Wind & Sky Productions
Many Roads: Stories of the Chinese on the goldfields... mining...Mining Life...Craft: Mining model...From the first few Chinese arrivals on the goldfields in the early 1850s anti-Chinese sentiment swelled. Not all fellow goldseekers were unkind or unwelcoming but many European miners saw the Chinese as alien. Moreover, Chinese mining methods were... was paid off, successful miners were free to mine on their own account, or use their earnings from mining to set up businesses such as store keeping or market gardening, as many did. It is thought that news of the gold rush first reached Guangzhou (Canton ...
In the 1850s tens of thousands of Chinese people flocked to Victoria, joining people from nations around the world who came here chasing the lure of gold.
Fleeing violence, famine and poverty in their homeland Chinese goldseekers sought fortune for their families in the place they called ‘New Gold Mountain’. Chinese gold miners were discriminated against and often shunned by Europeans. Despite this they carved out lives in this strange new land.
The Chinese took many roads to the goldfields. They left markers, gardens, wells and place names, some which still remain in the landscape today. After a punitive tax was laid on ships to Victoria carrying Chinese passengers, ship captains dropped their passengers off in far away ports, leaving Chinese voyagers to walk the long way hundreds of kilometres overland to the goldfields. After 1857 the sea port of Robe in South Australia became the most popular landing point. It’s estimated 17,000 Chinese, mostly men, predominantly from Southern China, walked to Victoria from Robe following over 400kms of tracks.
At the peak migration point of the late 1850s the Chinese made up one in five of the male population in fabled gold mining towns of Victoria such as Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Beechworth and Ararat. It was not just miners who took the perilous journey. Doctors, gardeners, artisans and business people voyaged here and contributed to Victoria’s economy, health and cultural life. As the nineteenth century wore on and successful miners and entrepreneurs returned home, the Chinese Victorian population dwindled. However some chose to settle here and Chinese culture, family life, ceremony and work ethic became a distinctive feature of many regional Victorian towns well into the twentieth century.
By the later twentieth century many of the Chinese relics, landscapes and legacy of the goldrush era were hidden or forgotten. Today we are beginning to unearth and celebrate the extent of the Chinese influence in the making of Victoria, which reaches farther back than many have realised.
Rosemary Clare Kelleher
Australian Natives’ Association (1871-2021): Celebrating 150 Years... of Mines or at rooms in the municipal council buildings. All meetings were open to the general public. There were no secret passwords, signs or special regalia for members. People of all political points of view could participate in discussions or debates ...
Friendly Societies in England existed from about 871 Current Era. Their aim was helping others in sickness and distress and to foster helpful human relationships. The Independent Order of Rechabites Friendly Society established a branch in Victoria in 1837. Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows (MUIOOF) and other English Friendly Societies followed.
The A.N.A. Founders wanted to provide friendly society benefits to its Australian born members and encourage Australians to manage their own affairs and plan their own future, independently of nostalgic ties to another homeland. Fourteen men attended at the first meeting established a committee to consider forming the “Victorian Natives’ Association”. This soon became the Australian Natives’ Association,(A.N.A.) admitting men born in all Australian colonies.
A.N.A. was registered as Friendly Society 1871. Membership fees assisted people in times of sickness and bereavement. All meetings were open to the public, with no secret signs or regalia, unlike the English-based friendly societies. The Australian Natives’ Association amalgamated with MUIOOF in 1993 to form Australian Unity. A.N.A.Fraternal Organisation (A.N.A.Fraternal) then formed to continue the social and cultural activities of the former A.N.A.
School Days: Education in Victoria... In 1866 the Board of Education professed that educating the children of migrants was too difficult a project to undertake, claiming: ‘there seems no reason why we should charge ourselves with their education’. Church and community groups in mining ...
The exhibition, School Days, developed by Public Record Office Victoria and launched at Old Treasury Building in March 2015, is a history of more than 150 years of schooling in Victoria.
It is a history of the 1872 Education Act - the most significant education reform in Victoria, and a world first! It is a history of early schooling, migrant schooling, Aboriginal schools, women in education, rural education and, of course, education during war time (1914-1918).
This online exhibition is based on the physical exhibition School Days originally displayed at Old Treasury Building, 20 Spring Street, Melbourne, www.oldtreasurybuilding.org.au and curated by Kate Luciano in collaboration with Public Record Office Victoria.
Way Back When Consulting Historians
Daylesford Stories... with many of them. But Daylesford seemed different. She recalls: ... when I came up here to visit a friend of mine who’s actually gay, I thought this was actually a country town that I could live in. Because it’s much more open ... to alternative ways ...
Daylesford is a picturesque town, quietly nestled at the foot of Victoria's Great Dividing Range. It is green, lush and magical and its soils are rich with minerals and mineral springs. Indeed it was an early centre of mining activity in post-European settlement Victoria after gold was first found in 1851.
Daylesford has long been both a popular tourist destination and often seen a place of calm and healing. Guest houses flourished alongside mining activity, farming and industry.
Slowly, but surely, in the late 1970s and 1980s, Daylesford and the surrounding areas began to become home to individuals who identified as gay or lesbian. Today it is seen as a gay and lesbian friendly town, indeed a LGBTIQ hub, no doubt helped by the reality that it is home to ChillOut, the largest rural gay and lesbian festival in Australia.
Daylesford Stories explores ideas of community, identity and belonging as it focuses on individual experiences of Daylesford and surrounds and why it is that they call Daylesford home. In doing this, we begin to see a story of how and why this region has become a place of meaning and significance for lesbians and gays and for those who identify as part of the LGBTIQ community.
Through short films, individual profiles and image galleries, we start to explore how identity shapes us and how support and understanding can build community. But, it is important to note that represented here are just some stories of Daylesford. We need to talk to more people, gather additional stories and in so doing, look at more perspectives on why and how it is that Daylesford has become such an important rainbow community. Daylesford Stories is just the beginning.
Jary Nemo and Lucinda Horrocks
Collections & Climate Change... to an individual and family. Originally mined and brought by specially made raft from Palau 500 kilometres away over many hundreds of years, knowledge and meaning is attached to stories of place. Chiefs still use the exchange and gifting of Rai to sort out ...
The world is changing. Change is a natural part of the Earth’s cycle and of the things that live on it, but what we are seeing now is both like and unlike the shifts we have seen before.
Anthropogenic change, meaning change created by humans, is having an impact on a global scale. In particular, human activity has altered the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the world’s climate to change.
Already in the state of Victoria we are seeing evidence of this change around us. In the natural world, coastal waters are warming and bringing tropical marine species to our bays. Desert animals are migrating to Victoria. Alpine winters are changing, potentially putting plants and animals at risk of starvation and pushing species closer to the margins. In the world of humans, island and coastal dwellers deal with the tangible and intangible impacts of loss as sea levels rise, bush dwellers live with an increased risk of life-threatening fires, farmers cope with the new normal of longer droughts, and we all face extreme weather events and the impacts of social and economic change.
This Collections and Climate Change digital story explores how Victoria’s scientific and cultural collections help us understand climate change. It focuses on three Victorian institutions - Museums Victoria, the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Parks Victoria. It looks at how the information gathered and maintained by a dedicated community of researchers, curators, scientists, specialists and volunteers can help us understand and prepare for a hotter, drier, more inundated world.
The story is made up of a short documentary film and twenty-one examples highlighting how botanical records, geological and biological specimens and living flora and fauna provide a crucial resource for scientists striving to map continuity, variability and change in the natural world. And it helps us rethink the significance of some of Victoria’s cultural collections in the face of a changing climate.
Isaac Douglas Hermann & Heather Arnold
Carlo Catani: An engineering star over Victoria... that they were selected for this role, a mere four years or so after their arrival in Victoria. Catani was appointed a juror of textiles; Dattari of gold, silver, precious stones and jewellery; Baracchi of silk and lacework and Checchi of mining and metallurgy ...
After more than forty-one years of public service that never ended with his retirement, through surveying and direct design, contracting, supervision, and collaborative approaches, perhaps more than any other single figure, Carlo Catani re-scaped not only parts of Melbourne, but extensive swathes of Victoria ‘from Portland to Mallacoota’, opening up swamplands to farming, bringing access to beauty spots, establishing new townships, and the roads to get us there.
The Missing... It was also dangerous work—active hand grenades and mines were a real threat, the ground was filthy, and the process of exhumation, transportation and reburial, physically exhausting. Will McBeath wrote “this week we have reburied 200 men... You ...
When WW1 brought Australians face to face with mass death, a Red Cross Information Bureau and post-war graves workers laboured to help families grieve for the missing.
The unprecedented death toll of the First World War generated a burden of grief. Particularly disturbing was the vast number of dead who were “missing” - their bodies never found.
This film and series of photo essays explores two unsung humanitarian responses to the crisis of the missing of World War 1 – the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau and the post-war work of the Australian Graves Detachment and Graves Services. It tells of a remarkable group of men and women, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, who laboured to provide comfort and connection to grieving families in distant Australia.