Those Hardy Pioneer Women

      Don't ever let anyone tell you that women can't be tough if they need to be. And the ones who needed it most were the pioneer women. Imagine giving birth when your husband is away, and your only midwives are two native girls, one of whom was crippled and the other spoke no English. Or what about fighting off a horde of savages when you are nine months pregnant and your husband is away? Yet these were the sort of things experienced by the wives of the early white settlers in the Channel Country, that vast stretch of desert in the corner of Queensland next to the South Australian border which, during rains, turns into a vast network of rivulets and channels. (At the time of writing, it is just recovering from extensive flooding.)