In an incomplete and uneven process between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, colonial disdain for ‘freakish’ Australian native species gave way to affection, mythologisation, and conservationist concern. This pre-submission seminar examines the neglected roles of settler women in shaping these shifting relationships with the non-human world. Ruby's thesis charts settler women’s interactions with native animals between 1880 and 1950, across a range of spaces, from nature writing to organised conservationism and from suburban gardens to national parks.

Though far from uniform in their views or actions, many settler women cultivated an ethic of care that cast native animals as emotionally and morally significant individuals meriting attention and patriotic affection. They often did so in their roles as educators, mothers, and writers for children, and as politically engaged ‘new women’ who embraced opportunities for intimate and sustained encounters with non-urban nature.

These new forms of interspecies care were not straightforwardly benign. They coexisted with control, commodification, and exclusion; records show that affection did not preclude possession or violence. Yet women’s advocacy for animals’ inclusion within the sphere of moral, domestic, or religious concern had consequences: fostering opposition to the marsupial fur trade, spurring the creation of national parks, and promoting some species as friendly national icons who could be rhetorically enlisted to affirm settler claims to land and legitimacy.

Ruby Ekkel is a PhD candidate in the ANU School of History.  Her award-winning work spans animal history, environmental history, and women's history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and has been published in leading academic journals including Australian Historical Studies and Settler Colonial Studies. She also contributes to public-facing platforms such as The Conversation and Australian Book Review.

Ruby has served as an HDR Representative on the Australian Historical Association Executive and was a co-editor of ANU Historical Journal II. While a visiting student at the University of Oxford, she convened the Oxford Workshop in the History of Science, Medicine, Technology and Environment. 

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