The drover's Wife - The adversities faced by a Bush woman

Australia is considered to be the place where the first lady Lucy (Historically and not biblically) ever trod. Australia however has even since the advent of time been known for Negros and black men. It is a fact that the Australian bush is the most difficult place for a man to survive and what to say of the plight of a women in such a place!

The title suggests that a female character drover's wife is living in a bush. The entire story has revolved around this one character - the wife. All adversities and all the pains and dangers have been dexterously tackled singlehandedly by her. It is incorrect to say that she is femaile, she is indeed a lion in the coat of a sheep!

"…It is impossible to fix a point if you were not a Bushmen for the everlasting maddening sameness of the land."

"….A few rotten she oaks stood….."

Bush is a place which has very sparse vegetation, and extremes of climate. It is a proven fact that only sturdy and robust men can survive in the bush owing to the acute shortage of resources needed every day and the other.

The wife of this ex-squatter is the main character, the Hero. The husband has gone droving and returns only for a short while once every six months.

"In the former time he has hired a railway sleeping compartment for her, put up at the best of the hotels and bought a buggy for her."

His husband - the bankrupt Solomon was 'good enough' sort of man and cared for her wife and had he the means he would have kept her in the heart of the city like the queen of Sheba!

The story uses flashback technique to acquaint the reader with the adversities that a bush woman faces and how bravely she had fought with each one of them. This wife,

"Built usual castles in air but her womanly desires had been dead long ago."

The external conditions didn't favor or even give a chance for the girlish desires of hers to blossom. On the contrary, "She seemed harsh in her behavior" towards her kids.

"She found all her recreation in the day's journal which she kept beside her while sewing."

The only medium of expressing and quenching thirst of her desires was the young lady's journal.

The wife had fought a mad bullock which besieged her house. She killed it and got 16 pence and a half by selling its hide. She also once fought pleura-pneumonia which took away her best two cows at which occasion she cried bitterly. Rainy seasons in bush are also as severe as the scorching sun is. Once in fighting a flood "she drenched herself in the outpour to dig an overflow gutter." But unfortunately it didn't work out. "There are something that a bush woman cannot do." She was extremely dismayed.

Once a forest fire in its haunting flares was just about to consume her little dwelling place which she valiantly saved from turning into ashes.

"Tommy was greatly amused by the sight of her mummy in his dad's trousers."

"…..Four excited bush men arrived in the nick of time……."

At this juncture she also she saved her youngest son from the forest fire.

There have also been instances when strange men seeing no other men in the house try to take undue advantage of her. But she was stern enough to turn away any trespassing jerk. With a club in one hand and loosening her dog - Alligator she said, "Now you go" and the treacherous fellow had to leave saying, "okay mum."

"There also have been time when she sat to have a good cry but her cat rubber against her and cried and then she had to laugh."

A strange yet innocent sense of ridiculousness! She knew the art of transforming her predicament to pleasures!

The worst incident was when the snake gets in the house. The way she stays up all the night and takes care of her children is noteworthy.

Thus people who live in the bush have to work hard and toil to the maximum if they are to survive there. The nature's fury, weather's atrocity, the loneliness, the social vacuum, and the unavailability of the most basic resources in a bush drives men crazy.

The story ends with a touch statement by Tommy her eldest son,

"I will never go droving Mummy, blarst me if I do."

The very sentimental declaration is the culmination and heights of the realization of the hardships that people in a bush face. The first-hand experience of the adversities faced by his 'mummy' is lucidly reflected when the boy fell into the arms of her mother. The tears running down the check of both prove to be the evidence of it. All in all the story describes privations faced in the Australian out-back, the condition of women in such a ruthless place. This story brings out melancholy of the bush women and tends to sensitize its readers to the opportunities, resources and love that they have received from life.