The ideal woman was a good manager- no small task with only a wood stoves, kerosene lamps, inadequate water..

And the nearest store for canned goods fifty to a hundred miles away.  She was toughened by adversity, laughed at her fears, knew how to fix things which broke in the house, and stifled any craving she might once had for beauty.  She could care for the sick, help fight a bushfire, aid a horse or cow in difficult labour, laugh and joke at life's absurdities and reverses, and like a man, mock any sign of weakness or lack of stoicism in her children.

This is Jill Ker Conway's description of the woman who went with the husbands or families to live on the plain or western New South Wales.  Although she is talking about the people she grew up with and she could be speaking of any country and the woman who grew up close to the land.  Although living and growing up on a station of thousands of miles and living day to day by the seasons with know one around unless you have some help mostly men to run the property.

Jill Ker Conway grew up alone except for her parents and her brother's who although sent to Sydney for school.  Her Mother an intelligent and hard working woman who was also a trained nurse had the foresight  to teach her to read and treat it like a special treat they shared.   Jill childhood was shadowed by two events;  WWII and the beginning of a nine year drought.  The war saw every  fit man sign up  and left few to work on the stations, and the drought which destroyed her families livelihood and broke her Father's spirit.   Jill worked as an eight year old, with her Father to try and maintain the sheep which were what, brought in the money they needed, through wool export and to fed themselves.   They also had some cattle and sheep.  It is hard to vision a child of eight riding to mend fences when she could hardly mount a horse or fed starved sheep but she did.

The tragedy of those years was the loss of her Father whom she loved and whose last words to her were to leave and do something better with her life.

This is just the beginning of a young woman who finds herself eventually in a private school in Sydney, where her brilliant mind is challenged and she comes into her own.
Her Mother having left the station in capable hands, then moves into Sydney to educate her children after the lose of her husband to succeed in eventually turning the station into a profitable place.   Her Mother succeeds financially but succumbs to the grief of the loss of her husband, and the life of respect she has known on the station.   Jill has to support her Mother and she does this well until another lose in the family creates the emotional break down of this ounce independent older woman.

Jill Ker Conway succeeds in the academic world although is not in awe of the old colonial system which sees Sydney's brightest go off to the great universities of England.   Eventually she makes her mark at Harvard in the United States.   She marries a Canadian, John Conway, and travels to England and then to Toronto, for her husband to take up his post as the head of York University.   Jill works for the University of Toronto then is asked to be its Vice President, an honour for the first woman to take the post.  

This book, road from the Coorain, and the video of the story is inspirational for any woman who has struggled to over come the adversity of a difficult childhood and the dream to go on in higher education.  This is only half of her story.