Written during the 1890s, this collection of short stories presents a bleak and uncompromising image of life in the Australian bush. These are not stories of mates gathered around a fire, but of the dark loneliness of women. Not only are there fences to be built and a living to be coaxed from the land, but babies to be born - or buried - and the dangers of profound isolation to be endured, as well as the cruelties, or plain disappointments, of men.
