researchers too

who migþt want to homogenise

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homogmise? ísn't thnt milk?

one of the delighÉul things about homo

sapiens is our difference not one of us

quite like the next except maYbe

identical twins / fraternal often determined

to prove their absolute unlikeness /

so when we label gay or Indigenous

orfarmer Muslim or teenager

it's like lve see them all as one thing

devoid of personality and interest

like bønanas ormilk pasteurized

and homogenized

farrrwomen are pnickly about homogeneity

*****

farmwomen are prickly about feminism

about the intellechralizing of issues

which impact on them profoundlY

I wrote ayapr about farmwomen

and the 'f" word ¡o feminism butit corld

just as well be fuck or funding or family farm

one yoìmg utoman heard the PaPer

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and wept

tbrough her tears she changed

I arnaJarmer!

women can befarmers üoo

*****

I makethis journey

to hear the voices of Australian

women onfarms

farmwomen

my on¡n oontribution

to insertfarmwomen

into contemporary Ozlit

t4

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part one: can the poet lie? ll

the role of (my) imagination in poetry

o-my pæt4' had nothing fo do wiih tricking rþe reader- the tricks were made by

rhe rcnder him/herself. They did all the believing or non belieling- They'd see what

ürey wanted to see-"

John Kinrella;l¡d¿, rÀIesfern Australia and Cambridge' UK:

salt R¡blishing, 20ol: 63.

'When I read out loud a poem about oourage in the face of n¡ral suicide and a

member of the audience comforts me for what she ¡¡¡egines is my

widowhood; or when I read a poem about cancef and am pitied for losing a

breast or about a disabled child, or a lost lover or dreams or savings or

face.-.

Do I correct the misap'prehension therc and then? No, my husband did

not kick outthe haybale no,I still have both my breasts no no etc.

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Or do I accept it as a complime.nt thaf my imagination has enabled the

audience or reader to believe in the people in my poems?

'What if I'm writing in the voice of someone really familiar, but not me; what

tf I hecomethe widow or the caîcer victim or the farmwoman in my

intagínøtíon?

In the following poem *Pasto¡ale', the first line is a direct quote overheard at

a gathering of farmwomen. Like EhzabfjthJolley, and indeed, many many

writers,I eavesdrop quiæ shamelessly- I store away little vignettes and

storylines, and then let my pen cfËate someone, somewhere, doing

sometbing. It's not lies exactly br¡t it's not truth either- It's how it comes

out of my head. This, surely, is the nature of fiction; the nature of the

imagination

Pastorale

Thank goútess for brasts!

She tays down the fencing Pliers

outof reach of the toddler

hoiks up her shirt and feeds

herred-faced babe in the

zudden sucking silencne

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she contemplates flre safidactory glemt

ofanew sheep fence.

Her new son's soft wisps

of red-tinged hair lift gently

in the wann October btæ,zn

eyes closed / his pleasurc

joining hers / her carrot-topped

daughter at herfeet

deeply immersed in a tumbling tower

of pebbles and mud. tz

I had to bottle-feed my babies, they were all bald when new-born and heavy

fe,ncing pliers slun my knuckles and left me close to teans long before a

fence ryas up. This wornøt is ttol ¡ne!

Am I stealing the voices of Australim farmwomen and using them for my

own satisfaction? Well, I am giving them a voice which is not theirs

(except for direct quotations), becatrse I am the poet and I am writing the

poetry- But given that the farmwomen in my Poems are all created in my

hea{l canonly be appropriating thevoices of imaginary womenâ notreal

live everyday ordinary farmwomen.

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Listen. I'm telling You stories.

aqua vita

On a shuddering indrawn breath

the old prmrp down bY the dam

wheszes inûo action

As the muddy water is sucked

up the tnembling'meal pþup the steep bank sf ths dam

up and over the hillside

out through the standing army

of irrigation sprinklers

forcing water into roots

green into leaves

juicy flesh into berries

cash into the bank

I give thepump

a proprietodal pat

on its heaving sides

dip my frngers in the dam

mdflicka blessing

Walk away whistling ¡3

I have been afarmwoman- I have done some of the things that occupy the

women in my poems. I am not any of the u,omen in my poems- Now I just

listen-

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I'm notwriting poems aboutfarmwomen formy own enjoyment, although

the work does give me pleasure; I'mwriting them to bring something that

the city reader or audience doesn't regularly think about, rigþt up under thei¡

noses

I wantyou to listen. I'm telling you stories.

I'm otú of here,

the son sighs as the father's voice

rants on and up,

fanriliar dystopic sour tem¡rer.

'Where's thû bloody bo¡t? fleeing,

wild hair, cringing pale eyes,

seeking a p[ace of quietness,

freedom from shouting-

Get himto bring me tlat sPønner!

I senf himfor it bloody Inws ago-

Sitting with his back to a gum tnee

np the paddock" eyes tight shut" hunted-

The famreds wife buffers for the son,

automatically calming

as she fetches the spannet, yet again

steers away the angry man-

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The boy's heart hufs at the

beauty of the bush, the deep splcy

breath of eucalypÇ lichen underfoot,

distanthaze of hills,

üe mud of the dam between his toes

when yabbying, the excitement

of rabbit shooting, insistent

hg of calfs tongue at his fingers"

wide-eyed fear for the favourite cat

as it grapples with a red-bellied black;

above alt, sining on this gentle hillside, grass

in mouth, planning lifie on the farm.

As boyhoodmoves info adolesoenoe

he recognises their incompatibility,

mgry farrrer and dreamy son"

held onty by thread of landlove.

Idles ther€ benealh his t¡ee"

willing his fafher to an apoplectic end"

yearning for the inheritance

he knows he mustleave- ¡a

My poetry is not always about women, and not always about farms, but

frequently so. But youtrg people on farms are nearly as invisible as women'

both in literahlfe and in public life, unless they are developing as sporting

20

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heroes, or da¡edevil buckjumpers, oÌ tall poppies of some kind. "Farmer"

equals gfown man in the pubtic eye, and the labour of women and children

goes urremarked. But I am no longer young, so again the stories about

youths in my poetry come from my imagination, as well as being inforrned

by my own experiences as farm mothern and listening to women who a¡e still

mothering ard stitt farming. This is notarealyoung man Ìì'ho is out of

here, but a distillation of farm family life.

This does not make poetry "lies' if it is not autohiograPhical- My

imagination en¡iches my Poetry. Yes" I do take the voices of farmwomen;

and no,I don'ttake thei¡ voices: this paradox is quirky, stimulating and

enriching.

Women in n¡ral Australia are going to l-andcare in the way they used to go

to the Country Women's Association (CWA) or Red Cross, and they are

getting on to boards and running meetings and I wantto tell stories to bring

these achievements into the public domain- So my Poems become brag frles

for women I've dreamt up, and at the same time they show off the feats of

farmwomenwho a¡e achieving great heights-

Poefy can use stories from the imagination to wonderful effect, and these

stories do not, by definition, tre€d to be at¡tobiographical, althougþ of course

they can be. They need to be believable-

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Helen Gatner, in her latest book the/e¿I of sæel- wdtes of a conversation

with Western Australian writer Tim Winton about the Bible, where Tim says

'How it works for me is that the stories work on me. Thæ they seem tnre as

stories and thatl believe them -.. Probably amatter of imagination, forwhat

else is belief mostly built on.' rs

My poems, by and large, take the hardship of farm life head-on, without

losing their humour. Country people have a greartfacility to laugþ at

themselves and their predicaments, butin a sense these are 'in-house' jokes

and are not meant to offer city people the opportunity to mock. This poem of

mine always produces roars of laughten

butling

The cow tbrows a startled groan

over her shoulderblade

The AI man reaches the metal Probe

far into her fiery insides

rubberglove.d hand playing

ncross her twitching fl ank

to find exactly the right spot

Frozen semen is shot

Sex is overfor another sêason

I th¡Dk to myself

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How is his sex life thisAI man?

f can't quite look him in the eye

as I write the cheque

The cow races down the paddock

bellowing for the existential br¡ll

TheAI man and I continue

our ordinary livesr6

Being the butt of derogatory 'cocþ famer'o 'countr5r bumpkin' jokes is

uncomfortable for rural Australians, and widens tle rural / urban divide. But

gentte infornred humour can soften the impact of drought and flooding, hard

workfor small retum; nothing cat ease the pain of having to grve up farming

after generations on the same farn¡ or the death of a child in a farm accident-

Farrnwomen writ¡ng about ùemetves

My poetry of the everyday (and sometimes quiæ shocking) experiences of

ordinary womeû on farms contrasts dnamatically with the poetry that women

in the bush are writing for themselves and each othe4 Poetfy which is

rhyming and metred, in the true tnadition of tle ballad and which is blokey

and tells yanß and raises a laugh; poetry which covefs up the hardship with

flippancy and self-deprecation" and which feeds into all of the myths of the

23

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bush that city audiences tend to find tedious. Here is an example by Jan

I-ewis, a bush poet who lives in North East Victoria:

A Rursl Tlroman andl{erillaûes

A rurat w(xlan and her mates slrotrld need no intnoductiqr

but many myths about her oor¡ld do with rcoonstnrctiott-

They don't all lean on rustJr gates, ttrcy're as diverse as can be

frqnfarms atl a¡ound ttre corrrtry cr a house intown like me-

Some are employed by bocses, or t<¡il or family lards-

Most volunteer their time as well with dedicated ha¡rds.

Ilarids lbat do a hrmdred taslcs wilùout waiting to be traine{

keepng their communities from odlapsing with the srain

IIer rnaÍes could be n¡ale orfernale, middle-aged or young-at-heart:

she worfts best with their enæuragement a¡rd each orc plays a part

Althorgh they're in a sitr¡ation wheæ rnany have no choice

tlrere is spirit and there's strèngù betrind the ruml woman's vcice- t7

Here is a baltad by South Austr¿tian songwriterJeanette Wormalú

MathcB¡ide

Ste carne as a bride to ttreMdlee

Her d¡eams stretcbing far as a mile

IIer newly wed husband beside her

They'd ourquer all with their love a¡d a smile

v+

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ÀÁallee hids, Mallee bride

You can take anything in your stide

All thê dreams and ttre dqlbts

Good years and drcughts

Èlallee bride, I\¡Iallee bride

They told her, life could be tough there

Cloes d&r't always gfow grcen

Wh€å¡ æuld wither and sheepdie dihirst

The land and is promises obscene

There came to the land a recession

Rain didn't faII down til Jme

Money got tighter, wool Eices fell

But slp refused to give in to all tlrc gloom.--

The years have passed, lnrrd time's are behind h€r

Croldenhair is showing signs cf grey

Son ard daughters readytotake over

Sk'll leave the fanru let them go ttrcir way

I\{allee bride, Mallee bride e¡c- l8

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I can't write bush poetry. The ballad is not my genre. Rhyme and meter

don't produce that excitement, th¡t buz I get from tautly constructed,

punchy political free verse. Neither do I wish to gloss over the hard life nor

diminish the exuberantjoy of landlove. ButI aclmowledge the pleasure

bush poetry gives to bush audiences. I'm su¡e the¡e are many occasions

when they are in dire need of the safety valve of laughær, given to thern by

bush yarns and ballads.

The manuscript fi¡rmwoman tnis the story of a woman, Molly, who has

lived all herlife on farms in North East Vic"toria, aûd who is silent. The

poems are in the first llefson, so this silent woman is articulate only in the

texl Her story is entirely of my ovrninvention but herfarrn seüing is the

product of a ctmbination of my own experience, my conversations with

contemporary women on fannso and also my imagination.

It is always my hope that the people I write about oome alive on the page

and for the lisener. If the audience believes in my farcrwoman Molly,

perhaps for the first time they will experience life on the farm as it really is,

in its everyday ordinary ext¡aordina¡iness.

26

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part two: other poets on the journeY

whene are the farmwomen?

the search forfarmwomen

in contemponary Australian @fy

arduous m almostfruitless search

*****

I have looked at the work of ten of the contemporary Australim poets most

likely to be writing about farmwomen, because of the context of their poetry.

Goingfirst to ournearly poet taureate, countr¡r boy poet, the 'green man'

L€s A Mun:ay3 I meander through forty yealìs of vigorous and fresh

language, much of it about rural Australia Says Caribbean Nobel poet

DerekWalcot in cpver blurb mode:

there is no poery in the Englishlanguage now so rwted in its sacredness, so brød-

teafed in is pleasures ard pt so intimarc and coversational 21

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brush and hills farmsMurray gves us fhe paddocks of his childhood

and couutry people reach-out-and-touch¿ble:

Abandmedfruit tnees, moss-tuft€d, spotted witl¡ dim lichen painS; the fruit fees

cf the Grardmothers,

rhey stand along the creeküanks, in the old horrrc Fddocks, where the houses were,

they are reached through branrtlegrown front gales, they creak at dawn behind

bunit skillions...

The uees are split and rotren+lbowed; they bear the old-fashioned summerfruits,

the ann¡al bygones : china pear, çince, persimmon.-- 2

\VhatMurray does not give us, is women: no \À¡omeu

Children, yes; grandmothers only to locate in time and spaca

Amid alt the hot drowsy beauty of the Australian rr¡ral landscape, there are

shadows only of women in the mind of widowers. B In a poern which catches

the essence of Murray's love of country, *Towards the Imminent DayS", u an

invisible wor¡an (his Aunt ?) sen'es *boiled things with butter". The only

females Murray gives his readers are oows:

IlerNomady borps

ttæ nap cf t¡er Charolais ælq¡r

the ticks qt her elder are such

mr¡scabls of good blood-

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ff I envy lrer one thing

it is her ease with this epæh-

A wagøit switching left-right, teft-right on her rump. tt

and from the same suiæ of poems, "\Halking to the Cattle Plrce:

lvlaudieÀi[aisie

Shicinth+bailQuince

Blossqn DaisyshyAbigail

PrimaveraStrawberry

s¡e wiü a twestnoke rdd-ahHorace

Doris

MarraÞl

dear

GtoryI(ayleen little

fliesplease

Cliloreen spare Anaolia

A¡abellehugeOnnanolia

C-alico

and so on for Frfty ormofe cows' names, exquisiæty carefully struchtred. ø

ln *Farmer at Iifty' o thefarmer sits with his dog looking at 'his' farm,

over 'his' paddocks and Murray peoples this landscape with cattle- The

woman who bung out the nappies ('daily bunting on the line'), fed the dog /

farmer I children / and generally was an integral part of the farrt, this woman

is not in Murray's thoughts, and therefofe unlikely to be in the mind of the

reader- And in Subhuman Redneck Poems, o the poetry collection for

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which Murray won the T S Eliot pnzn,Britain's premier poetry award, the

*toddters and wives are out beside thefence crying" in '"The Rollover,"

such is theirlack of involvementin the business of the farm- Australia's

most renowned poet, setf-styted boy from the bush, does nothing to raise the

profrle of Australian farmwomen-

RobertAdamson is an Australian poet most associæed with landscape, but

it is a landscape of 'his' river, the Hawkesbury, and althougb he evidently

enjoys the company of women, they only people his poetic language on the

outer ¡eaches, certainly not as a worting part of the world of frshermen, or as

tb.e 'we' on some intellecftal, roma1tic orfishing journey. o Adamson's

'she' is as tihely to be a nightjar as a woman in the landscape-

hilaÈ O'Cmnor is a poet of passion for the richness and diversity of the

Austnalian environment" which wor¡ld be enougü, one would im"glne, to put

him offside with farmers, male orfemale, eternally suspicious of 'gfeenies'.

'She' for O"Connor, is a giant clam, Tridacnanæi¡na"or an Alpine

grasshopper or the sister of the moon- *

I browse hopefulþ through the poetry of John K¡nsella" an Ar¡stralian poet

who spent at least part of his childhood on afarm in \Vestern Aust¡alia Even

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when writing together with a reoman, as in Wheatlar¡ds with Dorothy Hewett,

Kinsetla doesn't admit lvomen into his poetic wor[{ let alone agricultural

women- His "Recalcitrant Daugþter" has left the farm, doesn't grow her own

food nor keep animals 3r; the widower"s daughter *glows like the best of crops

of a frne yeâf" but has no voice. æ Kinsella's farms a¡e for farnprs, who are

always men:

... dispæsessed

ihe farmer m@ns - a sudden downPou

shaves his precious topsoil-...

ÀÌight-seeding, the fiactor's floodligþts

arc túood-red a¡rd ova¡ian -rurrhdng the cloddish scil. & alwatris

thefrr¡rer wøking the wheel, hands

-efrarted & frwtbitæn & Iarge. æ

Canberr¿ poet Creotr Page has women on his farms, but they are past tense

wofnen, such as the tragic made-one-mistake-and paid-for it-forever

pastoralist's wife Sally in The Scalrine- s effrcient at wartime farming but

'spayedo like a birch for a momÊntary lonely laPse. He sings the praises of

count4¡women of true' git"

37

Grit

Adaxology

I paise úe coutry wornen

cf, my mother's çneration

who bred, brought up and bæsed

six Ar¡stralians each -tbe nearest dætor ftrty miles

ona rqd cut dbyflood;

the wome¡r who by wordless men

were cq¡rted away from tJ?esriters

and üaught úremselves to ùive -I paise their style

inttre gravel oorners.

I praise ürc snake they brclse in two

and tt¡e swiæh of wire theykepinaflPb@¡d.

I pnaise what they keep and what they lose -Thelongrædin to the abartcirs,

the starc which cr¡rqs

A stækman of stræting swans-

I praise úe pints, the wide straw brims

tlrey worc or¡t to ttre cloúhe.s line;

Ipaiseeach oily crow tln¡ watcHürer¡1.

l6aise ihe tilting weather -

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32

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the dry creeks and the steady floods

and the few good weeks betrveeru

I paise each colrmm in fu ledger

they kep r.qplate by mæquito andlampligþt;

the temerity of the banker

reining fui in at last - a trying;

the rmchimtions for clreqr.rered paddoclcs

swung on üæ children's nanres;

úre compnies just one st€p aheaù

ihe tax clerlc, in his wa¡ also.

I praise also that moment

when they headd off in rears -füe car ina tocilshed failing úo sta¡t

abooüriü dfencewire.

I praise theforty years

wlren tlrsy did not I praise

æh day and evening of their lives -tha¡ hard ahmdance yar by yar

mapped ina single word.35

A pæon of paise ùo countr¡r wometr, and I have included mostof this

because it is the one contemporary Australian poem thatl could frnd that

genuinely dwells upon the lives of farmwomen- But where are today's

33

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women? Have they less grittoday? Page's mother is seen on a pre-marital

hockey fiel{ sooner than in the paddocks where the farurer, his father says

'The eye of the mastq fattens the cattle" * (my emphasis)-

I wonder whether farnrwomen are mote visibte in conteurporary Ausffalian

women's poefry. But they are even harder to find in women's poetry, women

writing of theeveryday, the encounters" the hopes andfears, the romantic

idylts or the biuer fruit of unrelationships. Jena Woodhouse briefly

remembers herpouttry farm childhood butthe workof hermotheris barely

mentioned- ï Australia's conûemporary po€try scene is an urban scene, with

bits of unpeopled bush in betrueen. Lyn Marwood, a dairy farnrer herself,

situates her farmwoman in the home, being a wife: taking ptnne messages.æ

Doroúhy llewcff's rural memories afe childhood ones also, and dwell ligbtly

on adult experience. In her int¡oduction to'lilheatlands. Hewefr remains

haunted by thefarm landscape of herchildhooú

I ask myself now, did I ever really loow this corntry? I saw my father'

Heeding slagger from the Hacksmith"s shoP to fdt urrconsciqrs with one

eye alrnost kicked out by a ¡ecalcit¡ant tþrse. I saw him conrc home with his

wate@ ernpty from a day tcriling in the paddæks in the hlazing heat to lie

qrt in ttre sleepout witb a wracking lrcadache. I saw the seams of dirt and

rrnrts d tcil on his hands. I saw the dead sheep, fre.shly killed muttori'

34

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hangr.,g on ttre gallows of ttp staHeyard, the beheaded chooks running in

Heeding circles round afd roündtlÉ woodheap. The dead rabtits were piled

rry in furry treaps qr fhe tray cf tbe tnrck the shorn sheep were let out into

the perrs with their sides scored and Uoody from the blades, br-Ú this was as

close as I ever came to death. ø the sweat and bmtality d

labo¡r. Ð

Did she not see her mother labouring also? In *I-egend of the Green

Countr¡1" we have a rare glirnpse of Hewett's motheË

Mymotùer...

Hated úrc farm, haæd the line d waules

Smudging ttrc creeþ keS her tnnds full cf scones

Boiled th æpper, washing out sins in creek water'

Kept sex at bay like the btæk snake adled in the garden-.-ð

In "Once I rode with Clancy.-. * Hewett mentions the wives of dour Quaker

men, swomen witl hooked nosss, baking bread, / Breeding, hymning,

sowing, fencing off the stony earth / That salts their bones for thanlsgiving

when they'rc dead." at These are reomen who a¡e maffied to farmers.

Hewett also has women who farm when their men die, thougþ not giv¡ng aûy

seûse to the reader that they do so out of any love of the land; simply that

there's ûo ore else to do the farming with the man gone. *My Aunt Alice--.

/ went to feed the pigs each evening;' *Don / died in the iron luog / at foAy

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Ieaving Meg / with the farm to run;' * Jim...coughed his lungs out / on the

jarrah verandah/Jess ca¡ried on/ with the three boys / she'd always liked

oulside work anyhow-' 4

So indeed, Hewett has women on hef childhood fams, but they are not

recognisable to today's farurwomen; too much has changed-

There rnustbeother contempofafy wofnen writing literary Poetry about

farmwomen! lVhy can't I find them? Has tle bush really gone rigbt out of

fashion, or crontemporary thinking?

Back then to the male poets, one dead and one very young- Both have

escaped thefarm. I-es Murnay called PhilÍP Hodgins a "master of rural

writing..-no one has bettefed his observation of cormtr¡l life or his

understanding of mral people.'* U/hen writing gntty Poetry about his own

dying, one can quite appreciate the lack of women in Hodgins' landscape,

except as nuses. But in the farm PMS, the¡ds *'ìVoman with an axe"

(about the pleasules of woodchoppiag, nather than about the woman); Haüie

(who is Hodgins' dog); and a Jitla¡oo driving bomeÍ But Hodgins' dry

Australian idiom issues time and again from the mouth and brain of arural

nlan.

36

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Brenden Rya¡ is a young Melbourne poet whose first collection was called

'Whv I am aot a farmer. 6 Writing f¡om a boyhood where he would "chase

day old calves through driving rain / away from the pit of their mother's eye,

/ and with a sledgehammer/ d¡aw blood from those underweightand

unsaleable.'s And where bushfrreburnt cows Tall from the bulldozer's

bucketin clumps / ten at a time, sideways, heaüi¡stthudding / into place

amongst the flies." n Mum waits " by the fire for the appearance / of Cliff

Portwood on theMike walsh show.- Just when I decided Ryan would

rìevef mention a farmwoman, I found a vefy r€cent Boem of his in Island,

called ¿fne pa¿¿ocn with tlte BigTree h ü,u with a farm girt *ritten out of

the poet's blackvision of all things rural:

Like an anchq rarling ov€rboard

she tr¡rns f¡om her mother

lmving the morning into üe sfn dryer

a¡rd faces ttre paddocks.

Ttre smell cf mud is nesting in her lread

úe tractc thundering in the shed

is pulling her aror¡nd-

She walks like a dancer seasded by grief

lfu,qEü fhe cow shit on the &ivewaY-

All sor¡oç's are accepted

as stre divides thefence wires

herpilgrin legs splayedbetween ùe paddæla

37

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between sonrcone buzzing the bone

ard someone licking the spoon"

betweÉrr úe bed she wa¡rns with her sistels and the milking a girl should

neverdo,

She drags her rubber booæ ftrough capeweed

stands in drains to watch dirty waûerrise.

Uke anecho she retums

to the tnnk d a dead $trtr tree

rubbed sr¡looth by cow's r¡ecl<s.

She leans intowood

electrifred as prayer. *

I feel a need to rpdress the balance; to shine a light upon the invisibility of

farmwomen in contemporary Aust¡alian poetry-

38

part three: same joumey, different road

why writc poetry at all?

was it amid life crisis

a middle class whim

or something to fill my time?

was it a serious ca¡ger move

a change of scenery

augmentation of previous skitts?

waslbom toit

writing avidly in ihe style of Kears say

or Elizabeth Barrett Browning even

from abed of pain

from the age of five

from an obvious God-given gift?

none of these

Tyndale

*****

39

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latein life

burntout

bored with HerMajesty's Treasury

done with nesting

thefarminashes burnt out

onAshWeduesday

one too many clients psychotherapised

I pickedup a peû

tried short sÉories

TneFutbains

British novelist and visiting Writer in Residence

at Adelaide University in the'Nineties

ran a week-long workshop

helping us to capture the essence of time

spaoe and place to be exactto the point

of experiencing the burst of acid flavour

in the mouth from 1950's fnrit Spangles

or the prickle a¡ound the knees

from the layers of net Petticoaß

flouncing up the fuII circle jive skirt

N

*****

*****

the stories I wrote were bleak and black

suicide in the bush

r¡nhappy ÃW children being looked after

by unhap'py angry grou'nups

death of a hand reared calf

in the arms of an overworked farmet's wife

an embittered cleric and his embattled wife

stories tifted jr¡st above ajercmiad

by black huurour

alaugþing at seHand world

if there was an overall theme

it would have been escape

Tyndale

a¡rd thebeginnings

of an awareness of feminism

*****

4l

awoman poet

came to the University

Diane Fahey invited interested writers

to eat lunch and think about poetry

sitting in a circle on institution chairs

her delicate myths were dissected

and enjoyed to the rhythmic

mastication of sandwiches and fnrit.

not needin g much encouragement

but getting it anyway we wrote

the pen unasked

was beginning to pare away

to cut to the core of the matter

without losing the cadence

to find the essence of an idea

feminism

Tyndale

*****

42

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A woman of few words and those usually pithy,I was hooked on poetry. I

started by thinking: thinking often for days on en{ frequently with no ouþut

at all. Then sequences would appear out of my head almost fully formed,

needing, it seemed at that time, only Paring back here and there before being

ready to send off- When I look at some of those Poems now, f cringe.

This was my first poem published" from a s€qlrence entitled *The Thinker,"

in the cpntext of Rodin's ponderous statue of that name; each poem in the

sequence began with the line *I never thought..."

The mother

f never thought

when my fust cbild

first opened her eyes and Ilooked deep into

herunformed psyche,

I never thought

what it meaût to be mother.

I knew

about nap'pies and breast-feeding

and sleepless nights,

at teast,I thought I di&

there was plenty of time to think

during pregnancy.

43

Tyndale

But I never thought

aboutpubescence

or addiction or intellectral

capacity or value systems

or sons-in-law or even

grandchildren.

Vtlhenl gazed at this new baby

I never thought of the pain

of being cast in many toles,

of being cast

aside.s

This earty poem is clearly auûobiographical. ln that same skinny volume I

had a second poem which was not autobiographical at all; it was a farm

poem, thefirstfarm poem I wrote. *How much courage?" was about a

fa¡mer who hung himself in the hayshed. This was not a good beginning for

him but it was for me.

How Much Courage?

He gave no thought

to me and the kids

when hekicked out the haY bale

and hung himself so carelesslY

in the shed last winter.

4

He gave no thougbt

to us having to do his work

as well as all of ours

to keep thisfarm runûing

as he would have liked-

He gave no thought

to how we would make ends meet

any easierwithout him

than with his years of

experience and strength-

He gave no thought

to teenåge sons left hopelessly flaiting

withoutrole model

without guidance

without encouragement and pride.

He gave no thought

to two little girls

with no daddy to admire

and petthem but only

an exhausted mother for love.

I can see

how much courage it took

to kick away the hay bale.

If only he'd had the courage

to face the futurc with us. s

Tyndale

45

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That same poem hrst led me to question the role of imagination in poetry

(see part one), when I was c-,ommiserated after a public reading on the sad

loss of my husband. I confess to blushing in denial-

**{E**

Nearing the end of the century and with the bitfirmly clenched between my

teeth to complete a Master of Arts, our kofessor of Creative Writing is

determined to get us \tfiting novels. His resolve does not work for me. l-et

loose in the Barr Smith Library I devour Akhmatova and Robert Frost,

Carlos Wìlliams and Ashberry, Levertov and Simic and Marge Piercy,

Emily Dickinson and Carol Ann DtS-

Moving into the shelves filled with local Australian poetry I explore Judith

Wfight and Mary Gilmore - she of the wicked Dobell immorAlisation -

whose littte poem *Never admit the pain" has kept me constant in my

personal [ife:

Æ

Tyndale

Coverthy wotrnd, fold down

Its curtained place;

Silenæ is sill a crown

Courageagrace. tt

I move onwards through the collections of l-es Murray and Geoff Page and

the madly hyperactive John Kinsella All tbe while I'm writing fiction and

non-frction and completing a maruscript about the Adelaide Parklands that

is more collage than anything else but I still rnanage to fit some Poehry

between the covers, such as this poem about the nineteenth centrrry

instiUrtional buildings along North Terrace which were built upon Colonel

Ligbt's dfeam of a sweeping parkland vista down to the riverTorrens:

Monuments to leanning

Squinting sunlight on hewn sandstone,

the eye follows angle to slate tile-

Nineteenth century stonemaso'ns used

scaffolding to build monmrental piles

(by legislative decree) to house

homesweet landscape oils framed in gitt,

shffed kangaroos and whale skeletons,

bird's eggs, butterflies and native sp€¿lrs,

the daily papers six months old f¡om England.

47

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Now crane-poured concrete back-fiIls

multi-storied centres of knowledge where

sh¡dents learn the morpholog5t of stone and slate,

the mathematics of angle and elevation,

architecture for the twenty first cenûrqr

and the ethics of the bottom line- s

I continue pubtishing poems iujounals and newspapers beforc graduating

Master of Arts in Creative Writing accompanied to the graduation ceremony

by Tom Shapcottin his doctoral rcbes resplendent no other word for

iL

*****

I-et loose on an unsuspecting world, we few first graduates fluster va¡ious

publishers, both local and interstate, before settling each to find our own

niche. Immediately I return to thefarm, afarm long sold, a life reluctantly

relinquished; a well of experience into which I continue to dip my bucket.

Nanrrally, as a woman poet I wriæ mostþ about famrwomen: I've been one.

They are almost invisible, in fact and on PaPer, and I begin to wish Ûo stir the

potof theüban lrrural divida

ß

Tyndale

*{<*+*

I heard aboutAustralian Women in Agriculture (AWiA) from the Secretary

of the Mscellaneous Workers Union in \ilestern Australia" Helen Creed'

She had me;tthe then President of AWiA Cathy McGowan at a meeting in

Pertb" and was impressed by her vision for Australian farnrwomen to have a

voice in the public world of agripolitics.

Knowing my interes! she rang to tell me; and this from a unionist' rarely

comfortable bedfellows with farmers, but this unionist mar¡ied a farmer-

AWiA are pushing women's issues, feminist issues - feminism dirtier than

middenmuck in nrral communities, comÍlunities conservative in the

extfeme, touted in the media and among ¡rban communities as red-necked,

xeno,phobic and deeply suspicious of change. Yet here are women from

these very ommunities, not dqscribing themselves as feminists (far from it)

but nevertheless most definitely using a feminist agenda Farmwomen

lobbying in Canberr¿ to raise their visibility in policy-making, wanting to

change the culture that has men make decisions which impact on whole

commr¡nities-

I pricked up my ears.

49

Tyndale

I joined AWiA, went to their u¿tional meetings, tiste.ned to their stories and

admired their articulate and well-informed online discussions. I had found a

grass rcots organisation that would feed my own wort-

I heard aboutrural lvomen's gatherings from PIRSA: in layman's terms,

South Australia's agricultural department ln 1997I went to a Rural

Women's Gathering in Kimba - Kimba's claim to notoriet5r is that it is

situatd halfway across the continent. I was bowled over to hear

fannwomen standup and tetl theirown stories, poignmt andfrom the heart,

unembellished- I started rccording their stories, frst as vigneües and quotes,

and then in poery. These women's stories are powerful politics, making

the invisible seen and heard; but atKimba theirvoices were heard only by

fellow wometr farmers, of womeD who identified with rural Australia, of the

runal press and radio.

*****

Since then l've been all over the c"omtry listening to hard working women at

Gatherings, often their only time away from husband, famity and farm for

the whole year. Together with these women I've gone to workshops on piz.za

cooking and tolepainting; internetnetworking, succession planning and yes

life writing; picture framing and genealogy; massage, belly dancing and

50

Tyndale

glass blowing and all the while they laugh and they talk and they tell their

stories.

They laugþ and they weep and they tell their stories.

*****

They've got used to me. I neverfeel outof place. As an ex-fannerl'm

welcomed; as a poet I'm exclaimed over but never mocked, not made to feel

an outsider or worse still, someone watching them critically. They love my

poetry, especially when it's funny or political and his the mark. I'm a hit at

conference dinne¡s. This is theirfavourite to date:

Farmerts wife

The cows milked and the chooks shut up

The bread baked and the dishes done

The pickers'pay packeted and the books uptedate

The garden watered and ftesh flowers in the house

Homenrork supervised md a square meal earcn

The tractor spares ordered and the vetassisted

at apost-mortem

on a hand-¡eared calf

ayearling that's non, a dead loss-

No need for Serapax orMogadon orValium

No need forHorlicks orMilo orhot milk

The famre/s wife sleeps every night

51

Tyndale

the sleep of total exhaustion

She groans with relief

as her body unfolds

onto themattrcss and

as he clmrbers on top of her

like the prize Poll Hereford bull

inthe paddock

she is beyond cadng.

She is rocked to sleep already thinking

of whattomorrow brings when the pickers arrive

at five. s

*****

I have no desire to write bush poetry- Farmwomen love bush poetry. They

have 'pop up poets' at Gatherings - countr¡r women like themselves, who

write a bit in their sparc time, sometimes get pubtished in local papers, self-

publish to an adoring, appreciativelocal audience- Rural women in the

audience laughrmtit tears pourdown theircheeks; they doû't know where to

put themselves, some nrsh to the loo toprcventaccidents.

As I have commented before, I think bush poetry, rhythmic and rùyming'

*boy stood on the burning deck' balladic in its cadenoe, c¿m gloss over the

hardship of life on the fam. The¡e's nothing like a good laugh ßo ease the

pain of reality: dirty unrelenting wolk, ill paid and unappreciated. There's

52

Tyndale

nothing like a good yam to sha¡e the humour of the good Iife and the hard

times.

Maybe nobody ever taught country kids that Poems don't have to rhyme, just

sing; don't have to be angst ¡idden; don't have to be about that most private

of issues, [ove. Maybe the pouter of Cormtry and \Uestern music is

predominantin the counE5/, theAmerican droning of lan and the lovelom;

cowboy hats and spurs more comfortable than their primary school

memories of compulsory performanoe, daffodils and quinquiremes and the

language of'sloans'.

Collections of modern bush poetry - therc arenot mariy - feature boys'

y¿ur¡s, bush tales of horses and pioneers, heroic cattlemen, drunk ringers and

mobs of grm shea¡ers and readily available sheilas with big busts- A

Thousand Campfires, a recent buth po"tty collection produced by the

Victorian Royal Agriculturat Society, n are not equal opporhnity

campfires: no place for a woman. There are only twent5rfive poems by

twelve women in this book of overfourhundred Pag6, in spite of thefact

that women often win the major prizes at bush ballad competitions. I sent

two poems into the Spirit of the Outback poerry competition in ã)00, a

competition th¿t had asked for poems relating to women in the outback.

The judge's cpmments came baclc

53

Tyndale

A number cf entries were infiee vense, but most were traditional rhyming

verse, arguably the most diffrcult form d poety to write, as it involves tight

rhymeandrhythm. s5

Women bush poets self publish" perform wherc they know they are

appreciated and tatk to their own- Jan Lewis performed at a'Women on

Farms Gathering in Beechworth in thefoothills of the Snowy Mountains

with her *Rural Woman and her Mates- (see above, page 7A)- The audíence

begged for mote^ The 'pop up poet' Terry Ackland over in country W'estern

Australia pubtishes her poetry in nral journals and magazines. Here is an

example; itispolitical in its own wa¡ itis rt¡tming, and itis guaranteed to

raise a laugh with a rural audience; most ufban audiences would cringe:

A WeeComplaint

&r cemefery is neat a¡ldclea¡l

Wlrere danfs and plastics tüæm,

Odd trees are dotted'round tlp sææ

As shade for grief ard toutb.

,A.fun'ral usually takes a while...

R,onr chr¡rch, slow crawl to grave-

The star¡{ the ponder. lod(andnod

,Amid dead so¡l's enclave-

Now thseof you with Uaddsrs strong

Or toroûs you've tied so tighg

Canrpw rela¿ recall, reneÌ...

v

Tyndale

B€hold, death's passaç riæ.

But wtren you glance around ttre throng

Take note cf little signs...

The hlging eye, the tigþrser motlút,

Red face. Weak bladder time.

Some legs are in mac¡amélmots"

While others wriggle toes"

Soûre turids display white knucklefear..-

All aidstostoptheflow.

Look for furtive glanoes' rot¡nd...

The scanningto the tneqs.-.

And will one make it back to tor¡,n?

ùle mustmtthink of wees!

I,fororp, have used my brain...

(Not bladder strength, take nofe)

I do not drinkfor hqrrs befqe

So I will r¡ot get U@t-

Too rmny limes I've eyed the t€€s..-

For me ttrey are too small.

One hundred yearc more growththey'll rEGd

Toshiddmefrom youall!

And wlren at last I have to leave.

When nau¡¡e needs to work

I have a marathon to run...

The car"s way back o'BourkÊ!

fll even vol¡mteermy tin¡e--.

55

Tyndale

Just show me all the gears.

I'll prsh back alt that bush nsarby...

ACarPark! Toilet! Ctrcers! -r

AcHand and I are not writing in the s¿¡me way norfor the same audience

althougþ Ackland's motives are as political as mina Moora Shire in

Western Australia has responded to her Poem (in verse!) with the promise of

a toilet at the cemetery when funds pernir

My poems may be appreciated by farmwomen butit's city audiences I'm out

to engage. I have to tread warily: certain urban listeners gfoan aloud to hea¡

the word comtry ot farm; while others become dewy-eyed with the

sèntimental country myths of Slim Dusty et al. My farm poems contain no

tum but sotne sex, no rhyme but some fhythm, no yafns but good stories

and plenty to think about:

considerthis

Do they ever stop themselves short

these men in suits

seoonded from this department and that

secur€ salary and superannuation

fleet car and a wife

to iron their handkerchids

Do they ever stop shof and consider

those of us on the Board

drcssed in our agri-politic best

fi

the one-FletcherJonesdoes-all suit

court shoes killing ourfeet

the potite intelligent expression

hiding our dismay at their ignorance

Do they ever consider

the predawn goodbye kiss

fourhour each way drive

in the old Ford station wagon

sty high fuel prices

school run reorganized

breatfast a cardboard two arches

they{idn' t-buy-their-beef-fr om-us

excuse for a hamburger

\ilhen they write policy

that has no impact on themselves

does itoccurto the,n

having gone to the trouble to

get elected to this Board

to inform ourselves of all the issues

economic social and political

having gone to the trouble

to get here at all does itoccur to them we might watrt some input

migþt have some brigþt ideas

have something useful to contibute

other than to our own suP€rattruation fund? t

Tyndale

57

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part four: famwomen on the move

trytng to tmderstand

I've watched Australian farmwomen

formorre than a decade now

butstill I'm trying to understand

the essence of their love

forfarming and the land

*****

'1 inherited my farm from my mother, who inherited it ftom hers," says

Jeanette l-ong, a thirty-something from the Yorke Peninsula in South

Australia- *It's unusual, but I had no brothers"- s

Patrilineage or the inheritanceof land by the eldest son, still drives

Australian farming, as it does in Bdain, from where many of present day

Australian farmers' ancestors emigrâted because üey were second sons-

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Shortall !ryÐ argues that patrilineage *powerfully reinforces the belief that

male is tåntamount to 'farûret' aud th¿t he has almost automatic tight to the

land-- sAnd since early settlement, farmers' wives, sisters and daughærs

have worked physically on theirfarms with no prospect of inheritance.

Maybe their farmwork has been ignored for a historical reason: the early

Coloniat Ofüce did not wish to give the impression 'Back Home' that

wometr's labour was essential to settlement, so mention of women's work on

farms was omitted from correslnndence with the mother country-

Nineteenth century Victorian Farlia.mentary Papers put it succinctly:

Cænsus wor¡ld no longer record farm wives as being engaged in agficultural

¡nrrsuits because that would create tlre impression elsewhere, that women

sele in the habit of waking in the fields, as they a¡p in ssne of the older

con¡ties d ttte world, h* certainly r¡ot in Ar¡stalia- ø

Women's (and children's) on-farm work is still ignored in the20Û2 census

of theAustralian Bureau of Statistics-

ln lfiI4nNonvay, inheriønce laws were changed to allow daughters /

sisters who wanted to farm, to inherit by mutual consent before sons /

brofhers who were not interested- ór After lg7+ the eldeS child coúd

inhqit, irrespective of gender. In 1987 the Norwegian Ministry of

Agriculhrre ¡ìtn an awa¡eness campaigu.to encourage girls to use this right of

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sucoession, at the same time instructing farmen' organisations to have at

least{O%owomeD on their boards. Maybe it was this tentative step in

Europe to move beyond patrilineal inheritance that stimulated the start of the

women in agriculU¡e movementin western counEies in the 199Os. Whether

it was this, orbetter opportunities forthe education of women and girls in

the seventies and eighties, or the rise of neo-tiberalisnU or globalization: by

the e,nd of the twentieth century, wometr on farms in Australia wer€

becoming activists.

They had become activists, however, aor¡nd mone than just the issue of who

should inherit the farm, o¡ strccessíon phming as it is referred to in present

day agricuttrrral terms. Once they got the bit between their teeth they

became active about a whole myriad of issues affecting them and their

families and communities; issues which,like the women themselves, had

always been ignored by governments, policy mahers and male dominated

agri cultural organi sations.

The C-ountry'Women's Association" bastion of twentieth century nual

rvome¡'s affairs, drew attentionin l992to the lack of recognition received

by women fortheir significant contribwion toAust¡alian agriculture, in a

report entitled Invisible Farmers. @ As its title suggests, this report covered

visibility and recognition of n¡ral Ìeomen, but also p ticipation in policy-

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making, education and training, social justice and natural resource

management, and networking-

Across the lgg0sAustralian farrrwomen began to educate themselves. This

does not mean to suggest that they we¡e an ignorant lot, farfrom it - many

had compteted tertiary courses away at rmivemity or by distmce education,

and had taken up positions in their communities as teacheÍis, rlurses,

physiotherapists, even GP's, bringing in vital income to support the farm

from their off-farm work. Many farms in Australia are kept afloat by the

off-farm income of the'farmer's nife'-

Farrrwomen in Gippstand, Victoria heard of an external ooufse they could

attend in Sale, nm through the campus of the Universiry of Melbourne. The

oourse incorporaæd ideas relevant to them, such as getting to grips with the

technology revolution, computers, email and the internet, farm book

keeping, nnal leadership. A srnall group of wor¡ren became a larger gfouP

of women by word of mouth. Then they heard what was happening for

farmwomen in North America" and they lobbied for the establishment of

ru¡al women's networks within govemmentdepartments of agriculture. This

coincided with a powerful gfouP of women winning positions within the

bureaucracy - the so-called'femocrats'.

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The Rural'Women's Network was born in Victoria in 1936, funded within

the Department of Agriculnrre, and the journal netwotk started- * ln L994

the,{BC held the firstABC Rural 'Woman of the YearAward (now taken uf

by the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation (RIRDC);

Northern Territory station olvner Sara Henderson becâme a very high profrle

winner- A Rural Women's Unit was se.t uP in July 1995 withi¡ the

Commonwealth Departmentof Primary Industries md Energ¡r (DPIE).

Some of the States followed suit and womeü in these units began to produce

networking journals, and to organize n¡¡al women's Gatherings. There are

sevenQl thor¡sand farnrwomen out there iu nrral Australia; é the word spread

rapidty and farmwomen \ilere on the move. Once marginal' 'women's

business'was just beginning to be seen as central to the br¡siness of

agriculure.

Several women's organizations developed outside the traditional Country

'Women's Association (CWA) and Women in AgriculU¡e and Business

flI/AB); these new organisations werie more aboutwomen in agriculture than

about farmer's wives; more about agribusiness than the proverbial pumpkin

scones. Broadly speaking, the conservative ideology of the CIVA sewed to

support the existing patiarchal social strucû¡res, whereas the new

organisations wer€ pushing for change.

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The Foundation of Australian Agricultural Women (FAAW) and Australian

Women in Agriculture (AWiA) both devetoped iu country Victoria

supported by the Rural 'W'omen's Network. These few women took a

g,g"nti" step into the unknown tn lgyl, when they hosted in Melbourne the

Flrst International Women in.Agriculture Conference, entitled Farming for

our Future- Eight hundred and fifty women camefrom all over the world for

several days of conference papers, semina¡s and wor*shops.

Many rural women describe this event as a watershed experience for them.

North American women picked up the gauntlet and ran the Second Congress

in 1998 in \l/ashington, and several hundred women attended f¡om Australia,

on scholarships and industry bursaries, or self funding the trade talks and

networking were said to be phenomenal. A grouP of theseAustralian

uromen traveled to Spain to assist Spanish fannwomen run the Third

Congress in Madrid in?-W2. The fourth will be in Africa in 2ffi-

Dr Margaret Alston, of the C-entrre for Social Rural Research at Charles Sturt

University, convened a National Rural'Women's Fonmr in 1995, which

identiFred b¡roader issues within nral communities, rather than exclusively

onfarms. The stress in this fonrm was on the 'em¡rowermett' of rural

women, and thenominated priorities were:

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developing a positive image for nr¡al Australia

improving access to an integrated delivery of services to nral

communities

In March lW,the Commonwealth Standing CommiUee on Agriculû.rre and

Resource Management (SCARI\IÍ) organized and sponsored a Nafional

Fonrm on'Women in AgficutUre andResource ManagemenL This forum

brought together for the frst time, rmal wometr and the representatives of

State md Tenitory and national policy makers, and indusûy and community

representatives. Their brief was to *recognize and $rpPoft the role of

women who are involved in agriculture and resou¡ce managemenf- fl

In her welcome to the forum, Helen Board, the DPIE National Rural

Women' s Coordinator said

Women arc often described as resilient in tinres of crisis - sometimes as the

-9,-- which holds rural wrml-nities together as services are withdrawn. I

ænstandy l¡ear that wqnen a¡e the first to exflore avenues for help and

guidance wtren things get tougtu and to helpfarmingfamìlies to get a

perspective on their lives - their wotk a¡rd family lives. Despite the role which

they play, we rarely see this represented in the media or indeed in the

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coltection of data- lt has been - in data terms - "invisible" - tlot worth

couúing. 68

Out of this fon¡rU a National Plan was developed by SCARIvI called A

VISION for change. * ftefederal govemment ran a project in 19913 in line

with the National Action Plan, the ¡esults of which are still being updated

and pubtished- The project was fundedjointly by the DPIE and the Rural

Industries Research and Development (RIRDC) and was called Missed

Oppornnitìes - IrØ'ves sing the polential of womø in Australiøt

agriculture. The project aimed to define ' the ¡ole which women play in the

agricultural sectors and the skills and experiences they hring to this role'- æ

In the wording of these aims, I lind the faintly patronising suggestion that

women are -playing roles' rather than being taken seriously-

In line with the neo-liberal, economic rationalist Pfogramme of the current

Coalition government, the project wasreally looking atthe economic

contribution of farmwomen to the agricultural sector. It canre to the

conclusion tbatfænrwomen are conEibuting atleast48.% to national farm

income; grcup participants all agreed that farmwomen's input inhours

worked is at least equal to that of men, not including childca¡e and family

commitments.

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A group of participants from Milawain NE Victoria discussed the issue of

farm succession, commenting that

üe real issr¡e is the econqnic viatrility of thefarm to sl4port more than one

çneralion...Unkd with this is the frustration cf,being only one player in the

decision-nraking Focess. Paficipanfs notcd ttut for younger professional

wor¡rcn working off-farnu this cften meant they were marginalized in

decisicn-nnking about tlìe fann- Orre prticipant comrnented that the only

uray fo, her to remain *súte- iD ur inter-generational farm was to exclude

trersetrf¡omfarm decision-making alttrurgh her off-farm inconre was

æntrihring to farm upkeep

Participants felt that generally, tlæ ecoomic input dwomen to the farm was

neither aclcnorr,l4ed nor comted- 'glomen have gained the right to work

langer hrrs!" * claimed ane prticipnt. . -Women staying in the irdustry are

&ring so orlt of a love d what Úrey do and a desire fs a secu¡e base to raise a

family and a "central fær¡s in ttre life cf the family"- "t

* This commentfed directþ into my manuscriPtfafmwoman- Young

women whom I have spoken to at wortshops wofry constantly about their

insecurity on thefarm managed by úeirhusband but directed and owned by

their in-laws: what will happen to them if their husband is injured / killed /

divorced? And mothers-in-law are similarþ filled with angsE how can the

farm remain viable if the daugþær-in-law demands a settlementif the

marriage breaks down?

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AppendixB details the results of the'Day inthe life' diaries kept by

fannwomen participants in the Missed Opportunifi'es project The project as

a whole identified three common issues needing to be addressed: the male-

oriented cr¡ltu¡e within tle sector, with few women in leadership positions;

rvomen needing to shoulder the burden of family responsibilities and thus

having neither time nor enefgy to take up leadership roles; and farmwomen's

lack of self-confidence in tleir ability to take on managerial or leadership

roles-

Stage two of this project planned to put strategies in place to h¡rn around

these th¡ee issues Membership of women's agricultural organizations is still

growing, and farmwomen continue to educate themselves and aspire to

leadership roles. But already, farrtwomen's busine^ss has fallen off the

mainstream political and bureaucratic agenda almost beforc it anived; rual

units are bêing dismantled and funding cut. Farmwomen are going to have

to wort harder than ever to maintain any visibility they h¿ve achieved.

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Fa¡mwomen and the'P word

When a worlan stands up in front of any gfouP and says "I am afamler,"

justwhat is she is asserting? Is she asserting shefarms alone, or that she is

a farmer's wife with acitude? Cerøinly she is asserting a right to be

noticed for att the work / brain-power / bookwork / chitd-reating /

community involvement / etc she does and always has done- But not just

noticed- Taken as equal.

The invisibility of farmwomen in Austnalian lite¡ature has been mirrored in

reat life. The frst and second wave of feminism came and went without

creating any noticeabte backrvash on the farm and although the leaders of the

new movement of women on the land would probably all have identifred as

feminists in the early 1990s tlere wasn and still is considerable antagonism

to feminism down on the farm. rilhy should this be?

This may be a matter of language. Farmwomen in Aust¡aliaare interested

and engaged in the issues of æntemporary feminisûl" and yet they reject the

word itself and its accompanying theory and jargon-

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In the women in agriculturemovemenf, women on farms want what earlier

feminiss fought so hard to gain: they want their input into agriculbre

viewed from a standpoint equal to that of men, They are not trying to wrest

powerfrom men: they are attempting to gain an equal footing, to be

acknowledged as 'farmer' ie the Peßion who knows how to grow what they

grow on their [and, and how to market it and deal with all the practical and

business a¡:eas of agriculture in the twenty first century- And perhaps it can

also be assumed that the farmwoman is the frefson who knows how to make

policy (and carry it througþ) that deals fairly with all parties, and that takes

into account and balances all aspects of farm, community and business life.

She is also the person whose supportfor'the farmer' - her wifework,

housework etc - is taken for gnanted, So why do farmwomen resist the 'f

word, gi-v.n that their aspirations are feminist aspirations?

Farmwomen's voices have been conspicuously missing in Ausmalia until

rece,ntly; they have also been inconspicnoust-v missing. Few have particularly

noticed their absence. This omission has only slowly been brought to light

Isolation plays its part But in many cases, farmwomen are reluctant to be

considered unfeminine, are concemed about nrflling male feathers, alarmed

to hear the sound of their own voices raised in their own defence, raised in

their own praise even. They are overdy reluctant to unde¡mine the

confidence of theirmen, conlidencewhich crumbles easity when faced with

fuoght, or bank repossession or depression, be it economic or spiritual;

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wifhout their men, there is no farm to be passionate about; farmwomen need

to cosset their men. Also they ane thoroughly suspicious of academic jargon.

I noticed itfirstin ?ßOl, when I was sittingin an audience of fannwomen at

a W'omen on Farms Gathering in Beechworth, NE Victoria. All around me

$,om€r audibty and visibly bdstted as Dr Margaret Alstor, Associate

Professor at the Centre for Rural Social Research at Clarles Sturt University

in ìüagga rüagga positioned the famitiar issues of empowerment for these

women frmrly into feminist theory. The women squirnred and shtffiled,

muttered and dis4greed and sotne even walked oul I wonder if Alston was

aware of their discpmfort.

Then the next year, in?-W2,sitting among the same wometr listening to

Rhonda Galbally, the contrast was stæt- æ Galbaily addressed all the same

issues in the same thorough way and the farmwomen were in complete

agreemen! happy that someone should so succinctly encapsulate the issues

in their lives.

The difference? Galbally fteveÍ once said the *f" word- She talked of

women's libe¡ation, skating on thin ice, but tro one tufned a hair. Feminism

and its imEact on farmwomen's lives was being discussed but it u'as never

mentioned, and in a sense it's almostas if a trick was being played upon

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these women: a semantic sleigbt of hand. At this point I ask myself, what do

farrrwomen fear in the word -feminism'? Or is it just the jargon?

For many Australian farmwomen, and indeed Western farnrwolnen

generalty * as sure as farmer e$¡åts man, feminism equals unfeminine-

They fear social stigmatisation- - Take for example the way in which

countql women are always impeccabty dfsssed whe,l¡ever they go into the

public sphere, whether ûo the local post office, the school run or meetings or

shopping: *Oh no! I would neyer wear my farrr clothes beyond the gate!"

said one farnrwoman I asked about feeling feminine, *and anyway Doug

(husband) wouldn't let me.'7s

They also see feminism as an attack on their menfolk. They collude with the

status quo because tley see that to divide their husbands' 1rcwer would be to

undermine the power of the farm and thereby risk the farm enterprise

altogethe4 they would lose out just as much as their men. *'!Ve have to stand

by onr men; they own our livelihood, we depend on thern!' says Eileen, 57,

wheat and wool near Colac in Victoria- *l love my ma¡L why would I want

to undermine him?": Sheena is a young thing f¡esh out of agricultural

college, newly wed and yet to oome up against the in-laws- "f don't

disagree he's the boss, after all!" insists quiet l-ucinda from a saltbush

block in Soufh Australia. ft

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I-oss of their pivoøl productive and reproductive role would lead to them

being mæginatized within their own nr¡al communities; this is not

sonething farmwomen are going to let happen. But by being so reluctant to

be branded feminist, they are in danger of missing out on everything useful

for them in feminist organisæion and theory, as well as continuing to be

inc.onspicuously mi ssed-

I don't think the avefage farmwoman in Australia understands, or even

wants to understand a¡ry theoretical definition of feminism: she is using

other images altogether.

Whet is feminism in the conteÍ of farming?

The Oxford English Dictionary entry for feminisrn is bleah ordinary and

predictable: *the qualities of women, and advocacy of the rights of women

(based on the theory of equality of the sexes)--

American historian Linda Gordon delined feminism in the lylOs as "2n

analysis of womet's subordination for the Purpose of frgUring out how to

change it.'z Dale Spender maintained in the 19&)s that *[a world without

feminisml is a world where belief in the inferiority of women is woven into

the fabric of existence"æ

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Norwegianfeminist titerary critic Totil Moi argues thatferninism is a

political project dedicated to * the stnrggle againstpatriarchy and sexism"

and can therefore be distinguished from 'femaleness' (biological) and

'f66ininity' ("a set of culturally de,frned characteristics-).'

Julia Kristeva outlined European feminism as thrce distinct phases" starting

with a demand for *equal access to the symbolic order', moving to the

rejection of *the male symbolic order in the ûame of difference" in order to

achieve the rejection of *the dichotomy between masculine and feminine as

metaphysical". æ

Berit Brandth, writing on gender identity in EJropean family farming,

notices a sbift in feminist resea¡ch in the tate 1990s to questions of identity

and she comments:

Wornen on farms have a gf€at woddød, a 'doutile burden" with little ¡eturn-

The srrvival of the farm is the pime interest of all the family members' This

ur¡ites them against external thÌears be it r¡afi¡ral, pol¡t¡cal or economic forces

ùat might lead to farm crises. Wonpn identify wiûr the farmfîrst and see

other threats as mofe oveniding than their own oppression as women. tt

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Sarah Whafnore criticizes current feminist research for having little to say

about (famr) women whose position can't be understood tbrough those of

either housewife or labourer- æ

61[otme! f'nt nota femini,sF

As stated eaflier, there are around seventy thousar¡d farmwomen in Australia

at presenl s Itis probable that only a very small minority of these women

wo¡rld defrne themselves as feminist \[/hat is more, their de,frnition of

feminism would undoubtedly vary. I keep coming back to the reaction of

most rural women, ttrat feminisrn equals unferninine. Which leads to the

very consisænt fÊsponse from conûemporary farmwomen, qQh no! I'm not a

feminist f'm as liberated as I wantto be-.

They will give me their own vivid examples of feminists: of the radical

lesbian sepanatisÇ the crophaif€d taüoo toting" fag end between the lips

bulldyke, hra burning, ball bfeaking, mar hating. Few have actually met any

of these mythic $'omen.

Andwordimages are scarcely any beÉer, as academicfeminists have not

always been carefut to nurture the confidence of women in the bush. The

academic language of feminism does not sit cornfortably with women who

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spend their entire lives in a highly practical world dominated by men-

Although måny farmwomen are university-educate{ many farurwomen are

nofi manyhave nothad the opPoftunity to complete secondary school and

are suspicious of what they see âs academic jargotr-

But this dæs not me¿ìn that the majority of those sevent5r thousand

fa¡srwomen are content to be desffibed as farmer's wives, as passive support

persolts, as cooks, cleanefs and schoolnm taxi{rivers. This does nof mean

farmwomen don't want to frgbt for social change, for child care in the bush,

for better education for their children, for care in their old age, for an input

into agricultral policy, an input into fufal social policy, an opportunity to be

part of tlre'knowledge nation' themselves. Not at all- ltjustmeans they are

acutely uncomfortable with the idea of being labeled 'feminist''-

So Galbally was speaking wisely, intentionally orotheruise' in avoiding the

word.

Farnrwomen are beginning to speak ouÇ and the moæ of those seventy

thousand that can be encouraged to become conspiolous thebetter- At the

moment, perhaps a couple of thousandfarmwomen acfossAust¡alia a¡e

learning to lobby, to get onto boards, to understand trade and globalisation

policy, to nrn meetings, to organize confercnces and gatherings; to become

Ieaders for social change in rural a¡eas. Most of this learning is self funded,

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as goyemment promises of funding for nual women have quietly

evaporated. With the marginalising of nrral tl¡omen's interests currently

under way in govefnment and farming organisations, the shength of those

other sixty eigþt thousand will be useful when they are encouraged by their

peers to speak out.

*****

In spite of appalling telecommunications diffrculties experienced in the bush,

many farmwomen are the major computer usefs on üe family farm. Their

menfolk catr cope with higþ tech machinery but usually leave the bookwork

(and therefore the computer) to their wive,r To overcome isolation,

farmwomen can be encouraged to get onto the Internet, to join farrr

women's chat lists, and tobby md rally and, yes" gossip'in the middle of the

nigþt in front of their computers, and to learn from each other about equality

of opportunity, and about how to worlrfor change-

AWiA has a new National I-earning Network which is encouraging

farmwomen to get into industry-basd refere¡ence g.ouPs and discuss

industry issues and what to do about thetn, via email. Margaret Gnace and

June Lennie conducted an online discussion of fe'nrinisnn on the Queensland

'welink' list (short for women's electr,onic link), which had over 120

members by late 1998.8'+

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Many wom€n who farm have not yet reached this level of engagement but

they are gening there, and particularly the baby-boomers; the younger

women can often be too busy educating themselves, having babies and

establishing themselves and their hushnds as people who count on the farm

and in the communitY.

But those older women, in theirforties and fifties particularly, have finished

their schoolruns, are conversant with the running of thefarm and the

vagaries of their own industries, have re-skilled through TAFE courses or

leadership coürses, are chock-full of energy and have every rigþt to be

chosen to sit on boa¡ds, to have theirknow-how used in lobbying and to

have all the expectations of a modern farmer-

Equatity of oprportunity and the chance to be head - this is the catch cry of

second wave feminism. If one is carefirt to identify equality of opportunity'

without using the word feminism, many of the women on farms who are

grouping and organizing and lobbþg as various parts of the lVomen in

Agricutture movement would agree this is what they are sniving for. And

others would come forward. Butnot only to have equal oprporfirnity,

because mary would say they have thatalfeady on thefarm (if notoff it) but

acknowledgement of that equdity in the wider community'

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lVhat are famwomen looking for?

To be heated as equal / to be aclinowledged as having an equal amount of

skill or knowledge / to not have stock and station agents ask to be put on to

the boss / to organize a loan with the bank without the mmager noeding the

maû's signature / to have automatic membership of the National Farmers'

Fede¡ation / to not be ignored or treated as an imbecile at board meetings

(especially when one's ex¡rertise is equal to or greater than that of anyone in

the room) / to have the ear of the local or relevant member of Parliament I to

be acceptal as førner.

Among farmwomen,'fatm' can mean anything from a vegetable-growing

smatlholding of a few acrcs to thousands of square kilometres or anywhere

in between. It can mean fruit and vegetable growing' bed, sheep and wool,

crocodile farming, grains and oilseeds of every de'scription' aquaculture and

fishing, vineyards, sugaf cane: any growing and hartesting of primary

f€soufces animal, vegetable but not mineral- It can take place in pockets of

semi-rural land near capitalcities, on broadacrefarms centred on regional

towns or on ftmote cattle stations. One woman's apology forfarming "only

6O acres in retirement" is brushed ^wîy

as unnesessary by another woman

farming a station the size of France. Rece,ntly coutry areas have come to be

ctassifred 'fural, regional or remote' but the women tiving and working in

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these areas don't see the classifìcatioD as one that sets them apart from each

otheç mther as a bureaucratic device for funding- And -rufal, regional and

femote' gets more sympathy in Canbena (and hence more funds) than 'the

country'-

Can I fosúertheir journey?

My poetry is about 'rural, regional and remote' Australia and some of those

seventy thousand women who farm in those areias- It tries to evoke the lives

and experiences of farm women in language that is not too academic, not too

literarSr, not Wordswo¡ttrian br¡t not Country and \ilestem either, but strong,

like these women; honest, more hone.st about pain and hardship tlan they

might willingly be, and celebratory. I want the whole of Australia, urban

and ru¡al alike, to reægnize seYenty thousand conspícrilolus women on the

land.

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Notes

r tjularrpa is the word that South Aushalianlndigenous peopte use for their law,

orthe'dreaming' of their cotmffY.2 Tyndale, Ray R *Shadowlines.- The Australian'lVeekend Review June 2-3

2001: Rl5. Reworked into the manusctiptfarmwoman.3 See partfour,6l: Australian Women in Ag¡iculUre (AWiA), the movement.oTynãale, Ray R Tarm women and the 'f word-' Unpublished workshop paper

at cpnference Setting the Agenda for Rural Women: Reqearch Directions-

Wagga Wagga Charles Sturt University' July NLt Alston, Margaref "At¡stralian Rurat'Women: Mainsheaming the agenda-"

Plenary-Paper at conference Setting the Agenda forRural'Women: Research

Directions.- Centre for Rural Social Research: Charles Surt University, July

?ßü2: tl.6 See Appendix A, 92: AWiA Internet fon¡m excerPts on GM cropping and the

place of women in the National Farmers' Federation'? The; following forrr italic quotes a¡e from farmwome'n atfending the Annual

General Meeting of Austnalian'lVomen in Agriculture (AWiA), University

of Melbourne, August ?N2; used with theirpermission't TyndateRay R- *ode io @tvs." Performed af fhe conference dinner, Seting the

Agenda for Rural Women: Research Di¡ections. Chartes Suxt University,

July?frU2t Tyndalè, Ray R. '1cld (farmer's) wives tales.' Performed CÏarles Sturt

University,July zWL'o See part four.rr Tynåale, Ray R. tan the poet lie? The role of imagination in poetry'" OPinion

45,4(2lJ0l):3739.,. Tyndale, Ray R '?astorale." Eg¡kgdlg4gÞ. ed. R. clarkson et al. Adelaide:

Wakefield hess, ?,OO2:188. Reworked into the manuscriptfarnrwoman'B Tyndale, Ray R *aqr,¿ vita.'Beating Time in a Gothig sPacç. Riendty street

Reader23- Adelaide: Wakefield hess, lÐY,90. Reworked into the

manuscriptfarmwoman-toTyndale, Ray R- *out of het€-" Unpublishedpoem-6 Gamer, Helen. hefeel of stnel, Australiæ Pan Macmillan,2OOl'16 T¡rndale, Ray R *bulling." Unpublished poem-tt Lewis, Jan. A Rural V/oman and Her Mate.s. Self published" 1996.ts Wormald, Jeanete. Mallee Bride: The Journey- Loxton: Lindene Music, 2OO1.

teTyndale, Ray R. Farmwoman- Unpublished manuscript'

80

Tyndale

æ Secalled the 'green man' after a l98Zphoto of that name by his wife Valerie;

Murray is portrayed with his large trunk sticking out of the top of a lopped

treetnrnk, in a paddock. See Peter F. Alexander, I-es Murray: a Life inhogress. Melbourne: Oxford Univelsity Pness, 20fJf}.'29fi

tt Walcott, Derek on the cover of Les Murnay, New Selected Poems. Sydney:

Duffy & Snellgrov e, I9X3.2 Murray, l-€s, A. "The Bulahdelah -Taree Holiday Song Cycle-" The

VernacularRepublic: Poems. 1961 - 1983. Sydney: Angus & Robertson

Publishers, 19f8, revised edition: 120.æ Murray, Iæs & Lehmann, Geoffrey. The llex Tree- Canberra: The Aushalian

National University, 1988: 30.ø Murray, [æs. Poems Against Economic.ç Sydney: AngUs & Robertson" ll72:

3.Murnay,IJs. *Walking to the cattle place.- Poems Against Economics: 43.

6 Murnay, I-es. Poems Against Economics:5.t Murray, l-es. Ilog Fox Field. Sydney: Angus & Robertsou t99G 38.æ Munay, Les. Subhuman Redneck Poems. Potts Points Duffy & Snellgrove.

19%.æAdanson, Robert. Mulberry t-eaves. Sydney: Paper Bark Press,ZlJol.- O'Connor, lvfark The Olive Tree: Collected Poerns- Sydney: Hale &

Iremonger, 2flffi.3r Hewetto Dorothy & Kinsella, John. *The Hay King's Recalcitrant Daughter."

Wheattands. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Pf'ess,2ün 116-æ Heweft, Dorothy. Wheatlands: 72.3 Kinsella, John- Erratum / Frame{ô. Sor¡û F¡emantle: FoliolFremantle Arts

Centne Press, 1995: 4&9.*P"g", Geoff. The Sca¡ring. Sydney: Hale &Itemonger, LW-tt Page, Geoff . Cassandra Paddocks. Australia: Angus & Robertson,l9ffi:62-* Page, Geoff. Cassandra Paddocks: 89-o Ufoodhouse, Jena. Eros in l-andscape. Queenslanú The Jaca¡anda Press, 1fE9:

6.s Marwood, LSrn *Taking Phone Messages-" CoPperøles 2,1995: Tl.3eHewe$ & Kinsella, Wheatlands: 9-æ Heweq Dorothy. "Legend of the Green Country.- Selected Poems. Fremantle:

Fremantle Ans Centre Press, 1991: 20-ar Hewet& Kinselta:35.a2 Hewett & Kinsella: 35 - 43.* Hodgins, Phili¿ things happen. Published posthumously- Sydney: Angus &

Robertson" 1995. I-es Murray quotdon the backcover.* Hodgins, Philip: 3, 14, atd?Lí.ot Ry-, Brend"n. \ilhy I am not a farmer. New Poets 7. Wollongong University:

Five lslands Press, 2001.* Ry-, Brendan. "Comrgated iron.": l0-t Ryan, Brendan. *Morning Aftef : 13-

81

Tyndale

* Ry*, Brendan, '"The Paddock with the Big Tree in it-" Island 9l Summer

?ñ212ñ*154.oeTsnndale, Ray R *The mother." @ Friendly Street Reader 2L.

Adelaide: Wakefreld hess, 1997'. 90-t Tyndale, Ray R *How Much Courage?' Fluorescent Voices: 88-5r Heseltine, Harqr. ed. The Penguin Book of Australian Verse. Melbourne:

PengSuin: 1972.tTyndale, Ray R. *Monuments to Learning-" Parklands. Unpublished manuscript

submitted for the degree Master of Arts, University of Adelaide, 1998.o Tyndale, R"y R *Farmer's wife.' maiden voyage. Adelaide: Wakefietd Press,

200û 83.rRoyal Agricultural Society of Victoria A Thousand CamPfires, Sydney:

Macmillan, Z)0O.5s Outback Australia Literary Competitiono ãnO, Section 2: Pælry- Judge's

Comments-tAckland, Terry'. *A Wee Complaint.* RRR Network News 19 Summer 2W2.

Perth: Dept of Agriculture / Dept of Local Government and Regional

DevelopmenÈ 16.tTyndale, Ray R. "consider this." Performed, Charles Sturt University, Wagga

W"gga July 2002.$Long, Jeanette. Personal communication,I May Zffi-e Shorta¡, Sally. *PowerAnalysis and Farm Wives: An empirical study of the

powerrelationships affecting s¡omen on lrishfarms." sociologia Ruralis 32,

4(L992):43L -45L.ÚCusack, S. Ffidden Identities of aNation, areport on therole of women innat¡mat r€sou(ce managemenL Melbourne: Victorian Parliaurentary Library,

20[ol..13-6t Almås, Reidar & Marit S. Haugen- *Norwegian Gender Roles in Transition: the

Masculinization Hypothesis in the Past and in the Futr¡rc." Journal of Rural

Studies 7, 7-2(1991):79 -8ß.*'Willians, J. The Invisible Fatmetr A Repoft on Ausûalian FaIm \ilomen.

Canberr¿ Commonwealth Departrnent of Primary IndusEies & Energy,

1992-* Department for Victorian Commrmities. networlu Nen¡sletrer of the Rural

Women's Network, Melbourne DVC-s Australian Bureau of St¿tistics(ABS)- Census, 2W2-6Departrnent of Primary Industries and Energy (DPIE), 'Women in Rural

Canberra: Department of Primary Industries (DPI)' l%'* pini, Barbara *Fãnn Women and Femocracy.- Australian Journal of Political

Science. Forthcoming.6t Commonwealth Departrnent of Primary Industries and Energy. Proceedings,

National Fonrm on Women in Agriculture and Resource Managemenl

Canberra: DPIE lW7: L-

g2

Tyndale

c Board, Helen. hoceedings, National Fon¡m on'Women in Agriculture and

Resource ManagemenL Canberra- DPfE 1997: 12-13-e Standing Committee on Agricuttr¡re and Resource Management (SCARM). A

ManagemenL Canberra: Department for Agriculture" fisheries and Forestry,

1998.. Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation (RIRDC) and

Department for Primary Industry & Energy (DPIE). Missed OPPortunities:

Harnessing the Potential of Women in Australian Agriculture. Canberra:

RIRDC/DPIE lq)8.7t Missed Opportunities: 772 Galbalty, Rhonda AO. CEO, ou¡commtmity-com-au-o'Vfhatmore, Sarah" T. Marsden and P. I-ou¡e. eds. Gender & Rurality. l-ondon:

David Fulton Pr¡blishers,lgYl-* Dempsey, KeD. A Man's Town:lnequality Between Women and Men in Rural

Australia- Melbourne: Oxford University hess, l9g2-

"t A conversation with the Shepard family on their mixed sheep and grain farm

outside Yass. Quoted with permission-* Names changed to protect identity.7 Gordon, Linda. *The Struggle forReproductive Freedom: Th¡ee stages of

Feminism.- Capiøtist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminisrn ed.

ZiLbh,R Eisenstein. New York Monthly Review Press. l9l*, lUTn'.ß Spender, Dale. *What is Feminism? A Personal Answer." What is Feminism?

eds. Jr¡liet lvfitchell and Ann Oakley- Oford: Basil Blackwell,19ú:274-- Moi, Toril. '.[vlen Against Patriarchy.- Gender & Theor.v: Dialogues on Feminist

Criticism. ed. ünda Kar¡ffman. Ot'ord & New York Blackwell' lf)89:

152.* Kristeva, Julia quoted in Teril Moi. Sexual / Textual Politics:Feminist Litera{v

Theory. London & New Yorlc Methuen, 1985l: 12-

"' Brandth. Berit. *Gender Identity in European Family Farming: A Liærature

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blitures in CYberspace. ed. W. Harcourl l-ondon: Zed Books, 1998.

83

Full analysis of 'A Day in the Life' diaries

Nineteen cornpleæd responses were obtained in St C'eorge, ard l8 inMilarua, witù

alrnost all respondents being marrieq on-farm wotr¡eû.

The tasks recor&d v¡ere tùen classified by a mcmber of thc prrojecr tearn Í¡s sho*n in

the Table below.

The tirnes altocated for each respordent and tlreir p6rmer, ç'ere tlsl ettered in a

Microsoft Excel spreadsh,eel Means and stanùrd deviations wexecalculated using

the Excel s[atistical facilitias. ard results wirhin each catqgory of activities were

compared both be¡¡¡æn ìromeo arxi theirparùrers, and betrveen St George and

Milawa respondents, using Sr¡¡dent's t-test forunpaired sanples wiù equal r¡ariarrces.

Reprinted with pemission from Rural Ind¡¡sries Research and Development

Corporatiø- Mssed OPPorùnities: Ha¡nessing the Potential of Women in

Ausualian Agricuturrc Volume l, Social Survey and Analysis. Canberra- RIRDC

& DPIE, l9!ßzAppendices 1æ'- 185-

u

lrble rhowlng cl¡srlllcrtlon of rcllvltlo¡ ¡¡ r¿cordcd ln typlcd dry dlulcr

OllwElæpPotrorrltnP¡nm¡l¡monlng

l¿hurtlnoMðl

(Hadng

o¡lldc¡n

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llo¡roso¡lt

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Rd¡llürð

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ll¡rhù

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Rrpch/lnfonntlm collrcdcnMlntfiondn/Vrl$ddiq¡ to frñnñdrËËDcwþin¡ncwproductf

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hloduotlon lbrt¡moomurudat

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a.zt

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4¡t ! tsEop¡o

t3tt.¡ft0ITDt I^IDl-?trt3rtßtr,lüL'rLz.ôl'2.f'it.l-3|

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¡. VlÊrb t¡LntEdcd-irirlr¡Ë¡rldcbFF.ãa

- túÐlt4@

ffiAsnû*[irùEFddoftuÈÞrclÐrinrcs¡paúúEù3M¡hred$GoqF

hG eilül¡?.ttttirlro'

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rlh-thcHb-òtLiPs'ù

þcPtil-fEhrçætG'

¡ÜEtrl-h3iEBrægds-¡¡*eJÉfrDûilbi¡fcEr¡dDügdr¡rEl-llrmÐat

æ rb ga.@) il¡É¡¡ düæ drli¡ b& rhic@ r scrlB W- irt+- ixtåçad ¡rlr4p Lr4 brr¡rrdrf -h¡in¡¿r@-t*aËeû ñ!Flt'E¡rÇ' s

Tt/ndelc

corryæd with OIÌ5 houfs pcr da¡¡l spsrt þ wom iD S GûrEÞ æd OO0 holrsbytheirpatncrs.

Also, pertrry rcflcctfury tbÊ greanravailabilrty of ofr-Ërur ad comnity sGctor

aogess in te rnore deæely seded north,ssærn Victodan regioU only fuGc

parr¡sipans conp&xiqg d¡rics æ St Crcorge bcribcd ttcmdves æ worting m¡idyoff-ånn, $'ùilc ssuìen of ùæ oryhting db¡þs a Mibwa dsibcd tbcmslrc inthis way. This ¡s ¡eflcæd iD fu fc$lt üat m avtrage, both wonen ild ÛÊir

paftnÊrs sp€ûd morc tinc (p<t-05) in oflfum md oorr"nlnþ work at M¡hYe rhiln

do tbñe at St Cruge ülom psrticipe!¡b in Milawa +cd u averëe Lts houts

pcr day in off-fa¡m and wunþ activities md tùcirparms spc¡d an awrags lJ5hor¡rs- Thb ooryrcs wih an evaagc 0.9/ hous spÊot in off-fum and co¡nmmÛætivititls by uloum in St Cargg ¡nd an average Ol9 hours spcrlt by their parms"This coiæides wiÚt m¿le partus at Milaura spcndiry si8eificeoËJl hss tinÊ sr'årrt(an avcr4e 535 boü¡5 p¡rdry) tlun {p úcirn k 6úftrports a St Gærge, nnny ofùe hner crortiog rærfr @ houn in thcir pqcrtiesrsrch fut üe aìGr¡gc tilæ pcr

day çern uorting opñ¡m by thc mcn is 10.4? hüls.

Alùor¡gh lhe diarics ooqleæd sgsst ùat srmn r¡c mcofrGûtn üglng sevtnal

rasb coærme,nüy rh¡n ¡¡s tùcirmte panncrsr fuG is¡o erirlæ inüG amþais of¡esults that rtrcy ae geüing fewer borrs of slecp as a resltof ütÊ tory hñs and

multþle duties ecrforÐÊd.

Alùougù rhc req¡Ìs obNai¡rod povide a worttruùile sú46bot of tb disrriù¡nion ofwoÈ witüin fam families in both û cf,Eûsirc gfaziry am¡nity d in ¡ mrcinænsive food ptrodr¡cing arce, it shor¡H be noûÊd fut ùæ pqttint¡¡g ¡n lhe

wortsbops ucre gcncratty m¿¿ru.aged o ddcr womcn unùiry m funs. Tbæ in

rhe S¡ Creorgphrd æaverrge age of55.5 (t3.llycarr uùtle fusdMilawah¡d an

averegË age of 49-4 (t tO3) ycars" Given lüs ùe wo¿stqs wtrc H oo a urcd(

da¡ it is probebþ ùat tùos comnritbd to oFù¡m utort foud it mue ditrcutt opa¡t¡c¡pate rrnn did üæ workiry on farus- Howrm, úe cmcil of pttidpetion þon-f¡rm a¡d off-fum wrnrn Ag¡in refhcts the reü¡tive 6 o qonrmitics foroff-farm urorlc in úe tso locatioc

gl

Tyndale

Adamson" Robe¿ Mulberry l-eaves. Sydney: Paper Bark hess, 2001.

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?ffi.Almås, Reidar and Marit S. Haugen *Norwegian GenderRoles inTransition: The

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Tyndale

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Tyndale

Cusaclq S. Hidden Identities of a Nation. Melbourne: Victorian Parliamentary Library'

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