131-222 Digging for Gold: Cultural Landscapes

Overnight accommodation will be available in Castlemaine and Vaughan during the weekend field trips for this subject. Contact subject coordinator for details.

Usually 25 points of first-year history or Australian studies, see Prerequisites.

This is an intensive fieldwork subject in central Victoria. The Australian gold rushes have been cloaked by celebratory tales about European men building a nation and fashioning a distinctive Australian way of life. This subject strips back these overlays to reveal the actualities of social life in the central Victorian goldfields. Its focus is the crucible of Australian gold seeking: the Mount Alexander Diggings between Castlemaine and Maldon, which is reputedly the world's greatest shallow alluvial goldfield. Its approach is to integrate historical and material-culture analysis, and thereby to explore and decode the evocative cultural landscapes within the study area. Its scope is inclusive: to describe in full the diverse communities that formed on the diggings and that endured long after the booms had passed. Its goal is to identify and explain the forgotten objects and hidden histories of the Australian gold rushes. On completion of the subject students should have a detailed appreciation both of the historiography of the Australian gold rushes, and of the application to it of new historical concepts and methods. Students should also understand the interplay between historical interpretation and heritage management in fragile cultural landscapes today.

A 1000-word reflective essay after the fieldwork and a 3000-word research assignment at the end of semester. Students must attend at least 80% of the subject programme in order to be eligible for assessment.

• Mount Alexander Diggings Committee, Discovering the Mount Alexander Diggings. Prominent Press 1999.