tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/gold-miners-25536/articlesgold miners – The Conversation2021-08-11T20:05:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1613542021-08-11T20:05:50Z2021-08-11T20:05:50ZHidden women of history: how mother of 8, Mary Anne Allen, made do on the goldfields amid gunshots, rain and sly grog<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402271/original/file-20210524-19-nfd8gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=192%2C1124%2C2324%2C1454&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">S. T. Gill, 34. Iron Bark Eagle Hawk, in Original Sketches, 1844-1866.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://search.sl.nsw.gov.au/permalink/f/1cvjue2/ADLIB110329636">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/hidden-women-of-history-64072">this series</a>, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.</em></p>
<p>In February 1852, 46-year-old Mary Anne Allen set off from Melbourne for the Mt Alexander (Castlemaine) diggings with her husband <a href="https://portphillippioneersgroup.org.au/pppg5ho.htm">Reverend John Allen</a> and their eight children, the youngest aged five.</p>
<p>Histories of the Victorian gold rushes often overlook women’s presence on the goldfields in 1852. Women, children and home, however, were always part of goldfields life. </p>
<p><a href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/1ojgog/SLV_VOYAGER3649714">Mary Anne Allen’s diary</a> appears to have been written for publication. In it she observes life on the diggings, not through the lens of masculinity and mateship, but through family and home. </p>
<h2>A perilous journey</h2>
<p>Englishwoman Mary Anne and her family had arrived in Port Phillip before the gold rushes. They migrated in 1849 to deliver the word of God for Scottish evangelist and colonial enthusiast <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lang-john-dunmore-2326">John Dunmore Lang</a>. Yet two years later the family abandoned their congregation in search of gold, “dreaming of little beyond wealth and competency”.</p>
<p>On route to Mt Alexander, the family almost lost their dray over a ravine. Their son Frederick tried to “scotch the wheels” (likely wedging a stone or bar to stop them rolling) but to no avail. </p>
<p>“My little girl came running towards me”, wrote Mary Anne in her diary. “She said we expected father would have been killed but Fred’s hand was smashed and two of his fingers broken.” Disaster was averted, but it would be just the beginning of the family’s trials.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="drawing of men fighting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415132/original/file-20210809-16-aowctw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most stories of the goldfields were told through the lens of mateship and masculinity. An early illustration by S. T. Gill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=SLV_VOYAGER1654827&vid=MAIN&search_scope=Pictures&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US&context=L">State Library of Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Next, four bushrangers bailed up a bullock driver ahead of them. The Allen family continued cautiously forward, one of her sons armed with a gun, the second with a hatchet, a third with a club. Mary Anne’s younger children inquired anxiously, “What will they do with you Mamma?” Fortunately, fate spared Mary Anne an answer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-catherine-hay-thomson-the-australian-undercover-journalist-who-went-inside-asylums-and-hospitals-129352">Hidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Life in the clearings</h2>
<p>Mary Anne found the new goldfields “remarkably picturesque and singularly beautiful”. The countryside was already home to miners’ mia-mias (based on <a href="https://www.noongarculture.org.au/home/">Aboriginal dwellings</a>) and hundreds of tents, scattered for miles through the still dense bush.</p>
<p>But clean drinking water was impossible to find. A German miner gave Mary Anne’s children a cup of water, milky with chalk. Another miner gave Mary Anne a loaded gun to help her protect any water they found. The family moved on to nearby Barker’s Creek, where there were fewer tents and more available water.</p>
<p>The Allen’s erected their tent and furnished it with handmade “bush bedsteads”: saplings driven into the ground and bed cases filled with dried leaves. Their table was topped with bark and the floor carpeted with the same. Mary Anne wrote that the bark decomposed rapidly in wet weather, producing an “exceedingly unpleasant” smell.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402460/original/file-20210524-13-1wri7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Winkles, ‘Interior of a digger’s tent’, c.1853.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many miners’ tents, she wrote, were lined with blankets inside and bullock hides externally to keep out the weather. Her sons built a stone fireplace with bark sides, which they topped with an old sugar cask. They put up a tarpaulin awning so the family could bake damper and roast meat without standing in the rain. Even with these precautions, mould covered everything.</p>
<h2>Living with uncertainty</h2>
<p>Families lived in fear of the dangers presented by mine shafts. The lesson was brought home for the Allen family as they watched a man trapped down a shaft. Then another man went in after him. The father of one of the men rushed forward and he too fell headlong into the mine. The whole party, Mary Anne noted disapprovingly, was the worse for “the influence of spirits”.</p>
<p>Bushfires were a frightening, yet entertaining, reality:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One small tree burnt through fell at our horses feet. We hastened onwards and when out of danger we sat and admired the grandeur of the scene.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At night, diggings glowed with fires outside every tent and lamps lit by candlewicks made from honeysuckle flowers soaked in oil. One night, as the family sat reading around their table, a gun was fired through their tent. The bullet landed on her son’s book: “So uncertain was life at Barker’s Creek”.</p>
<p>On the diggings, Sunday was not for religion but for domestic duties and domestic quarrels. Sometimes Mary Anne expected that “instant death would ensue from stabbing members of their own families”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bark hut on goldfields" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415133/original/file-20210809-23-er9j72.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canvas and bark tents smelled terrible when wet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/cjahgv/SLV_VOYAGER1671651">S. T. Gill/State Library of Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/emancipated-wenches-in-gaudy-jewellery-the-liberating-bling-of-the-goldfields-60449">Emancipated wenches in gaudy jewellery: the liberating bling of the goldfields</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Abrupt endings</h2>
<p>Living next door to a sly grog tent, Mary Anne reported: “Drunkenness, fighting, profanity and robberies were every day occurrences”. Her diary ends abruptly, to cries of murder and an aborted gold robbery.</p>
<p>She did not record whether her family found gold. Historical documents reveal the family only stayed six months on the diggings. John did not return to the church until just before his death in 1861, by which time the couple had bought a number of properties in Melbourne.</p>
<p>My doctoral research is the first time Mary Anne’s diary has been written into goldfields history. Her manuscript is entitled Mrs Allen’s Trip to the Gold Fields, suggesting she intended it for publication. Now, almost 170 years later, we can read her observations as one of many women on the diggings in early 1852. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-masters-of-the-future-or-heirs-of-the-past-mining-history-and-indigenous-ownership-153879">Friday essay: masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and Indigenous ownership</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katrina Dernelley receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.</span></em></p>Mould, dodging mine shafts, sleeping in beds of dried leaves: Mary Anne Allen’s diary offers a fascinating glimpse of family life on the goldfields in 1852.Katrina Place Dernelley, PhD Candidate in History, La Trobe University, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/604492016-06-13T20:09:01Z2016-06-13T20:09:01ZEmancipated wenches in gaudy jewellery: the liberating bling of the goldfields<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126016/original/image-20160610-5894-kf331b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An unknown portrait of Lola Montez as a young woman.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private Collection Print</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl.</p>
<p>But that’s not all she was. Not by a long stretch.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126006/original/image-20160610-7083-choej4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lola Montez.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lola Montez was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1818, and christened Maria Eliza Delores Rosanna Gilbert. She changed her name to Lola when, at 18, she fled an arranged betrothal to a reviled old man. The woman who had dined (and slept) with the kings of Europe, plotted against the Jesuit-controlled monarchy in Bavaria, given advice on matters of state to Czar Nicholas and Ludwig I, performed in the opera houses of Europe, married at least three times and travelled the globe with her infamous Spider Dance, died alone in a New York boarding house of syphilis, aged 42. Her gravestone simply reads “Mrs Eliza Gilbert”.</p>
<p>By the end of her short and explosive life, Lola might have suggested a better epitaph: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A woman of beauty and intelligence needs the quills of a porcupine as self-defence – or else risk ruin.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She made this assessment in the lecture tour of America she embarked upon after her colourful but calamitous theatrical tour of the Victorian goldfields in 1855-56.</p>
<p>It is this part of Lola’s globe-trotting journey that is celebrated in <a href="http://made.org/whats-on/bling/">Bling!</a>, a sparkling exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka in Ballarat. A life size figurine of Lola descends from the ceiling — like Mary Poppins in crinolines — of a circular room adjoining the cosy catacomb that houses the original Eureka flag. </p>
<p>If Lola’s ersatz feet were to touch the ground, she’d find herself surrounded by the most extraordinary collection of goldfields’ jewellery. Over 250 pieces of finely wrought gold, often depicting the tools of the trade that earned diggers the cache that allowed them to purchase such pieces of adornment, often for the first time in their lives. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126009/original/image-20160610-5899-z0tdna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unknown early NSW miners brooch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trevor Hancock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other brooches, earrings and hair clasps represent the fauna and flora of the colony that had welcomed them as penniless (and sometimes illiterate) immigrants and given them the opportunity to dress like queens.</p>
<p>These were challenging, topsy-turvy times.</p>
<h2>An upside down society</h2>
<p>Lola plummeted into the upside down society of goldrush Melbourne and hit the ground running. Like most entrepreneurs and show-offs, she banked on attracting attention. But whether Lola fully anticipated the amount of social opprobrium about to be heaped on her shoulders is unclear.</p>
<p>Reviewing the Melbourne performance of her autobiographical theatrical production, Lola Montez in Bavaria, Punch derided Lola for wearing her hair in short curls “like a barrister’s wig”. </p>
<p>“She can talk politics like a book”, the review continued, “and teach kings how to govern their people more easily than you and I could conjugate a French verb”. This was faint praise, and Lola was damned for her self-promotion and delusions of grandeur.</p>
<p>One of the most poignant and telling aspects of Lola’s story is her own need — despite the gold nuggets tossed at her on stage by adoring diggers — to set the record straight. In her lecture tour in 1858, Lola revealed that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A woman, like a man of true courage, instinctively prefers to face the public deeds of her life, rather than, by cowardly shifts, to skulk and hide away from her own historical presence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With the mass popular uprisings on the Ballarat goldfields in recent memory, the raven-haired democrat might have expected finally to have found a captive audience for her grand political designs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126017/original/image-20160610-5883-n9k8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The early gold rush was also a golden era for rebellious women. Viennese violinist Miska Hauser toured Victoria at this time. In a letter dated 15 May 1855, Hauser described:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Emancipated wenches in unbecoming riding habits, and with smoking cigars in their mouths, appear on horseback, and crazy gentlemen … career madly after them and laugh delightedly if a flirtatious equestrienne in a spicy mood aims a mock smack at them with her riding crop.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A month later Hauser wrote that Victoria was “deafening”, “giddy” and “life here is like a Venetian carnival!”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You see all the dykes of civil order torn down … women who have long since forsaken the joys of family life and despised all regard for respectability are here hoisted to rank and wealth. Even young ladies who nevertheless claim to be well-reared and cultured, sit all day at the latter-day gambling tables, where every decent impulse disintegrates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hauser had met Lola in San Francisco, and was not surprised to encounter her again in Victoria. He found “the beautiful good-for-nothing” stretched out in a room on a white ottoman, smoking cigars, surrounded by mountains of boxes and chests. She had Tarot cards laid out. Lola, reported Hauser, was very superstitious.</p>
<p>The social problem in Victoria wasn’t just with impulsive stage performers like Lola. Hauser attended a meeting in Melbourne that was convened to determine how “the ever-increasing fickleness of women could be most quickly and safely remedied … no-where in the world do husbands get such short shrift from their wives as here”. </p>
<p>One solution was to erect houses of correction for “undutiful and flighty wives” where women could be punished for “their wanton caprices and faithless intrigues”.</p>
<p>The architects of this plan clearly had short memories. Their confidence in detention facilities might have been eroded by the disquieting events of November 1854. </p>
<p>On 3 November, the Geelong Advertiser reported a “female revolt” at the Immigration Depot where the female portion of the inmates</p>
<blockquote>
<p>rebelled against the constituted authorities … [two or three] members of the fairer sex, inspired, doubtless, by too ardent a desire for liberty, scaled the fence round the buildings …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, the “remainder of ladies vigorously assaulted the unfortunate manager”.</p>
<p>Just over a year later, Clara Du Val, common law wife of Henry Seekamp, edited the Ballarat Times while her husband was on trial for sedition in the wake of the Eureka Stockade. On New Years’ Day 1855, she wrote this truly radical editorial:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is this country else but Australia? Is it any more England than it is Ireland or Scotland, France or America, Italy or Germany? </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Outlandish displays of good fortune</h2>
<p>It wasn’t only women’s outrageous behaviour that drew criticism in gold rush Victoria. Commentators were apt to pass judgement on their appearance as well, particularly the nouveau riche penchant for outlandish displays of good fortune; for bling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126021/original/image-20160610-5899-1i73hip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A brooch with a figure of a miner holding a large nugget standing atop a washing pan filled with gold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charles Rudston Read, public servant and author of <a href="https://archive.org/details/whatiheardsawan00readgoog">What I Heard, Saw, and Did at the Australian Gold Fields</a> (1853), remarked on Victorian women “liking flash dresses better than making butter and cheese”. After a visit to Ballarat, English sojourner Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye wrote </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think the ladies of New York could out-dress some of the fashionables there. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was not a compliment. She went on to describe:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most absurd caricature of a digger’s wife, spending up on items with which she has no acquaintance, gaudy, ostentatious, laughable. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>William Kelly, who wrote a book that compared gold rush Victoria and California, noted that Victorian women had “a passion for parasols” and were “addicted to flowers and corn-stalks” worn in their bonnets. </p>
<p>Kelly was particularly perplexed by how many women could be seen in public: women</p>
<blockquote>
<p>of the strong-minded class … striking but unattractive women jostled you on the flagways, elbowed you in the shops and rattled through the streets in carriages hired at a guinea an hour, arrayed in flaunting dresses of the most florid colours, composed of silks, sarcenets and brocaded satins. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For good measure, diggers’ wives also paraded “gaudy jewellery”. (The wives were often diggers themselves, it should be added.)</p>
<p>But Kelly saved his most derogatory description for a humble washerwoman, who was, alas, not humble at all. Here she was “dressed for the washing tub”. Her hair tied up in a knot and “fixed with a huge gold pin with a father-o’-pearl head”. </p>
<p>She wore a satin dress and apron, and clasped on her wrists “a pair of massive bracelets”. A heavy watch chain hung around her neck “stuffing a carved time piece into her virtuous bosom”. </p>
<p>The Bling! exhibition at M.A.D.E. has collected a dizzying array of the sort of adornments that this washerwoman — making a show of her newfound market power — could have commissioned or acquired. </p>
<p>It was not only the miners who wanted to wear their pride in their freshly minted wealth on their sleeves – and fingers, wrists, necks and bosoms. </p>
<p>One of my favourite pieces in the exhibition is a brooch made in 1855 by Geelong jeweller William Paterson. It depicts a perky, cartoonish kangaroo sheltering among huge, curling fern fronds. The metal is hard but all the lines are soft, welcoming. The iconography of place mirrors the innovation of the piece: naive, exotic, precious, beloved.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126003/original/image-20160610-7059-qv90t3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No petticoat revolution</h2>
<p>So did the boundary-pushing Lola reap the professional rewards of being in the right place at the right time?</p>
<p>Not by her own reckoning she didn’t. There is the famous incident of Lola horsewhipping Henry Seekamp after he gave her a bad review for her performance at the Victoria Theatre. This encounter is routinely re-enacted for school groups and Chinese tourists at Sovereign Hill (though not the coda of the exchange, when Seekamp gave Lola a black eye). </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126007/original/image-20160610-5863-19zn06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lola towards the end of her life.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then there was the night Lola lost her temper with heckling miners at Castlemaine. From the stage she shouted at them that “she was a rich as any man in the room. She was the maker of her own fortune and she would recommend the man who had hissed her, to go to school, and learn not to hiss what he did not understand”.</p>
<p>So why might Lola have been showered with gold nuggets but also bombarded with vitriol?</p>
<p>It has often been noted that in times of deep cultural crisis — times of giddy change — attitudes about sex and gender become more dynamically held or contested. The early gold rush in Victoria was such a time. Just as the European revolutions of 1848 transformed political hierarchies, so too the social turbulence and popular unrest in goldrush Victoria challenged gendered power structures.</p>
<p>Imperial anxieties about the state of social flux in the colonies in general, and about the presumptuous, defiant behaviour of women in particular, were expressed by politicians, newspaper editors and dancehall racketeers. Popular goldfields entertainer Charles Thatcher sang that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The gals that come out to Australia to roam <br>
Have much higher notions than when they’re at home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With a prominent libertarian and democrat like Lola so effectively vilified, the public/political sphere could continue to be constructed as a place of respectability and conservatism.</p>
<p>The show might go on, but there would be no petticoat revolution here.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of a public lecture delivered by Clare Wright at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka as part of the public programs for Bling!</em></p>
<p><em>Bling! is on at M.A.D.E. until 4 July.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The early goldrush was a topsy-turvy time for rebellious women, such as the globetrotting dancer Lola Montez. An exhibition showcasing goldfields jewellery spotlights this era when penniless immigrants could dress like queens.Clare Wright, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/572372016-04-12T14:04:07Z2016-04-12T14:04:07ZWhy it doesn’t make sense that all informal mining is deemed illegal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117647/original/image-20160406-28935-ehnht7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Legalising the small-scale and artisanal mining sector may unlock entrepreneurship opportunities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Luc Gnago</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Throughout Africa artisanal and small-scale <a href="http://www.miningfacts.org/communities/what-is-artisanal-and-small-scale-mining/">mining</a>, whether legal or illegal, has been associated with social problems such as conflict, environmental damage, health risks and child labour. Although there are no exact numbers of how many people participate in such mining activities, it is evident that it is widespread. </p>
<p>Despite its negative aspects, the contribution of small-scale mining to the resource sector and social development cannot be disputed. About 15% to 20% of the <a href="http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G00723.pdf">world’s</a> non-fuel mineral production comes from this sub-sector. An example of this <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46497693_Recognizing_and_nurturing_artisanal_mining_as_a_viable_livelihood">can be seen in Ghana</a>, where small-scale mining has contributed US$460 million since 1989 and is estimated to employ 300,000 to 500,000 individuals. </p>
<p>In South Africa, illegal mining as it currently stands covers all aspects of unpermitted mining. But this definition does not allow for differentiation between invasive illegal mining and informal community miners. Invasive mining occurs when miners illegally enter the old mine workings of decommissioned mines. Informal mining is community based mining that typically follows customary law. </p>
<p>The two are very different types of mining but have the same illegal status under the law. This gives rise to a fundamental question: is all informal mining illegal and is it all the same? The answer is no.</p>
<h2>Informal versus illegal mining</h2>
<p>Both types of mining, because of their attributes, can be classified as artisanal and small-scale mining. In sub-Saharan Africa the artisanal and small-scale mining sector is the oldest form of mineral extraction and processing. It continues to be widespread and active despite the advent of large-scale mechanised mining, which began in the late 19th century. But the sector is not homogeneous and to curb the scourge of illegal mining, a distinction between illegal mining and informal mining must be made. </p>
<p>As the law in South Africa stands, a group of women mining the semiprecious tiger’s eye quartz as a community in the Northern Cape province is considered equivalent to illegal miners who trespass on old abandoned mines. In addition, individuals who use rudimentary techniques and mine without permits are also considered to be illegal miners, even when no trespassing or invasion of old mines takes place. </p>
<p>The South African Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development <a href="http://www.dmr.gov.za/publications/summary/109-mineral-and-petroleum-resources-development-act-2002/225-mineraland-petroleum-resources-development-actmprda.html">Act of 2002</a> requires a mining permit from the Department of Mineral Resources for small-scale mining to be deemed legal. Because of this, any activity that takes place without a permit is illegal, despite the context in which it takes place. </p>
<h2>South Africa’s ‘zama-zama’</h2>
<p>Illegal mining in South Africa has dominated the news from the late 1990s, when large-scale <a href="http://www.mining.com/gangs-battle-over-abandoned-gold-mines-in-south-africa/">gold mines</a> in the the Witwatersrand Basin were <a href="http://www.colby.edu/academics_cs/courses/GE127/upload/Robb_Meyer-1995.pdf">decommissioned</a>. Most of these closures were the result of declining gold prices. The depths at which mining was taking place made many mines uneconomical. Many of the workers who were laid off turned to illegal mining in the region to eke out an existence. They are known as <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Inside-Labour-Zama-zama-illegals-or-entrepreneurs-20140220">“zama-zama”</a> miners, derived from the Zulu word “<em>zama</em>” which means “to try”. </p>
<p>These chance-takers spend long periods of time underground digging for gold. The dangers they face include rock falls, methane poisoning and underground fires. <a href="http://citizen.co.za/860659/bodies-pile-up-in-alleged-zama-zama-turf-war/">Gang activity</a> is also synonymous with zama-zama mining. The gangs are typically differentiated along ethnic lines. The <a href="http://www.chamberofmines.org.za/">Chamber of Mines of South Africa</a> has equated zama-zama mining with the <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/driven-underground-by-poverty-1927803">illegal drug trade</a> or sex trafficking due to the way that kingpins run the sector. </p>
<p>Zama-zama mining has become a widespread problem. Deaths and underground accidents <a href="http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1935">are common</a>. Responsibility for rescuing underground zama-zamas, or recovering bodies, lies with the mining companies that own the disused mines or the government. Because of the sector’s organised nature, arrested miners quickly get replaced because the kingpins themselves are still free. This results in a futile exercise for law enforcement.</p>
<p>The illegality of zama-zama mining is not only because miners operate without a permit. It is also because they trespass on the land of large-scale miners and are in possession of unwrought gold. This is illegal under the Precious Metals <a href="http://www.randrefinery.com/Precious_Metals_Act_2005.pdf">Act of 2005</a>. </p>
<p>But these activities are very different from customary mining practices, which are in fact <a href="http://www.dmr.gov.za/mineral-policy-a-promotion.html">recognised by</a> the Department of Mineral Resources. It has campaigned for these activities to be formalised and recognised under South African law, but this hasn’t happened – possibly due to the lack of capacity in the small-scale mining sector. </p>
<h2>Customary practices</h2>
<p>In South Africa, customary practices are governed by the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework <a href="http://www.customcontested.co.za/laws-and-policies/traditional-leadership-and-governance-framework-act-tlgfa/">Act of 2003</a> and overseen by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. </p>
<p>There are many communities that are considered traditional communities under the law. They are led by chiefs and headmen who are recognised by the law. These communities are governed by customary practices and law, and permission to mine falls under these practices. Community members assume that once they have permission from the chief, who acts as the custodian of the people, they can mine freely. This customary practice is informal, but no invasion of land or trespassing takes place. Examples include the women mining tiger’s eyes in the Northern Cape and the mining of coal in rural parts of Mpumalanga province.</p>
<p>In these cases customary law has been followed, but mining is still deemed illegal because it occurs without a mining permit from the Department of Mineral Resources.</p>
<p>A distinction needs to be made between the two. By doing this, South Africa can start to formalise the informal sector that is typically based on customary law. By using these informal structures, the country can start to formalise the sub-sector of artisanal and small-scale mining. This “partial formalisation”, as I call it, would bring clarity by allowing invasive mining to be dealt with as illegal while enabling artisanal mining to be developed. </p>
<p>Creating a legal artisanal and small-scale mining sector creates an opportunity for entrepreneurship for traditional communities and individuals. It can also play a role in development and poverty alleviation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kgothatso Nhlengetwa receives funding from the Canon Collins Educational and Legal Assistance Trust. She is affiliated with the University of the Witwatersrand.</span></em></p>Informal mining and invasive illegal mining have the same illegal status under law in South Africa. But is all informal mining the same? And should it all be deemed illegal?Kgothatso Nhlengetwa, Associate lecturer, PhD candidate, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/500302016-03-08T12:28:32Z2016-03-08T12:28:32ZSilicosis: why African miners’ fight for compensation is a just one<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113906/original/image-20160304-17730-1ciucxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An x-ray image of a miner's lungs. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Damir Sagolj </span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Mining giants Anglo American South Africa and AngloGold Ashanti have agreed to pay <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/Business/silicosis-claims-anglo-has-to-cough-up-nearly-r500m-20160306">R464 million</a> to more than 4400 miners who contracted silicosis and TB from working on the their mines. The settlement follows 12 years of protracted litigation against Anglo American South Africa and four years of litigation against AngloGold. Health and Medicine editor Candice Bailey asked Professor Jill Murray to explain some of the basis of the case.</em> </p>
<p><strong>What is silicosis and what is its relationship to TB?</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.lung.org/lung-health-and-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/silicosis/learn-about-silicosis.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.za/">Silicosis</a> is a disease that you get from inhaling silica dust, also known as quartz, the rock the gold dust is embedded in. Drilling the rock generates the dust which miners then breathe into their lungs. This eventually scars their lung tissue. </p>
<p>Breathing in silica dust also compromises a person’s immune system which increases the risk of developing TB. Not everyone who develops silicosis contracts TB but they are between four and five times more likely to get TB than someone who doesn’t have silicosis. </p>
<p>Silica dust can never be removed from the lungs so a person with silicosis has an increased risk of contracting TB for their entire lives, even well after they have left the mines.</p>
<p>Some of the highest TB rates in the world have been recorded in South African gold miners. The World Health Organisation’s <a href="http://www.who.int/tb/features_archive/tb_emergency_declaration/en/">definition</a> of an epidemic is if a country has a TB rate of 250 cases for every 100,000 people. At its height the mining industry in 2007-08, South Africa recorded 4000 cases for every 100,000 mine workers. That reflected a combination of silica, HIV and living conditions.</p>
<p>South African gold miners still have rates of more than <a href="http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2014/03/24/000456286_20140324170149/Rendered/PDF/862020BRI0WB0R00Box382165B00PUBLIC0.pdf">1000</a> per 100,000 people. In the <a href="http://www.tbfacts.org/tb-statistics-united-states/">US</a> and <a href="http://www.tradingeconomics.com/cuba/incidence-of-tuberculosis-per-100-000-people-wb-data.html">Cuba</a>, the TB rate per 100,000 people is less than 20 cases.</p>
<p><strong>What is the burden of these diseases on society?</strong></p>
<p>Silicosis takes a long time to develop. On average, it takes up to 15 years before symptoms show. If you look at people who have left the mines or who were exposed for long periods, one in three have silicosis. </p>
<p>Most silicosis cases are ex-miners who have either retired, been retrenched or lost their jobs because of injury or disease. Silicosis is not contagious but TB is. This means a person suffering from silicosis who contracts TB, is ill and needs care is a big risk to their family and to the population around them. It then becomes a problem for the entire society.</p>
<p>The burden of silicosis and tuberculosis associated with silica dust is being borne, not by the industry which caused the problem, but by governments in southern Africa, the communities that miners live in and their families. The burden has shifted unfairly from the mining industry to the state and the family.</p>
<p><strong>What has been the mining industry’s role?</strong></p>
<p>Silicosis is a preventable disease if proper controls are enforced. Australia has a large mining sector but there are no silicosis cases. Any case of silicosis is a failure of the mining bosses to control the dust in the mines. It may be expensive to control dust levels, but there is a technical solution available.</p>
<p>More recently mines have made strong efforts to reduce dust levels and if current dust controls are rigorously applied and adhered to, they may provide enough protection. We will have to watch and see how it develops.</p>
<p>But the problem lies with enforcement. The South African Department of Minerals has a shortage of inspectors to monitor dust levels at the mines. This needs highly skilled people. Mines are relied on to measure and report their own dust levels. In truth, a rigorous external body is needed to run checks. The inspectorate needs to be beefed up.</p>
<p><strong>Are there adequate measures for compensation for miners who develop disease?</strong></p>
<p>Miners who fall ill at a mine can go through a compensation process. But the challenge lies with the hundreds of thousands of ex-miners scattered across the southern African region.</p>
<p>A recent report, which is not yet published, was submitted to the South African National Department of Health. It handles the compensation process, highlights the problem. One of the main challenges is that facilities to examine potentially diseased ex-miners are few and far between. </p>
<p>There are vast areas in South Africa and the region where these clinics simply do not exist. So accessing the compensation system and getting paid out is impossible for most claimants. </p>
<p>In addition, the once-off payment they get is a disgrace. There are <a href="http://www.ilo.org/secsoc/areas-of-work/policy-development-and-applied-research/social-protection-floor/lang--en/index.htm">international standards</a> that stipulate miners who can no longer work because they are suffering from an occupational disease should be paid enough to live a dignified existence. This is certainly not the case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill Murray has received grants from the Mine Health and Safety Council for research and does post reitrement work for the National Institute for Occupational Health. </span></em></p>For thousands of miners who have developed silicosis from years of work on South Africa’s gold mines, a landmark court case will change their lives.Jill Murray, Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Public Health, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.