The following is an extract from The Frontiersman’s Pocket-book compiled by Roger Pocock, John Murray, London, 1909. Chapter X Women on the frontier is by Elizabeth Robins. See the reprint or if you have a spare $2000, the original.
Women on the frontierI am asked - despite my small claim to be accounted among the frontier folk - to say something for the guidance of the women who propose confronting the hardships of travel in out-of-the-way places.
I will therefore set down two or three observations about dress and diet.
With respect to the dress question, there are two pitfalls to be avoided:
The endeavour to wear clothes tolerable enough at home, but utterly unfit for user conditions.
The attempt to make use of the newest and most "sporting" equipment obtainable.
Comfort and efficiency lie between these two extremes. I would warn any woman against deferring till she is under the stress of frontier life the adoption of any fundamental change in her way of dress. Before leaving civilisation behind, she should not only "try on," but wear for hours, if not for days, the boots, the knapsack, the rubber waders, the putties, or gaiters, that she means to travel in. This sort of "dress rehearsal" is as essential to women as it is non-essential to men - for reasons that are obvious.
Perhaps greatest among our problems in this connection is the hair and hat question. Of women who have not travelled the unbeaten ways, only the few who ride or yacht have
much idea of the difficulty of keeping (in rough weather) any of the usual forms of feminine headgear; and none perhaps but the traveller knows the drafts on energy and temper made by the need to be clutching at a veering cap and a clinging veil which are wobbling about on a roll of hair that is loosened from the grip of pins.
In the fashion of my heart I fear that a reconstruction of the fashion of women’s hair will be inevitable, as the hitherto stay-at-home sex moves more about the world. Until that day, let the long-haired ones braid rather than twist their hair, and let them tie it securely an inch or so from the roots before pinning it up.
To insist on the need not to multiply skirts is to encounter less opposition these days when even ladies of fashion wear only knickerbockers under their Directoire gowns. But the woman who goes "on the trail" will find it an advantage to have knickerbockers of the same colour as the skirt. If the luggage problem allows, she should have at least two skirts; one of short ankle-length to wear in camp, and in the earlier days of her journey; another reaching no further than the knee. If she goes far, and faces real hardships, it is this skirt she will wear most - if she wears a skirt at all. Should she refuse to abbreviate her petticoats, the trails will do the abbreviating for her - but in the process the traveller will find herself a loser in strength, and hardly a gainer in either looks or dignity. It will be found that to force several yards of trailing fabric through marsh, tangled undergrowth, and the indescribably tough meshes of interwoven scrub willow; to drag it through mud or snow in making ascent or descent; to find it flapping wet about one’s knees, catching and pulling one back,
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Bushwalk
