in her best (or worst) days, she had pulled a mounted policeman off his horse,

and half-killed him with a heavy pick-handle, which she used

for poking down clothes in her boiler. She said that he had insulted her.

She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any Bushman;

she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy's;

she had often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband,

when he'd be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate,

as he often had to do -- because of her mainly. Old diggers said