The Australian Country Girl: History, Image, Experience

212 Pages·2014·2.038 MB·English

by  Catherine Driscoll

The AusTrAliAn CounTry Girl:
hisTory, imAGe, experienCe
For my mother, Judith Mary Driscoll,
and all the other country girls
The Australian Country Girl:
history, image, experience
CATherine DrisColl
University of Sydney, Australia
© Catherine Driscoll 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Catherine Driscoll has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818
Surrey, GU9 7PT USA
England
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Driscoll, Catherine.
The Australian country girl : history, image, experience / by Catherine Driscoll.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-4688-0 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4094-4689-7 (ebook) – ISBN 978-1-4724-
0109-0 (epub) 1. Rural girls–Australia. 2. Rural women–Australia. 3. Country life–Australia. 4.
Rural-urban relations–Australia. 5. Women–Australia–Identity. 6. Sociology, Rural–Australia. I.
Title.
HQ792.A85D75 2014
3.05.40994–dc23
2014005354
ISBN 9781409446880 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409446897 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781472401090 (ebk – ePUB)
V
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: ‘The Australian Country Girl’ 1
Part I assemblIng australIan Country gIrlhood
1 Becoming a Country Girl (Gough, Kate, the CWA, and Me) 17
2 Miss Showgirl (Rural Girlhood and Representation) 37
Part II hIstory, Image, exPerIenCe
3 The Bush-Girl (a Pastoral) 63
4 The Country Town Girl (a Soap Opera) 89
Part III PlaCe and PraCtICe
5 Subjects of Distance: (Country) Girl Culture Capital 113
6 Home Economics (Nowhere to Go, Nothing to Do) 137
7 Ex-Country Girls (a Human Geography) 161
Bibliography 179
Index 193
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list of illustrations
I.1 Family photograph, Ada Sheather, c.1928. © C. Driscoll 3
2.1 Family photograph, Peggy Sheather at The Show, c.1951.
© C. Driscoll 49
2.2 Family photograph, Judith Sheather on Skettie at Ellenborough
Gymkhana, with Anne Duffy, c.1960. © J. Driscoll 55
3.1 Rex Dupain, Girl by the Pool, 1996. © Rex Dupain 70
3.2 ‘The Girl Who Found the Moon.’ Cover of Mary Grant Bruce,
The Stone Axe of Burkamukk, 1922 (London: Ward, Lock & Co.).
© Orion Publishing Group 77
3.3 George Lambert, The Squatter’s Daughter, 1923–1924. Oil on
canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased with
the generous assistance of James Fairfax AO and Philip Bacon
AM and the people of Australia in 1991 79
4.1 Television still. Vicky and Simon, A Country Practice, 1981.
Channel ATN7. © JNP Productions 98
5.1 Film still. Freya and Danny, The Year My Voice Broke, 1987.
© Kennedy Miller Mitchell 129
This page has been left blank intentionally
Acknowledgements
The research for this book was funded by the Australian Research Council:
centrally through a Discovery Project on Australian country girlhood
(2004–2007). Before that a Small Grant (2000–2001) helped establish the
premises of this project and, later, a collaborative Discovery Project on cultural
sustainability in Australian country towns (2009–2013)—shared with Kate
Bowles, Kate Darian-Smith, Chris Gibson, David Nichols and Gordon Waitt—
materially contributed to its final form. A version of Chapter 1 has previously
appeared in Mary Kearney’s edited collection on Mediated Girlhoods (Driscoll
2011) and an essay based on Chapter 4 appeared in the journal Cultural Studies
(Driscoll 2012).
I want to particularly thank Claire Jarvis at Ashgate for her interest in this
project and her patience while I wrote and rewrote it. I wanted this book to give
a primary place to country girls’ lives and yet not claim to fully represent them;
to be neither overwhelmed by theoretical discussion nor overly simplistic. Claire
made my best attempt at that juggling act possible. It was initially difficult to
accept that as I was writing for an academic readership I was inevitably writing
about the people I met during this research in ways that would seem alien to
most of them. I have tried to be responsible to many stories of Australian
country girlhood here, including my own, but I know that I have nevertheless
written a book in which we have all become examples.
Since 2003 many people have contributed to this work, most materially the
country girls and ex-country girls who were collectively my most important
resource. In keeping with ethical commitments for my fieldwork I have taken
care not to identify participating individuals or groups in what follows except by
pseudonyms. I have also given pseudonyms to the locations in which I worked,
given that in smaller communities only a little specificity works to identify
people. This means, however, that I can only issue a general thanks for the
hospitality and generosity with which people mostly met my interest in their
ideas about and experiences of Australian country girlhood.
I owe warm thanks to the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies
at the University of Sydney. I am especially grateful there to Elspeth Probyn,
who urged me to take on this project when I felt it would be too personally
challenging; to Meaghan Morris, who has shaped my thinking on all the questions
it raised; and to Tess Lea, who helped immeasurably with problems in the final
stages. For advice and feedback along the way I am also grateful to Andrew