Abstract
‘The Australian country girl: History, image, experience’ is an ethnographic work in which the author, Catherine Driscoll, attempts to identify the iconic Australian country girl. Aspects of rural Australian culture and girlhood are explored through the author’s accounts of TV series, movies, Miss Showgirl, interview and her own personal experiences. With a range of inquiry techniques, the reader is introduced to Australian country girls throughout various times and contexts.
Addressing first the Australian country girl in the media, Driscoll turns to the iconic 1960s/1970s Australian TV series Bellbird. The show, about a fictional country town, had high ratings among country viewers because of the particular ideologies portrayed by the country characters. ‘Bellbird’s countrymindedness emphasized images of close-knit community, generous goodheartedness (despite some dramatic villainous exceptions), and heroic struggles with the environment’ (Driscoll, 2014: 26). Driscoll goes on to argue that some girls identified with the women in the series who remained in the country despite its frustrations and limited opportunity. The author explains, however, the reality for many young women was that they headed to the city where they thought that their education and range of skills could be put to better use. Analysis of TV drama gives the reader access to the figure of the Australian country girl of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and points towards the way it was received by young female viewers.
In further pursuit of the rural Australian girl, the author then turns to ‘The Show’ which is an event held annually in various locations across Australia. This is where animal husbandry skills are demonstrated, agriculture knowledge is shared and services and products of rural Australia are on display for the interest of show-goers. Children’s games and rides are a feature, as are a range of competitions. One such competition is Miss Showgirl in which young women are selected as ambassadors for their district. Young women chosen come from ‘well-established families’ and are judged on their ‘… personality, confidence, ambition, and life goals, general knowledge, rural knowledge, presentation and speech. Finalists were also asked to demonstrate knowledge of their local community and current affairs …’ (Agricultural Societies Council of New South Wales cited in Driscoll, 2014: 45). Girls who were both pretty and ‘good’ (in terms of morality and reputation) were deemed to be desirable qualities for Miss Showgirl, and there was a distinct advantage of being a farm girl. While the perfect Miss Showgirl was perhaps elusive, this chapter is able to define quintessential characteristics that the community, if not always the girls themselves, aspired to in their Miss Showgirls.
The relationship to animals such as horses is a point of difference that rural children have compared to their urban counterparts. Driscoll outlines how rural girls learned equestrian skills at Pony Club and its members are able to socialize, sharing their interest and love of horses.
The author omits to investigate the manner in which hobbies such as Pony Club can divide well-off girls from the less affluent. Knowledge of my own New Zealand context, however, is that in wealthier rural areas, there is often an elite attitude to Pony Club. Here, girls compete in dressage and conform to club standards. These girls are from economically comfortable backgrounds, where the costs of maintaining a horse and obtaining obligatory club paraphernalia are exclusionary. In very remote rural areas, the owning of a horse is more functional with horses being used for farmwork or transportation. In some poorer rural areas, children ride their horses to school or ride together as an unstructured form of play.
The Pony Club was mentioned by Driscoll, but further details about this network of girls would have been fascinating, especially, given that horses play such a big part in the lives of rural girls. The reader is told that there were ‘other girl groups’ but what they were not discussed. Apparently, the ‘horsey girls’ did not mix with the ‘non-horsey girls’ but I was keen to find out why. I wanted to know what they did in their free time, what they wore, what music they listened to, who they idolized and what they talked about. The country town girls who the author interviewed in later sections of the book did satisfy this curiosity, however.
The 15-year-olds who were interviewed are both Aboriginal and White Australians from a small rural town who meet at their local riverside. They prefer to meet here rather than participate in the supervised activities available to them. Too young to go to the pub, too old to play at the playground, the interviews reveal that they are bored and biding their time until they are old enough to leave the town. This section ties the interviews with statistics and previous research related to rural country youth, in particular, their migration to nearby cities. Here, the author accesses a perspective in which the girls raise issues concerning their present situation and lack of prospects – perceived or real. The frustration of being ‘trapped’ in a small town is a recurring theme. One girl’s comment that she does not need to protect her online identity (she argues that sexual predators would not want to come to a place like her town) gives us a sense of the feelings these girls have to their country town.
Young women and adolescents are the subject of the book, although the author uses the term ‘girl’ and ‘country girl’ throughout. This is indicative of the status socially designated to this group. They are economically dependent upon adults and required to attend school. They are, however, old enough to participate in roles of citizenship such as farm chores, part-time jobs and family duty. This book also connects to international scholarship on ‘girlhood’ and the socio-cultural production of gendered subjectivity more broadly.
Driscoll, for instance, competently describes the juxtaposition of British colonial country girl and the Aboriginal bush-girl as they are portrayed through media, specifically movies and art. Themes include Aboriginal girls being brought up by British Colonialists and the accompanying loss of cultural identity for these displaced girls. The images she describes are vivid and I am reminded of the power of cultural interpretation through media study.
She further addresses race and girlhood in her narrative of Aboriginal children, mostly girls, who were removed from their Aboriginal communities to be raised by, and assimilated into, white Australian culture. Australian State and Federal agencies allowed removal of Aboriginal children from their homes from 1905 until 1970. This is known as ‘Stolen Generations’, and the complex and far-reaching consequences are beyond the scope of this work. Driscoll informs the reader that during these times, girls were targeted with greater frequency than boys because of their perceived sexual vulnerability and their demand as cheap domestic servants. The ultimate objective for white authorities was for Aboriginal girls to be assimilated into white Australian culture and to subsequently marry into white families. Without this historical knowledge, this section of the book is a challenging read.
‘The Australian country girl: History, image, experience’ defines aspects of Australian country girlhood including the frustrated young women who are wanting to leave town, the pioneering British colonial farm girls, Miss Showgirl and the displaced Aboriginal girls/young women. The range of Australian country-girl-ness, however, is more multifarious than this. While these ethnographies are engaging, by its nature this book invites further work. I wanted to know even more about the identities and experiences of Australian country girls.
For instance, many of the girls would have been to boarding school, had visits from the flying doctor or completed their schooling by correspondence from very remote locations. Some would have had experiences helping out on huge cattle stations or country stores. These experiences of rural Australians are unique and crucial to the shaping of their individual and collective identities.
An account of infants, toddlers and young children would have given a fuller picture of the Australian country girl, as would an investigation into the games they played and the schooling they experienced. I wanted to know about the joys and hardships of parenting in rural Australia and the issues of life for farming communities in harsh physical environments where extremes of weather prevailed. The voice of parents would have informed the inquiry because of their own historic connections with rural Australia as well as their insights into their daughters’ lives. The author grappled with finding the definitive Australian country girl but a consideration of broader aspects would have eased this search.
This work is enticing in itself, but also in the cultural and ethnographic paths yet to be travelled, the stories yet to be told. There is no definitive Australian country girl but by building a montage of Australian country girls, we can better appreciate both the universality and diversity of gendered culture.