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The Australian Colonies: Gold

This inquiry-based unit presents students with a range of visual primary sources to spark curiosity about life in the 1800s. Each activity introduces a new concept related to the Australian Gold Rushes.

Video

Pipe dreams, 2007: O'Connor's dream for water

This clip is an excerpt from the 2007 film 'Pipe dreams' (55 min), the second episode of a three-part series entitled 'Constructing Australia'. Over black-and-white photographs and dramatised video of the key players, a narrator describes the significant challenges of supplying water to the WA goldfields in the late 19th ...

Video

The Perth Mint Starts Making Currency: The gold rush era

The gold rush of the 1890s, which started in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, prompted a rush of hopeful prospectors to Western Australia. Perth Mint exhibition supervisor Greg Cooke talks about the reality of life in the harsh outback with little water and no roads. Would you have risked your life to try to find your fortune ...

Interactive

Sites2See: Gold

This resource is a page supporting the Stage 3 unit 'Gold!' with selected links to information, interactive games, challenges, videos, a podcast, related literature and activities for students and teachers, including the task-based resource Gold: Shaping our identity.

Interactive

Gold – shaping our identity

This is a task-based resource for students to explore the social, economic, political and environmental impact of the gold rush in Australia in the 1850s. The resource includes videos, SMART notebooks, worksheets and links to further interactive resources. It includes support notes for teachers and/or supervisors in distance ...

Online

Chinese migrants and the Gold Rush

Throughout the 1800s Chinese migrated to colonial Australia to try their luck on the goldfields. This Look to Learn activity enables you to explore what life was like for the Chinese migrants through primary sources from this period.

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: Henry Ellis

Investigate the role played by the doctor Henry Ellis in the events leading up to, and following, Federation in Australia. Examine two different types of biographies of Ellis: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects ...

Image

Australian gold diggings, c1855

This is an oil painting measuring 70.5 cm x 90.3 cm, painted about 1855 by Edwin Stocqueler (1829-1895), showing men working on the Bendigo gold field in Victoria. The men are panning, puddling and cradling for gold on both sides of a stream in a tent-dotted valley. The valley is stark, with only a few trees remaining. ...

Image

Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 1

This is a hand-coloured lithographic print of a painting by George French Angas showing a stream zigzagging through she-oaks and sparsely treed cliffs at what was to become Ophir, Australia's first gold rush site. The print shows 14 miners prospecting using several different methods. Measuring 24.2 cm x 35 cm, the print ...

Image

'Diggers licensing, Forest Creek, 1852'

This is a black-and-white print that shows diggers (miners) at Forest Creek on the Mount Alexander diggings in Victoria lining up before the Gold Commissioner's tent to pay a licence fee. A policeman stands guard next to the tent while, in the foreground on the left, two policemen can be seen speaking to a digger. The print, ...

Image

Outside gold miners' huts, Mount Dromedary, 1890s

This is a photograph, taken by William Henry Corkhill (1846-1936) in the late 1890s, showing four gold miners standing outside a simple slab hut on the Mount Dromedary diggings in southern New South Wales. The hut stands on a narrow terrace cut into the hillside amid the bush. Firewood and housekeeping utensils lie on the ...

Image

'The new rush', 1865

This is a coloured print, measuring 19.4 cm x 25.2 cm, by the famous colonial artist Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), published in 'The Australian Sketchbook' in 1865. It shows a gold rush scene, probably in Victoria, with a stream of prospectors travelling along a dirt road. Several are walking beside their horses and heavily ...

Image

Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 5

This is a hand-coloured print of a sketch, entitled 'Fitzroy Bar, Ophir', by George French Angas (1822-86) of the gold fields at Ophir, near Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1851. It shows prospectors cradling for gold along the banks of a stream, which flows swiftly to the rocky Fitzroy Bar, then turns left down between rock-lined ...

Image

A boxing match in Bendigo, 1853

This is a hand-coloured lithograph, measuring 15.8 cm x 19.5 cm, entitled 'A BENDIGO MILL'. It was made by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80) from a sketch he did on the spot as he watched a boxing match in Bendigo, Victoria, and it featured in his publication 'Sketches of the Victoria gold diggings and diggers as they are'. ...

Image

'Gold digging in Australia 1852: bad results'

This is the first of a pair of oval watercolours, measuring 20.2 cm x 26.4 cm, painted by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows two gold miners sitting dejectedly beside their mine, probably on the Victorian gold fields. Behind the men is a windlass, as well as their wheelbarrow, pick and spade. ...

Image

Panning for gold on the Mulgrave River, c1888

This is a black-and-white photograph showing five miners prospecting for alluvial gold on the banks of the Mulgrave River in Queensland. Two of the men hold shovels and stand by a sluice, two others pan for gold and the fifth rests on a wooden wheelbarrow. Several other mining implements are in evidence - a pan, pick, shovel ...

Image

'The claim disputed', c1852

This is a watercolour, measuring 19.4 cm x 25.4 cm, by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80), a famous colonial artist. It shows a well-dressed man - presumably the Gold Commissioner - arbitrating a dispute over a claim involving three diggers, probably on the Victorian gold fields. Two of the diggers are in animated discussion ...

Image

Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 4

This is a hand-coloured print of a sketch made by George French Angas (1822-86) of the gold fields at Ophir, near Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1851. The title of the sketch ('Ophir at the junction') refers to the junction of Summer Hill and Lewis Pond Creeks, but the junction itself is not clearly shown. The view is from ...

Image

Chinese people on the way to the Ravenswood gold fields, 1870

This pen-and-wash sketch dated 9 December 1870 depicts four Chinese men and a dog on the way to the gold fields at Ravenswood in northern Queensland. Made by Donald Sydney Thistlethwayte it is titled ''Celestials' on the way to Ravenswood diggings'. The men are dressed in traditional Chinese clothing. One wears sandals ...

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: George Leake

Investigate George Leake's role in the move towards Federation. Examine two different types of biographies of Leake: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: Federation people' series.