Bush Studies, written during the 1890s, presents a bleak and uncompromising image of life in the Australian bush. These classic stories of pioneering Australia are introduced by Elizabeth Webby. These are not the 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 barn - or buried - and the dangers of profound isolation to be endured, as well as the cruelties, or plain disappointments, of men: She drew out the saw, spat on her hands, and with the axe began weakening the inclining side of the tree. Long and steadily and in secret the worm had been busy in the heart. Suddenly the axe blade sank softly, the tree’s wounded edges closed on it like a vice.