Ursula (Ursie) Ewart, orphaned as a young child, is sent away from her home in the Australian bush. While Ursie was previously doted on by station hands, Boshy, Nungi,and Queeby, at her new home, in a nearby country town, she is barely tolerated. Her only confidante is Andrew (Andree), an older child in the same household. In Human Toll, Barbara Baynton builds on her observations in Bush Studies to provide further insight into women's experience of Australian bush life and culture at the turn of the 20th century. (written by Kirsty Leishman)

Bush Studies is a short story collection published in London in 1902. Baynton presents a grimly realist view of bush life in Australia for women in colonial Australia. She wrote in response to Henry Lawson's romantic depiction of bush life during the same era.