Domestic Service in Australia. By B. W. Higman. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 358

When I first arrived in Australia as a backpacker in the mid-1980s my job possibilities included negotiating a job as a governess on a remote station through an agency, and, when a café proprietor offered me a job, just a few minutes later finding myself alone in her house confronting a vast mound of laundry and other housework with no terms discussed and no prospect of lunch. I had applied to be a waitress but I felt like a slave. I did not know much about Australia or service jobs at that stage and neither of these positions stuck. I never worked in a bar although the Aussie barmaid might best illustrate the Australian stereotype of female service as Dianne Kirkby has shown in her recent work (Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997). It is interesting to place such experiences in the context of Barry Higman's excellent new book. For all the male and macho impressions of the pioneering male conquering the alien landscape of the outback, in fact colonial Australia had a very high proportion of women in the workforce. Yet the concept of service somehow sits oddly with the egalitarianism of Australian culture.