The
Archeology of the Victorian Gold Rush
by Dr Susan Lawrence
(This
report on Dr Lawrence's presentation at the August meeting
of Heidelberg Historical Society, appeared in The Historian,
October 2004. Dr Lawrence is the author of "Dolly's
Creek. An Archeaology of a Victorian Goldfields Community")
Our speaker
for August was La Trobe Archaeology lecturer, Dr Susan
Lawrence, providing another dimension
to previous interesting lectures we have had on archaeological
work at the site of Viewbank Homestead, at a city site
and in the Middle East. Dr Lawrence's work has been on
many and varied sites including whaling stations, vacant
township blocks and similar urban locations such as central
Ballarat. On this occasion she spoke of her work with
students investigating small gold mining communities,
and in particular, one such community called Dolly's Creek
near the townships of Elaine and Meredith south of Ballarat
on the Midland Highway to Geelong.
She explained
how the population of the new colony of Victoria jumped
from 100,000 to over 500,000 in the 1850s with large numbers
living inland and inevitably on and around goldfields.
Goldfields townships, she demonstrated, grew up haphazardly,
first just a massed collections of tents and some wooden
buildings with no planning such as had been the basis
for Melbourne and Adelaide. The Mount Alexander diggings
which became the township of Castlemaine was the administrative
centre for the goldfields in the early years and the collection
of public buildings around the government camp helped
to produce a more orderly township plan with a number
of splendid brick mansions and stores and banks along
wide roads and streets. In contrast, the poorer township
of Chewton grew up from a collection of tents, followed
by clusters of timber huts and cottages established along
narrow winding roads and streets close to the mine workings.
Similar rough townships developed elsewhere around Castlemaine
such as Tarnagulla and Fryerstown. Today the heritage
of old cottages and winding lanes and rough hilly country
semi-timbered indicates the mining background of these
midland townships which started with alluvial mining in
the 1850s and moved into the more stable era of reef mining
in the 1860s.
Dolly's Creek
was a small goldfields community which began about 1861
and continued as a poor man's field until the 1880s when
many of the roughly built cottages had already been deserted
and were crumbling into ruin, and with only a few families
left with the men folk fossicking and trying to make a
living. The population here was about 620 in 1861 including
many children, most under 5 years of age, with the bulk
of the population in their 20s and 30s. They built simple
but substantial dwelling, one or two-roomed, and Dr Lawrence
and her students were able to find the foundations of
these homes, and numerous artifacts which gave an indication
that though the people were not at all wealthy, they lived
comfortably and graced their homes with ornaments and
boasted having some of the finer things of life. There
was evidence of carefully tended garden beds and pathways.
There were items such as bottles of all types and colourful
broken crockery and toys which gave an indication of the
ordered life the miners and their families led.
The families
kept all kinds of domestic animals - fowls, pigs, goats,
rabbits - cared for by women and children. The food was
quite varied and no doubt well-cooked and presented. The
items found included beer bottles, medicine bottles and
bottles for salad oils among others. The houses had substantial
brick or stone fireplaces, and most had floors laid down,
and the windows had glass. Their walls were lined inside
with wallpapers. It is easy to understand that they did
not have to live in bare uncomfortable huts as they lived
just seven miles from Ballarat, and could have made trips
into the city for provisions. The miners would have first
lived in tents, and when they could they built their homes
nearby and added to them. Goldfields consumers would have
moved from the needs of the alluvial miner, gold pans
and dishes, shovels, buckets and rope with provisions
obtained from tent stores, to the need for timber for
lining their mine holes, and setting up winches and for
ironmongery for machinery, and iron for roofs and sheds.
Stability came when they obtained miners' rights which
gave them the right to build houses and establish gardens
on their quarter-acre allotments. Some went on to obtain
goldfields occupation licences for up to 20 acres and
could become small-scale farmers, and eventually achieve
the freehold for their land. The legacy of those pioneering
years can still be seen in many of the goldfields townships
in the old homes and winding streets and roads. Dr Lawrence
illustrated her lecture with numerous informative slides
and was warmly thanked for her most interesting account
of goldfields life.
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