It is nearing the end of the semester and the blog posts are drawing to an end, but luckily this is not the last. The Lady Alice Mine has opened up my eyes to the life of gold mining in South Australia. While you may not know much about this, or be aware that South Australia had an active gold mining culture (although it was certainly not as successful as that in neighbouring Victoria), South Australian mining was still a successful industry. I have been extremely lucky to have been able to do some study on this site. The heritage of the area is vast in nature and it would be great if more could be done on this site in order to find out more about not only Hamlins Gully but also about the Barossa Goldfields in general. It would be great if the history of South Australia’s mining culture could be shared with more than just the locals of the area.
The second semester’s Directed Study has focused on the domestic life of the Lady Alice, which is still largely unknown. There are a few photographs and paintings that show the different aspects of the Lady Alice Mine. These show different angles of the mine and how it once operated. They also shed some light on how the miners lived and worked. Nevertheless they give us some insight into the conditions and, having visited the site, allow for the mine to be put into perspective. From these photographs and paintings we are able to see that they miners lived in canvas tents, some of which had brick chimneys at one end. However, as the tents are transportable and were most probably taken with the miners when they left, there is no evidence supporting the photographs and paintings. It would be great if there was more photographic and written evidence of this time, but unfortunately the mine was poorly recorded and only some records survive, which can be accessed at the State Library of South Australia. There is not much information about the domestic life of the mine in these records, as lives were not documented as we’re able to do today. It’s fun to imagine what, if people of the 1800s had all the equipment that we do today to document daily life, we could have learnt.
(The Globe INN)
When walking through the Lady Alice Mine area it becomes evident how the miners once lived and worked. There are few ruins and even less surface evidence of what types of dwellings they lived in. There are ruins of chimney butts that stand by themselves with no other material. Standing at the edge of a site and imaging what once stood by the sides of the chimneys. It has been an incredible experience to be able to walk through the area and imagine the fields being littered with tents and makeshift dwellings. Unfortunately, I do not have the authority to share the paintings or the photographs as they are not readily available on the internet. One of the two photos that I have shared today is a photograph I took myself and the other was available through www.trove.nla.gov.au. Anyway, I must stop imagining all of this and get back to writing my report. Please stay posted for my last post, which will be in just a few weeks.
