Journal of Australian Colonial History: Book Reviews
Vol. 11, 2009
Keir Reeves and David Nichols (eds), Deeper Leads: New Approaches to Victorian Goldfields History, Ballarat Heritage Services, Ballarat, 2007, ISBN 978 1 876478 14 4, pbk, xxiv + 232 pp, $33.00.
These essays reframe goldfields history by applying concepts and methodology drawn from gender studies, cultural landscape analysis, heritage studies, cultural history, historical archaeology, electronic analysis and international comparative history. It concentrates on the Indigenous, female, Chinese and workingman's experience, long term civic projects and infrastructure generated by the mineral wealth, and the impact of this reformulation on national and individual identity.
Alan Mayne uses the tools and conceptual framework of historical ethnography to emphasize cultural performance — imaginative literature, art and music, and the building of interpretations 'outwards from small things and local detail'. He may exaggerate the novelty of his approach but he rightly underlines the difficulty of translating relics into a narrative that resonates with the present while emerging from the cultural landscape of the past.
Lyndon Fraser examines single Irish miners in the antipodes and confirms that they did not do well, and the few who did owed their success to small business activities. However, the Irish did as well as any other national group. Fraser highlights the mobility of single males between Eastern Australia, New Zealand and California and the importance of family and mates in facilitating such movement.
The multi-authored essay on goldfield asylums highlights the initial positive response. The institutions provided continuing employment for the towns concerned, were accepted by the townspeople with pride and became the focus of their charitable and social activities. However, by the mid-1950s these institutions were viewed as dirty, archaic, and brutal. The rapid demolition of many such sites reflected the dominance of this later perception. The conversion of part of these sites for educational purposes creates ambivalence towards institutions with a legacy of anguish and suffering, yet with a new life and tourist potential.
The essay on the eGold project is an essential read. It outlines the problems and achievement in adapting to the new technology and its footnotes are a good beginning for the novice. Dorothy Wickham isolates two marginal groups who challenged orthodoxies and exercised agency — married women who challenged common law by owning property and entering into contracts, and females who did not conform to the social and moral orthodoxies of the patriarchal society.
Clare Gervasoni examines the difficulties and successes confronting the predominantly Italian-speaking migrants on a field. While language barriers were a burden, an inability to speak English did not stop aggrieved aliens from seeking justice or becoming successful landowners and businessmen and in the process creating a successful early multicultural community. Kevin Wong Hoy, treating the Buckland Riots as a cold case, isolates many flaws in the original investigation and attributes blame where it can be determined. Andrew Reeves provides an excellent cameo on the Amalgamated Miners Association and the influence on it, and through it, of the central Victorian goldminers. The AMA was industrially active concerning working hours, wages and mine safety but 'socially and politically conservative'. This was 'a unionism fiercely grounded in local realities and local communities' and the migration of many of its members to new fields influenced other areas and unions.
Jonathan Sweet's innovative application of the concept of cultural landscape concentrates on the 1862 London Exhibition, which was used to reveal the progress of Victoria 'in all the areas of civilization and appliances of wealth'. The new exhibition environment demanded that raw materials be fashioned into objects that would demand attention. The main Victorian exhibit was The Gold Pyramid, a stage prop of timber, canvas and plastic finished with a gold patina, whose mass matched the exact amount of gold exported from the colony since 1851.
The last essay is a blueprint to communicate Bendigo's Chinese heritage to visitors and concludes that it should be achieved around themes rather than topics, and that these should include the multicultural nature of the gold rush, the interactions with Europeans involving co-operation and conflict, and the provision of water vital to the Chinese survival.
This book is a mixed collection both in genre and relevance. The multidisciplinary approach and the concentration on the outsiders of traditional history has long been the subject matter of scholars in Europe and the Americas and in other aspects of Australian history. Its relative absence from goldfield research reflects a significant gap in Australian scholarship. Consequently this book is a timely reminder that such an approach can deliver immediate nuggets, and hopefully act as a harbinger for a new bonanza.
Geoff Quaife
Citation: Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 9, 2009, pp. 209-10.