Molly Johnson (Leah Purcell) costume from The Drover's Wife

Molly Johnson (Leah Purcell) isn’t just raising four kids single-handedly, she’s got another on the way. But as Father McGuinness warns Sergeant Klintoff, “There’s nothing delicate about our mountain woman. She knows the way.” Not to mention, she’s a crack shot. Yet despite her toughness, it’s still rare to see a heavily pregnant woman in a western wielding a rifle, and rarer still for that protagonist to be First Nations. These images are key to Purcell’s feminist reimagining of Henry Lawson’s short story, The Drover’s Wife (1892), and offers a counterpoint to sexist and racist representations of the era.