With a smile and a song
From Far North Queensland to the Riverina, and across dusty outback plains, Australia’s food bowl lay in ruins. Unpicked fruit rotted on vines and trees, crops remained unharvested, and sheep struggled under the weight of unshorn fleeces. In 1942, Australia was in the grip of a desperate labour shortage. Japan had entered the war and Australian men had joined up in their thousands. Heeding the call to defend King and Country, they’d swapped dungarees for battle fatigues. The lack of rural workers threw Australian agriculture into crisis and left the nation facing food shortages and a scarcity of basics such as cotton, flax and wool.
Rescuing Australia from this catastrophe fell to the Ministry of Manpower, which came up with a radical solution: recruit women to work on farms.
Based on a British program that had operated during WWI, a Women’s Land Army (WLA) was envisaged to save Australian agriculture and keep food on kitchen tables. From picking fruit to driving tractors, the “land girls” would perform the jobs usually done by men. But women performing hard labour flew in the face of what was considered appropriate for the “fairer sex” in the 1940s.
