~ GOLD ~



The myth and the reality Life under canvas The egalitarian gold fields Health and medicine No place for a lady Caroline Chisholm: friend or foe? Sly grog Gold field gold deals Daily life The digger`s dictionary

SBS > Gold > Life on the Diggings

Ex convicts, Polish soldiers, Dutch sailors, English doctors, and Chinese labourers were among the many who flocked to the gold fields in pursuit of riches. Yet many found the myth of the gold rush more appealing than the reality. Sometimes hot and dusty, other times cold and damp, the diggings offered a life of hard labour, flies, mud, sly grog, dysentery, and occasionally, gold.

The myth and the reality
The reality of the diggings rarely lived up to the wild tales told in Europe and Melbourne.

Life under canvas
Edward Snell captured the spirit of the diggings with his sketches and memoirs.
The egalitarian gold fields
For the first time in their lives the British upper class were at a disadvantage.
Health and medicine
Dr Eadie’s sarsaparilla pills, a cure for all goldfield ailments.

No place for a lady
Sly grog seller, prostitute, storeowner and diggeress were some of the occupations available to women willing to brave the goldfields.

Caroline Chisholm: friend or foe?
Polish digger Seweryn Korzelinski casts doubt on the saintliness of Chisholm’s work.

Sly grog
Alcohol was officially banned from the gold fields, but was always easy to find.
Gold field gold deals
Buying and selling gold could be a risky business.
Daily life
Religion, sly grog and buying supplies were part of everyday life of a digger.

The digger's dictionary
Do you know what aurophobia is? And should you be offended if someone describes you as a duffer?

Australian soldiers were called diggers, as many men who fought for Australia in WWI were diggers from the goldfields.

"Gold is not found in quartz alone; its richest lodes are in the eyes and ears of the public."
Samuel Butler.

It is estimated that at least 20% of all the gold mined since 1500 has been wrung from the earth during only fifty years' worth of gold rushes in the nineteenth century.

A 150th anniversary is a sesquicentenary.

In the first few years of Victoria's life as an independent colony, the Victorian Government sold £4,500,000 worth of Aboriginal land.

The Incas called gold the "sweat of the sun", while the Aztecs and the Mayans called it "the excrement of the sun".

A census of the Kimberly gold fields showed unqualified practitioners such as faith healers, tonic sellers and clairvoyants out-numbered legally qualified doctors three-to-one.

Australia now mines about 300 tonnes of gold annually – worth about $4.5million – making it the third-largest producer in the world, after South Africa and the United States. Gold is Australia’s second largest export after coal.

In 1965 archaeologists discovered the "Ramlah Hoard" – a collection of gold dinars and ingots dating from 761 to 976 – at Ramlah, near Jerusalem.

Gold fingerprinting technology, developed in Australia to help police trace the origin of stolen gold, is now being used to determine the origin of archaeological artefacts.