“Here’s anothery
“After marriage, the women are compelled to do all the hard work of erecting habitations, collecting fuel and water, carrying burdens, procuring roots and delicacies of various kinds, making baskets for cooking roots and other purposes, preparing food, and attending to the children. The only work men do, in times of peace, is to hunt for opossums and large animals of various kinds, and to make rugs and weapons.”
–James Dawson, Australian Aborigines: The Language and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, 1881

Is Mise,

Liz Connor's book - "Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of
Aboriginal Women," tells us that "the women were portrayed
as the victims of their brutish Aboriginal husbands who
forced them into lives of drudgery. This enabled settlers
to view colonisation as an exercise in civalry rather being
complicit in an invasion. They were bringing the benefits of
civilisation to an inferior race."

It's an interesting read.

Another interesting read is the book - "The Colonial Fantasy:
Why White Australia Can't Solve Black Problems," by
Sarah Maddison.

The following link is also worth a read:

http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/outlaw-culture-aboriginal-women-and-power-resistance

Foxy
You have a superb ability for dredging up utter drivel.

Dear Is Mise,

What in Dawson's account do you find different to the European culture of the time. There was no childcare in those days and women were largely excluded from other jobs outside of raising a family and tending veggie patches while subsistence farming.

Yet here you are all high and mighty.

Why do you think that is?

“The First Ceremonial (Female) in the Boulia District: Among the Pitta Pitta and neighbouring tribes … a young girl when she begins to show signs of puberty … Two or three men manage to get the young woman, when ripe enough, all alone by herself away in the bush, and, throwing her down, one of them forcibly enlarges the vaginal orifice by tearing it downwards with the first three fingers round and round with opposum-string … Other men come forward from all directions, and the struggling victim has to submit in rotation to promiscuous coition with all the ‘bucks’ present: should any sick individual be in camp, he would drink the bloody semen collected from her … Among the Ulaolinya, as well as the tribes around Glenormiston, any ordinary corrobboree [sic] is held during the day-time, and the young woman who has been fixed upon … is decoyed by some old woman to come outside the main body of the camp for the purpose of collecting pappa-seeds, etc. She is stealthily followed by two or three men who suddenly pounce upon her, seize her by the wrists while the other bucks, till now in ambush, come rushing upon the scene: she at once realizes her position, and, despite all shrieks and intreaties, is thrown upon her back on the ground, the old chaperone clearing away to a distance. Four ‘bucks’ hold one to each limb while another presses upon her so as to compel her to draw her legs up: her thighs are now drawn apart and her eyes covered so as to prevent her seeing the individual, probably a very old man, who is beckoned from some hiding place to come and operate directly. Everything is now ready. This he does by slitting up a portion of the perineum with a stone-knife, and sweeping his three fingers round inside the vaginal orifice.” — Walter Edmund Roth, Ethnological Studies Among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, Brisbane, 1897, p. 174; cited in part in Louis Nowra, Bad Dreaming: Aboriginal Men’s Violence Against Women and Children,

Steele,
“ Emma Constance Stone (4 December 1856 – 29 December 1902) was the first woman to practice medicine in Australia. She played an important role in founding the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne.‘