AustLit

'The stories in Bush Studies are deeply unsettling, not least because they are deliberately ambiguous. This ambiguity is one reason the stories have been subject to the process of continued critical re-evaluation and dispute noted by Leigh Dale. "Billy Skywonkie" is a story the ambiguity of which seems to have infected its critical reception. This essay seeks to make explicit what is often left unclear in discussions of the story: it is remarkable for presenting a narrative told in part from the point of view of a woman experiencing racism in its intersection with sexual and economic vulnerability in the early years of the twentieth century' (p. 387).