What are the major themes of women’s writing in Australia? Discuss with examples

In Barbara Baynton’s stories, Walker observes, “the bush is grotesque and actively malevolent, inhabited by sinister and predatory creatures, both male and female. The victims mostly are raped or murdered or left, broken-backed to die when their usefulness is over”. The hush society is far from the egalitarian caring community of Lawson’s dreams where people toil and bake and suffer and are kind. One of its most grotesque female manifestations is the wretched old hag begging for money for drink at the roadside shanty in ‘Billy Skywonkie’:

She pointed to her toothless mouth (the minion of which seemed to be to fill its cavernous depths with the age-loosened skin about and below). A blue bag under each eye aggressively ticked like the grills of the fowls.. .. Alternatively she pointed to her mouth or laid her knotted fingers on the blue bags in pretence of wiping tears. Entrenched behind the absorbed skinterraces, a stump of purple tongue made efforts at speech. When she held out her claw, the woman understood and felt for her purse….