New World Visions
of Gold Rush
Victoria
Richard Broome: HTAV Lecture 25 March 2012
‘Marco Polo’ Gold-era clipper
Victorian new world visions
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Melbourne’s boom creates
a new world city
Victorian new world visions
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Victoria’s demographic revolution
• 1851-61 nine fold
population increase
• By 1856 most arrived
less than 4 years
• Different nationalities,
different classes
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Victoria’s social r/evolution
• A change in manners
• A change in
perceptions of status
• A can-do place
• Revolution to some
• Evolution to others
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Two Gold fields: Punch 1852
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Overseas origins of
gold-rush social ideas
• Rights of Englishmen
• Chartist ideas &
Revolution of 1848
• Self improvement
• Tholfsen: network of
institutions
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Colonial experience and
gold-rush social ideas
• Gold digging fosters egalitarian ideas
• State of flux favours transplanting of
Chartist ideas
• Gold digging emphases individual work
ethic
• Miners fought for small-scale mining
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Nature of the Gold Diggers
• Geoffrey Serle and exceptionalism
• Manning Clark and routine materialism
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Serle: Values of the Gold Generation
• Fare-paying, educated,
religious group
• Self-improvers: hard
work, thrift, sobriety
• Institutions of 1854
• Mechanics Institute,
Masonic lodges, friendly
societies
• But new? Procession for
Separation 1851
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Vision 1: Freedom & Democracy
• Licence protests
• Bendigo red-ribbon
movement
• Bakery Hill petition
• Outcome of Eureka
• Radical &
conservative
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Vision 2: Independence
• Land as radical
panacea: ballads
• Land: Peter Papineau
manly independence
& nationhood
• Land Convention
1857: conservative &
radical political ideas
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Vision 3: A Better Life
• Eight-hour day debate: radical and conservative
• Annual celebrations: respectability
• The Trades Hall and its self-improving ideology
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Vision 4: A British Victoria
• Victorian patriotism
• British nationalism
• A white society
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Not a ‘Virgin Land’
• Aboriginal New World Visions?
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Aboriginal victims of Colonialism
Land & economic loss
Cultural loss
Population loss
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Aboriginal Voyagers
• William Stanner’s: Aboriginal voyaging”
‘coaxing, forcing’ their way into a new
world
• Not by violence but the three A’s
• Attachment
• Accommodation
• Appropriation
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A Radical Hope
Synthesis of Old and New
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European forms & Aboriginal essence
Aboriginal Actions
Travelling
Performing
Working
Seeking land
Assimilating
Adhering to Tradition
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Travelling: ‘Natives Chasing Game’
Eugene Von Guerard, 1854
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Performing: but with what meaning?
‘Corroboree’ by William Blandowski,
1854
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Working: but for what?
Aboriginal Farmers at Franklinford
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Seeking Land: for what purpose?
Billibellari’s radical hope
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Assimilating: Thomas Bungeelene
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Adhering to Tradition: William Barak
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Colonial Experience: 3rd edition
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