What do you think?
Rate this book
Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia
A team of prominent historians and curators have produced this innovative cultural history of gold and its impact on the development of Australian society. Throughout history, gold has been the "stuff" of legends, fortunes, conflict and change. The discovery of gold in Australia 150 years ago precipitated enormous developments in the newly settled land. The population and economy boomed in spontaneous cities. The effects on both the environment and indigenous Aboriginal peoples have been profound and lasting.
394 pages, Hardcover
First published June 11, 2001
18 people want to read
About the author
Iain McCalman
20 books19 followersIain McCalman is professor of history and the humanities at the University of Sydney. He has published numerous books and journal articles. His latest book, The Reef: A Passionate History, from Captain Cook to Climate Change, was published in Australia and the USA. Beyond his research, he has been an historical consultant and narrator for the BBC, ABC and other TV and film documentaries. His interest areas are the history of western environmental and cultural crises; scientific voyaging, ethnography and environmentalism and is currently the co-director at the Sydney Environment Institute.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 20, 2019
I grew up in Ballarat. One of my great-grandmothers was born on the Ballaarat.
The different prepositions are far more significant than the modification of the place name. I grew up in a city of parks and tree-lined streets, an art gallery and comfortably sprawling suburbs; a world away from the goldfields tent in which, winter coming on, Agnes Ritchie was born.
My great-grandmother died when I was a baby, but she once held me in her arms and that our lives overlapped, ever so briefly, is a demonstration of how recent much of our history really is.
Despite that temporal proximity the historical record is all too quickly subsumed by stereotypes. I used to think the circumstance of my great-grandmother and her mother (another Agnes) being on the goldfield was unusual. But as several contributors to this excellent collection of essays attest, there were actually a surprising number of women and children on the Victorian goldfields.
An archaeological survey at Dolly’s Creek, an abandoned settlement near Ballarat, unearthed numerous indications of how those women shaped the material culture of their world. They were discerned in the presence of the many ceramic dishes, chosen by women in preference to the less genteel (albeit more practical) tinware, and in the use of kaolin to whiten their stone fireplaces.
Subtitling their collection “Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia”, the editors of this volume invite us to explore and reconsider the ways in which gold and its getting have determined our national character and fortunes. They want to “complicate or update the central gold themes that have been so well traversed, and to suggest some relevant new themes for exploration.”
Looking at the role of women on the goldfields, then, or of organised labor in the deep shafts of Bendigo, or the relationship between miners and Aborigines in the Tanami — all this is part of that agenda to “complicate or upgrade” the stereotypical digger.
Gold contains more than a hundred illustrations, almost half of them good quality color plates, and was produced with the assistance of the National Museum, an institution that also supplied one of the book’s editors and three of its contributors.
With almost half of the other contributors working at the Australian National University, there was a risk of east coast topics and perceptions marginalizing the Western Australian experience — it wouldn’t be the first time — but Westralia is in fact quite adequately represented.
Patrick Bertola’s “Undesirable Persons” outlines and explains the motives behind the racially discriminatory provisions (some of which were not repealed until 1973) of Western Australian’s mining legislation.
Bill Bunbury does his usual good stuff in relating the experiences of immigrant workers on the eastern goldfields, giving particular attention to the 1934 Australia Day riots and the woodline operations.
Aptly titled “Cinderella’s Jewellery”, Dorothy Erickson’s appraisal of Western Australian gold rush brooches is an authoritative overview that may have some of us taking a closer look at great-auntie Flo’s heirloom.
Ian Coates’s interpretation of the work of a couple of artists on the Pilbara goldfield at the end of nineteenth century deftly alerts us to what is really being depicted. Any picture may very well be worth a thousand words, but those words and the picture taken together can yield yet another image again.
Western Australian items were essential to have even the semblance of a national approach, but the editors have correctly insisted upon an even broader geographic compass. Hank Nelson provides a detailed survey of New Guinea’s various gold rushes; and David Raftery has written a fascinating account of the stories (white and black) surrounding the shady activities and harsh fate of Harold Lasseter — he of the fabulous “lost” reef of gold.
Describing these 20 essays as “stories or microhistories”, the editors give a passing nod to those “independent” writers who maintained narrative traditions while academics wallowed in “sophisticated theoretical paradigms … and specialist vocabularies”. They assure us that narrative has returned “to mainstream importance in the practice of academic history writing”.
The range of Gold cannot be faulted, the mix of its contributors (established academics to PhD students) is to be applauded, and, while the style of one or two contributors could have benefited from editorial advice, the writing is, overall, competent and engaging.
The different prepositions are far more significant than the modification of the place name. I grew up in a city of parks and tree-lined streets, an art gallery and comfortably sprawling suburbs; a world away from the goldfields tent in which, winter coming on, Agnes Ritchie was born.
My great-grandmother died when I was a baby, but she once held me in her arms and that our lives overlapped, ever so briefly, is a demonstration of how recent much of our history really is.
Despite that temporal proximity the historical record is all too quickly subsumed by stereotypes. I used to think the circumstance of my great-grandmother and her mother (another Agnes) being on the goldfield was unusual. But as several contributors to this excellent collection of essays attest, there were actually a surprising number of women and children on the Victorian goldfields.
An archaeological survey at Dolly’s Creek, an abandoned settlement near Ballarat, unearthed numerous indications of how those women shaped the material culture of their world. They were discerned in the presence of the many ceramic dishes, chosen by women in preference to the less genteel (albeit more practical) tinware, and in the use of kaolin to whiten their stone fireplaces.
Subtitling their collection “Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia”, the editors of this volume invite us to explore and reconsider the ways in which gold and its getting have determined our national character and fortunes. They want to “complicate or update the central gold themes that have been so well traversed, and to suggest some relevant new themes for exploration.”
Looking at the role of women on the goldfields, then, or of organised labor in the deep shafts of Bendigo, or the relationship between miners and Aborigines in the Tanami — all this is part of that agenda to “complicate or upgrade” the stereotypical digger.
Gold contains more than a hundred illustrations, almost half of them good quality color plates, and was produced with the assistance of the National Museum, an institution that also supplied one of the book’s editors and three of its contributors.
With almost half of the other contributors working at the Australian National University, there was a risk of east coast topics and perceptions marginalizing the Western Australian experience — it wouldn’t be the first time — but Westralia is in fact quite adequately represented.
Patrick Bertola’s “Undesirable Persons” outlines and explains the motives behind the racially discriminatory provisions (some of which were not repealed until 1973) of Western Australian’s mining legislation.
Bill Bunbury does his usual good stuff in relating the experiences of immigrant workers on the eastern goldfields, giving particular attention to the 1934 Australia Day riots and the woodline operations.
Aptly titled “Cinderella’s Jewellery”, Dorothy Erickson’s appraisal of Western Australian gold rush brooches is an authoritative overview that may have some of us taking a closer look at great-auntie Flo’s heirloom.
Ian Coates’s interpretation of the work of a couple of artists on the Pilbara goldfield at the end of nineteenth century deftly alerts us to what is really being depicted. Any picture may very well be worth a thousand words, but those words and the picture taken together can yield yet another image again.
Western Australian items were essential to have even the semblance of a national approach, but the editors have correctly insisted upon an even broader geographic compass. Hank Nelson provides a detailed survey of New Guinea’s various gold rushes; and David Raftery has written a fascinating account of the stories (white and black) surrounding the shady activities and harsh fate of Harold Lasseter — he of the fabulous “lost” reef of gold.
Describing these 20 essays as “stories or microhistories”, the editors give a passing nod to those “independent” writers who maintained narrative traditions while academics wallowed in “sophisticated theoretical paradigms … and specialist vocabularies”. They assure us that narrative has returned “to mainstream importance in the practice of academic history writing”.
The range of Gold cannot be faulted, the mix of its contributors (established academics to PhD students) is to be applauded, and, while the style of one or two contributors could have benefited from editorial advice, the writing is, overall, competent and engaging.
Displaying 1 of 1 review