Getting Ready for the North

The heatwave did break records the next day. We went out during the day to get a pcr test, but it was too hot to do much else. 

We had a zoom session where someone talked about research he’d done on women homesteaders in the USA. Homesteads appeared to be like various schemes in Australia - selections, soldier settlement schemes after the wars… Like selections in Australia, women could apply for them, and if they had fulfilled the requirements within a fixed period of time, they would own it. In the USA you had to be over 18 and the head of a household to take out a homestead, so widows and young unmarried women were the chief female homesteaders. As one of my great great grandmothers had a selection when she was young, and her land was eventually inherited by her children, I wondered whether similar rules applied here. When Americans voted for female suffrage, the states where homesteaders were predominant were the ones that voted for it, and the non homesteading states voted against it.

After dark, when it was a bit less hot, we visited some of the street art in the area. The head usually has a fountain, but it’s off because of the drought.