Female Invisibility in the Male’s World of Plantation-Era Tropical North Queensland

Australian rural history accounts abound with the admirable, foolhardy and often savage exploits of white male protagonists, while women, white or of colour, are generally invisible. This is despite the fact there is a substantial primary record of the history of European settlement in rural Australia. Taking the Herbert River Valley, located in tropical north Queensland, as a case study, this article fleshes out the scant detail of the women who, alongside the men, battled life on the frontier of European incursion into Indigenous Country. It will focus on the experiences of three women: Manbarra woman Jenny, Melanesian indentured labourer Annie Etinside, and Australian-born Chinese woman Eliza Jane Ah Bow, and how their lives were enmeshed with those of white women who lived alongside them in the Herbert River Valley in the late nineteenth century. These women were hardly bystanders and observers but active participants in the drama of colonisation that melded cultures from across the globe.