The Objects

Absinthe and oysters This absinthe bottle was found in a rubbish pit at Little Lon (in Melbourne’s north-east corner) with nine more just like it, along with French champagne bottles, imported spirits and 300 odd oyster shells. The occupant, Mrs ...
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They say a person is defined by their chamber pot. Well probably not, but it is easy to imagine that this would be just the style that Mayor Smith or his wife Ellen would have fancied for themselves. Athena in ...
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In 1907 the Premier of Victoria Thomas Bent purchased Victoria the Golden from the artist William Strutt for £120 and presented it to the Victorian Parliamentary Library. Victoria the Golden is celebrated as one of the Parliament’s great treasures and ...
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The humble petition of the Chinese Storekeepers, miners and others now resident on and in the neighbourhood of the Bendigo gold fields in the said Colony, ordered by the Legislative Assembly to be printed 2 December 1856   By late ...
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Between 1851 and 1861 Australia exported at least 30 million ounces (850 metric tons) of gold - more than one third of the world’s total. The diggings were a casino but the prizes went more to men of strength and ...
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There are, we should say, about a thousand cradles at work, within a mile of the Golden Point, at Ballarat. There are about fifty near the Black Hill, about a mile and a half distant, and at the Brown Hill ...
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In the early 1800s the voyage from Europe to Australia took between four and five months. By the 1850s sleek, faster clipper ships had been designed. Captains of the clippers regularly competed with each other to make the quickest trip ...
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What is the 20th Object…? The Old Treasury Building, of course! The volume of gold found in the first few years of the gold rush was staggering – some six million ounces was brought to Melbourne between 1853 and 1857 ...
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[A]dvise him first to go and dig a coal-pit; then work a month at a stone-quarry; next sink a well in the wettest place he can find, of at least fifty feet deep; and finally, clear out a space of ...
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A child’s life Goldfields must have been exciting places for children, but also unsettling and dangerous. Families moved about a lot. They often lived in makeshift shelters and there were hazards everywhere. Open fires, unprotected mineshafts and fast-flowing water courses ...
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