Hannah Hauxwell

is a name which will be known to many people in the United Kingdom, particularly those who come from Yorkshire.  

She is not nearly as well known out here but I was given a book about her many years ago. I would like to have met her. I would like to have spent a morning or afternoon with her on her Birk Hatt farm and seen it as she saw it - not perhaps in winter but in spring, summer or autumn. She was 91 when she died around four years ago, rather remarkable given her years of hard physical labour in such an unforgiving environment in winter.

Recently I was given the three DVD collection about her extraordinary and lonely life on the farm, a life with only the barest essentials, her eventual move to a village, and her eventual trip to Europe.

As I watched those DVDs (while working on other things as usual) I also thought about all the pioneering women here. A few days ago a friend gave me a copy of a cook book I mentioned some time ago on this blog. It has snippets of history from the women whose recipes they were. All of them were pioneers in their way. They went out to farms on an island after living in a communal camp. They had to deal with cold in winter - but not snow. They also had to deal with extreme heat, snakes,  other wildlife, fire and more. 

Unlike Hannah they were married, mostly with children. In some ways that would have made it easier, in others harder. 

But even they had it easy compared with the woman who once lived in this street. She came out here from Germany after the war. Her husband worked on the railway line which stretches across the continent. They lived in one of the loneliest sidings, often just the two of them. Their "house" was nothing more than a few bits of corrugated iron and some hessian bags. Their supplies came via the "Tea and Sugar" - the train that took supplies to many such settlements along the way.

Then there were the early women of this state who first  lived in tents and then wattle and daub huts before any permanent buildings were erected.

Hannah would probably have found their lives interesting. I regret I never thought to write to her, to send her a copy of one or other a book she might well have found interesting because, yes, she did read. 

I have been thinking of all this as we are being asked to admire this woman or that for doing something which seems to be special. Yes, it often is special and they have worked very hard. I often think well of them - but I also think highly of those women who did so much alone.