Sovereign Hill Education Blog

If we were to travel back in time likely one of the first things we would notice would be the smell. A wide array of smells we are no longer used to on our modern streets would ‘assault the nasal passages’. Newspapers and council meetings frequently included discussion of dirty streets.  There is no indoor plumbing in our houses or sewer drains or pipes on our early city streets.

Discussing the draining in Ballarat East: “Mr Cathie – Do you think the want of drainage will lead to malaria, miasma, and fever?

Mr Isaacs – That is a very large array of hard words, but it means this – Will garbage cause a stink, and is a stink hurtful? I say it will and it is. (Cheers, and laughter)”

“Municipal meeting Ballarat East,” Friday 9 October 1857, The Star

Life expectancy in the nineteenth century was much lower than today, in large part because childhood mortality was so much higher than today.  Surviving to the age of 5 was a huge challenge, and mortality rates for young children could be as high as 40%. 

So, what challenges did you have to navigate in our putrid past? Let’s explore one day in your life as a child on the diggings.

Accidents

The newspaper is full of stories of childhood accidents, including at home, particularly burns. When you wake up, candles or oil lanterns are in every room and matches within easy reach (so you can find your way in the dark). Leaving the bedroom, you will find a fire burning in the kitchen or main living space and, as it is used for cooking, there may not be a screen between you and the fire.  It is not uncommon for children to play near the fire. In our small goldfields homes the main room serves as the space for all the daily activities – particularly in the winter months.

Here are the common family areas in our cottage and huts. What hazards can you see?

Having navigated a morning by the fire, you head into town. The opening sketch by artist Samuel Thomas Gill’s of the arriving carriage in town highlights some of the dangers in town. Roads were busy, muddy, and dirty. There was no dodging the sludge in the road, you could find yourself wading in it some days! Being run over by a carriage was a very real risk.

Children were present everywhere. Down on the diggings you might be helping your family on your claim so mind you do not slip into the water or fall down a mineshaft. Children were not always supervised by adults, and it was not uncommon for older children to supervise their younger siblings.

Don’t Drink the Water!

While slipping into creeks and dams was a risk, probably the most dangerous choice you could make on the diggings was to drink from the creek. For example, in March 1858, zymotic diseases (what we might consider infectious diseases today) resulted in 64 deaths (50 were dysentery) and 36 of these babies under 1. Dysentery is a severe form of gastroenteritis – usually caused by drinking contaminated water.  No indoor plumbing or sewer system means waste sits in a pot under your bed and is then emptied into an open cess pit in your backyard. Waste from people, animals and industry eventually found its way into the main waterways.

A future career choice for young boys, could be the job of nightman. His job was to empty the cesspits into his cart and take the waste out of town. He is known as the nightman because he works at night. His job is a ‘noxious’ or smelly trade that people did not want to see or smell being done.

Beware the Doctor

This is likely to be your Doctor, an educated gentleman, no scrubs or stethoscopes in sight. You may meet the doctor several times in your young life, not just for accidents and injuries. His first visit will be to vaccinate you against the dreaded smallpox. This will likely happen in your first six months. The doctor will make incisions in your arm, rub live lymph into your arm (probably harvested from the arm of another child), and watch over the week for your body to react. He hopes a mild illness will protect you from the much deadlier smallpox.

If you find yourself unwell your doctor has a variety of tools and remedies at his disposal. Some of our doctors, like Doctor Wakefield (whose rooms you can visit at Sovereign Hill) is also a chemist. His medications can include a wide variety of ingredients ranging from rhubarb, bark, herbs and spices to heavy metals like arsenic and mercury.  He will likely aim to “clean out” your body with treatments to empty your belly or bowels.  Sometimes he might bleed you – notice the large leech jar on the apothecary counter! In serious cases surgery might be recommended and you will see knives and saws in all shapes and sizes in the surgical kit.  In most cases you will recover at home under the gentle care of a family member.

So wash your hands and stay safe on the diggings!

In recent blog posts, we’ve explored the primary sources behind Sovereign Hill’s recreation of the goldfields. But alongside these carefully researched reconstructions, you’ll also find a handful of authentic 19th-century buildings—structures that weren’t born on this site, but lived other lives before finding a home here.  

Pictured: The former Scarsdale Mechanics’ Institute on Sovereign Hill’s Main Street today. Photograph by Ellen Becker.

One of these buildings is the Mechanics’ Institute on Main Street, a small, unassuming building that represents a worldwide movement of education, self-improvement, and civic life. 

The Mechanics’ Institute Movement 

The mechanics’ institute movement began in Scotland in the late 18th century. In 1796, John Anderson, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, left his estate to found a new institution dedicated to spreading “useful knowledge” at a time when learning was beyond the reach of most people. Anderson believed access for all to knowledge and learning was “for the good of mankind.” 

Anderson inspired George Birkbeck, a Quaker physician and academic, who noticed that the ‘mechanics’ – a term referring to skilled workers at the time – had a hunger to understand science and the new technologies shaping their world. 

Pictured: George Birkbeck, after unknown artist. Stipple engraving, 1824 or after. National Portrait Gallery London collection.  

From 1800, Birkbeck gave free and open lectures on the ‘mechanical arts,’ drawing hundreds of eager listeners. His efforts helped spark the first Mechanics’ Institute in 1821, the Edinburgh School of Arts. The movement quickly spread across Britain and its colonies, aiming to offer ‘useful knowledge’ as well as ‘rational indoor recreation.’ By the late 19th century, there were over 1,200 Mechanics’ Institutes in Britain, with thousands more across the empire. 

Pictured: London Mechanics’ Institute, Southampton Buildings, Holborn: the interior of the laboratory, in a cellar. Wood engraving by W. C. Walker after Mr. Davy [1828]. 

Mechanics’ Institutes Movement in Australia 

The first Mechanics’ Institute in Australia opened in Hobart in 1827, followed by Melbourne in 1839. These institutions predated both the State Library of Victoria (1854) and the University of Melbourne (1853), making them some of the earliest centres of learning in the colony. 

Pictured: The former Van Diemen’s Land Mechanics’ Institute (1827 – 1871). Photograph by Ellen Becker.  

Victoria especially embraced the movement. More than 1,000 institutes were established in the state alone, with some 100 apparently already in existence before the gold rush. They served not only as libraries, but also as concert halls, theatres, debating clubs, and museums.  

The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute 

Ballarat’s own Mechanics’ Institute was born in the turbulence of the gold rush years. As early as 1853, the Ballarat Star newspaper argued that the “young men of Ballarat […] require an institution in which their minds can be improved” (The Ballarat Star newspaper, 10^th May 1853). 

With support from prominent Eureka figures like Peter Lalor and John Basson Humffray, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute (BMI) was established. Its first reading room opened above the Ballarat Fire Brigade in 1859. In an article on the 25^th May 1859, The Ballarat Times vividly describes the reprieve the reading room offered:  

A lamp light being shown outside the Fire Brigade House and the engine room being open and lighted, there is something comfortable and inviting in the appearance […] to visit the interior and there find such mental pabula [food, nourishment] as will not only enlarge their understandings and encourage intellectual health and activity but also benefit them morally. In the room burn ten bright gas lights… which give it a richly illuminated appearance – bright without being glaring, and a bright fire supplies a comfortable degree of warmth, which is a very necessary requisite to literary study or recreation. 

Pictured: The Ballarat Fire Brigade, 1800s. Max Harris Collection, Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute.  

By 1860, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute had moved from its modest beginnings above the fire brigade into a permanent home on Sturt Street. Within a few years, its striking façade and hall became a landmark of civic pride, hosting everything from public lectures and promenade concerts to fine art exhibitions and Victorian popular entertainments, some of which would not be acceotable today. Crowds flocked to see curiosities like P.T. Barnum’s celebrated performer Tom Thumb, who drew such numbers that members complained they could barely squeeze into the reading room. 

Pictured: Photograph of Tom Thumb and Mrs Thumb, Admiral Nutt and Mrs Nutt during their visit to Ballarat, 1870. Sovereign Hill Museums Collection.  

The BMI was a place where ideas and innovation flourished. Its library offered access to thousands of volumes of science, art, and literature. One of its most devoted readers was a local boy named Henry Sutton, who by age 14 had read every science book on the shelves. Sutton would go on to become one of Australia’s great inventors, pioneering rechargeable batteries, designing early telephones and lighting systems, and even imagining a prototype of television decades before it became reality. 

Pictured: Engraving of Ballaarat mechanics’ Institute. Harrison, W. H., engraver, 1868. State Library of Victoria Collection.  

The Mechanics’ Institute at Sovereign Hill 

Unlike many of the replica buildings on site, our Mechanics’ Institute is an original 1860s building – though not from Ballarat. Originally from Scarsdale, a nearby mining town, it was a modest ‘chapel cheapie’ rather than a grand structure like the real Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute. By the mid-20th century, the building had fallen into disuse and was nearly demolished to make way for a tennis court. 

Austin McCallum, a founder of Sovereign Hill and the Chief Librarian of the Ballarat Public Library and Central Highlands Regional Library, heard of the fate of the building and secured it for relocation to Sovereign Hill in 1972. As he wrote: 

Mechanics’ institutes were woven into the fabric of early community life in the goldfields’ townships. They were often the first civic centres; the places where people first glimpsed, examined, and decided on the community value of each other. They performed useful library functions and in the beginning they linked adult education with the daily lives of socially isolated working men and women. Sovereign Hill would be incomplete without a mechanics’ institute. 

The bookcases inside are original to the Scarsdale Mechanics’ Institute, and the first library collection came as a gift of 100 books from the Fisken family of Lal Lal. Some volumes once belonged to Reverend Thomas Hastie, who had founded the Buninyong Mechanics’ Institute. Others are ‘orphans’ from lost institutes and collections across Victoria. 

Pictured: Copy of an article from the Ballarat Courier, showing Austin McCallum in the doorway to the Scarsdale Mechanics’ Institute prior to its relocation to Sovereign Hill, 14^th October 1872.  

*** 

Today, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute on Sturt Street still thrives as a library and cultural centre, while Sovereign Hill’s Scarsdale building stands as a reminder of how vital these places were to community life in the past. 

Pictured: The Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute today. Photograph by Ellen Becker.  

Mechanics’ Institutes weren’t just about learning – they were about creating community, encouraging curiosity, and imagining a better future. In many ways, that’s still the mission of museums, libraries, and schools today. 

So next time you step into Sovereign Hill’s Mechanics’ Institute, take a moment to imagine the thousands of miners, performers, inventors, and everyday townsfolk who once found warmth, knowledge, and entertainment in buildings just like it. 

Written by Ellen Becker, Education Officer at Sovereign Hill and Heritage Collections Curator at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute.  

When you first step into Sovereign Hill, you arrive on Main Street—an immersive gateway into Ballarat’s goldrush past. This bustling thoroughfare recreates not just the sights, sounds, and even smells of the 1850s in Ballarat, but a very specific moment in time.  

Main Street is modelled on Main Road as it appeared 1855-59 – the first planned street in Ballarat. It marked the shift from the chaotic sprawl of the diggings to the beginnings of an organised township, laying the foundations for the city Ballarat would become.  

The businesses and buildings you can explore as you walk up Main Street are recreations of originals that were here in Ballarat during this period. What you see has been faithfully recreated through primary sources such as photographs, drawings and paintings.  

Several of these buildings are based on drawings by François Cogné (1829 – 1883), a French artist and lithographer who lived in Ballarat for three years during the 1850s. In 1859 he made a series of lithographs depicting Main Road with acute attention to detail. If you look upon Cogné’s prints from a distance, they are so finely drawn that they could easily be mistaken for photographs. 

Clarke Brothers’ Grocer 

Pictured upper: Part of Main Road and Victoria Street, 1859. Lithographic print by François Cogné. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection. Pictured lower: The recreated Ballarat Times and Clarke Brothers Grocers at Sovereign Hill.  

Thomas and Richard Clarke arrived in Melbourne from England in 1850, chasing opportunity in a new land. When the goldrush reached Ballarat, they followed the excitement—but rather than digging for gold, they found their fortune another way: by opening a grocery store. The shop seen in Cogné’s image, on Victoria Street, is believed to be their very first, opening its doors in early 1857.  

Pictured: An advertisement in the Ballarat Star newspaper on the opening of Clarke Brothers grocer, 1^st June 1857. 

Clarke Brothers sold pickled foods and cheeses, coffee and tea, as well as in demand goods like blankets, buckets and pickaxes. Grocery stores at the time were very much ‘general stores’, stocking items familiar to British migrants like oats “sweet as nut” from Ayrshire, Scotland, but also exotic imports such as bananas from Tahiti, lemons from Portugal, and loquats from Japan. Business boomed, and within just two years, the Clarkes had set up two more stores. 

Pictured: An advertisement in the Ballarat Star for the newly opened Clarke Brothers Coffee Works on Mair Street, 11^th August 1859.  

In 1864, the partnership between the brothers ended when Richard moved to Geelong to launch his own grocery store. Thomas stayed behind, continuing to serve Ballarat locals well into the 1890s—most likely from the original Victoria Street site. The distinctive coffee pot sign above the door, recreated here at Sovereign Hill, was once a familiar sight in town, remembered fondly even into the 20th century. 

Criterion Store 

Pictured upper: Part of Main Road, 1859. Lithographic print by François Cogné. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection. Pictured lower: The recreated Criterion Store at Sovereign Hill today.  

The Criterion Store was established by Welsh-born draper David Jones, who arrived on the goldfields in 1853. By the early 1860s, Jones had established three stores in Ballarat.   

A proto-department store, the Criterion represents a lesser-told story of the goldrush; the growing presence of women and the increasing emphasis on fashion and refinement on the goldfields.  

Like the grocery stores of the day, the Criterion Store was filled with goods from across Europe and America, but not your everyday necessities – here you could find silk taffeta, muslin gowns, imported gloves and bonnets—luxuries that appealed to the aspirational nouveau riche of Ballarat.  

Jones suffered the slings and arrows of starting a business on the goldfields. Ballarat suffered several disastrous fires in the 1850s which caused extensive loss of life and property. The excerpt below mentions a few of the businesses which have been recreated at Sovereign Hill, reduced to “a heap of ashes” in a conflagration in 1855, including Jones’ Criterion Store.  

Pictured: An excerpt from The People’s Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator, 8^th December 1855, p4. 

Calamities abounded at this time, and Jones’ stores also experienced destruction caused by floods and sludge (the waste material produced during the extraction and processing of minerals from ore) causing extensive loss and damage to stock.  

Pictured: An excerpt from the Ballarat Star, 28^th December 1858, p3.  

Pictured: An excerpt from ‘Floods: Great Destruction of Property’ in the Ballarat Star, 30^th May 1859, p3.  

Jones’ third Criterion Drapery in Ballarat was a grand brick and stucco Italianate two-storey building. The Illustrated Times of London commissioned an engraving of the building, below, which they painted as evidence of civility among the once “wild waste of pits and gullies, where men… live amidst the ceaseless sound of the pick and the cradle, with strength and endurance for capital, and revolvers for law and order.” The publication also reported that having been burned in his previous ventures, the building was fitted with a water supply and hose, “kept in constant readiness.” 

Pictured: Engraving of the third Criterion Drapery Store, on the corner of Armstrong and Sturt Streets, Illustrated Times [London], 11^th May 1861, p307.  

Rees and Benjamin Jewellers 

Pictured upper: Part of Main Road, Ballarat East, 1859. Lithographic print by François Cogné. State Library of Victoria collection. Pictured lower: the recreated Rees and Benjamin Clockmakers at Sovereign Hill today.  

The peculiar shopfront of Rees and Benjamin certainly paled in the relative grandeur of stores such as the Criterion, but this small corner store had a striking interior. The Ballarat Star reported on the 4^th December 1857 that the interior was “fitted up in a very appropriate manner, and contains, as a remarkable feature, no less than four hundred clocks, all tick-ticking.” 

The store kept the city of Ballarat on time, reported as donating clocks to public institutions such as the Council Chambers and the Benevolent Asylum, and as being contracted to keep the ‘town clock’ in working order.   

Rees and Benjamin later built a two-storey suite of brick shops in 1861 at the corner of Lydiard and Sturt Streets, which would become known as ‘Cobb’s Corner’ – as the top offices housed the Cobb & Co booking offices. The building was replaced in 1904, but a jewellery shop still occupies the ground floor today – over 160 years later.   

* * * 

Cogné moved back to Melbourne in 1862 where he started working with Charles Trödel producing lithographs. He subsequently returned to Paris in 1864, and died there in 1883.  

Written by Sovereign Hill Education Officer Ellen Becker

Happy International Donkey Day to our two favourite donkeys, Augie and Archie.  

If you’ve visited Sovereign Hill, you may have spotted this famous pair nibbling on hay or perhaps refusing to budge their as-, ah, bottoms – donkeys are notoriously stubborn after all. 

But why do donkeys deserve their own day? Aside from their cuteness, donkeys have been working alongside humans for over 5,000 years.  

Pictured: Postcard: Donkey in the wheel – Carisbrooke Castle. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

Over this time, donkeys have inspired some curious expressions. For example, ‘donkey’s years’ is Cockney rhyming slang for a long time — alluding to the length of donkey’s ears. Then there’s ‘talk the hind legs off a donkey,’ meaning you could bore this beast of burden into sitting down.  

The English writer Anthony Trollope, during his 1879 visit to Australia, noted that Aussies had their own spin on this saying. Instead of a donkey, they’d say you could ‘talk the hind legs off a dog.’ 

You might have heard a donkey-inspired, distinctly Australian turn of phrase this past weekend during the Australian Federal election. To ‘donkey vote’ is to vote by numbering candidates in a preferential voting system in the order in which they appear on the ballot paper. A donkey vote may reflect a voter’s actual preferences, but it is more likely to indicate that the voter doesn’t understand how to vote correctly, or that they don’t care how their vote is cast.  

Pictured: How To Vote Card, 1924. Sovereign Hill Museums Association Collection.

Some think a donkey vote will invalidate their vote – but if all boxes are numbered, the vote is counted as a ‘formal vote’ and contributes to election outcomes. The act of throwing away your hard-fought for right to vote in Australia is considered ‘stupid’, as are donkeys, hence the turn of phrase.  

But – are donkeys stupid? A study published in the Journal of Veterinary Behaviour used non-verbal problem solving tests on 300 donkeys to measure their cognitive ability, finding that donkeys are “intelligent animals when comparatively scoring them based on an analogous human scale”. Donkeys also exhibit a high level of emotional intelligence and empathy, and have been successfully used in assisted therapy in the treatment of people with affective and emotional disorders. 

Donkey intelligence aside, it isn’t quite clear when the phrase donkey voting appeared in the Australian vernacular. The donkey vote is considered a consequence of compulsory voting, which came into effect on a federal level in 1924, however, it was not until 1984 that Aboriginal people were included in compulsory voting. Rhetorical connections to voting and donkeys can be found well before this though in the newspapers of the Ballarat goldfields.  

In 1855, in the wake of the Eureka Rebellion, two miners’ advocates were elected to new seats on the Legislative Council, Irishman Peter Lalor, leader of the violent rebellion, and Welshman John Basson Humffray, a pacifist and chartist. The following year, the two men were again elected as members of the Legislative Assembly in the new bicameral parliament.  

Pictured: Postcard: Parliament House, Melbourne. Victoria. Australia. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

In 1856, Humffray continued to advocate for the principles of the People’s Charter, including the abolition of property qualifications for voters or members of parliament. Humffray recounted an anecdote “of a man who had a right to vote on account of possessing a donkey. Between the time of registration and voting the donkey died and, consequently, the vote was lost. It was not, however, the man that would have voted, but, in fact, the donkey.”   

Pictured: The Hon. John Basson Humffray, first Commissioner of Mines. State Library of Victoria collection.

In 1857, Lalor, son of a British MP and landowner, enraged his constituency by voting in the interests of the land-holding class. In a heated discussion in 1857 – Lalor at one point has to declare “I am cool now” – constituents argue that merely owning property does not make an intelligent voter. One constituent uses the analogy of a man with a right to vote by virtue of owning a donkey, “if the animal were shot, or broke his leg, the man lost his vote, so it was not the man that voted, but his donkey.” 

This International Donkey Day, let’s retire the idea that donkeys are dim. These long-eared legends are clever, compassionate, and have carried our burdens for over 5,000 years. Give donkeys the respect they deserve, and your democracy the same! 

The Eureka Rebellion and its legacy are explored in two of our education programs, Put Yourself in the Eureka Story and Collection Close-Up: Eureka.  

Written by Sovereign Hill Education Officer Ellen Becker

Imagine turning the page of your morning newspaper in 1865 to find a thrilling announcement: a brand-new kind of vehicle has just rolled out of a local Ballarat workshop:

Unfortunately, we do not have a picture of Mr Proctor’s newly built car, but below is an Albert Car to get you started. Can you picture it?

Pictured: Albert Car ‘Jingle’ on Display, Swanston Street Museum, 1960s. Photograph by Clyde Tilson, Museums Victoria Collection. Copyright Museums Victoria.

Our nineteenth-century streets were busy, bustling places – filled with foot and vehicle traffic of all kinds, though no motorised cars as we know them today. Horsepower dominated our roads and the skilled artisans behind these vehicles were in high demand. 

Pictured: ‘Ballarat Mining Exchange Sturt Street 1867’, print originally published in a supplement of the Illustrated Australian News. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

The world of the nineteenth century is a world of mass migration to the far corners of the globe. As the number of people moving grows, the technology for movement grows apace. Steam power moves from factory to travel as trains puff their way across Britain, Europe and across colonial empires. Steam power enters the sea in large iron-hulled passenger ships.

Pictured: Painting of the S. S. Great Britain, artist unknown. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

Your sea journey to the goldfields will shrink from an average of 100 days to 60 days over the course of the goldrush. Having travelled from home to a seaport, and from international seaport to Australian seaport, your journey to the goldfields is not over yet. What sort of travel technology might you encounter on the road to the diggings? Everything from hobnail boots, to wheelbarrows, to carts and carriages.

Pictured: Photographic Montage, Executive Committee & Officers of the First Australian Juvenile Industrial Exhibition, Alfred Hall, Ballarat, 1878. A ‘W. Proctor’ is near the bottom right, unconfirmed if the correct Proctor). Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection. 

One of these new arrivals was an Englishman, William Proctor and his family. Mr Proctor had his start with coachbuilder JD Morgan; famous for the construction of the monstrous Leviathan carriage, which carried 89 passengers, depending on reports.

Pictured: Leviathan coach panel, Morgan & Co, 1859. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

In 1860 Mr Proctor left to start up his own coachbuilding business. The Proctor workshop produced vehicles of all sizes, including dog carts, bread carts, and buses for large groups.

Pictured: Pony Phaeton by W. Proctor. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

In 1861, Proctor celebrated the first anniversary of his coachbuilding business with a long advertisement in the local paper detailing the quality of their work – including employing a local artist to produce beautifully painted side panels – and the quantity of his work. He announced they were in the process of importing a wide range of steam powered machinery to further increase production.

Pictured: Panoramic Photograph, from the Town Hall Tower Looking North West, 1870-1872. Bardwell’s Photographic Studio. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection.

Mr Proctor’s business was one of many coach manufactories in the region servicing a variety of farm and town vehicles. Their business included both a wheelwrights and blacksmiths so that all parts of the coach or carriage, from frame to springs to wheels, could be produced or repaired onsite.  

They carried a variety of carriage plans to help you choose the appropriate vehicle for your family or business and it would be built to order in their workshop. Newspaper reports suggest that by the mid-1860s his ‘hands’ (workers) were paid between £4 10s and £5 per week. “The fame of Mr Proctor’s superior work in all the departments of the coachbuilding trade” meant those who worked in his workshops were sought after (1881 ‘NEWS AND NOTES.’, The Ballarat Star (Vic. : 1865 – 1924), 5 December, p. 2. , viewed 10 Apr 2025).

W. Proctor’s steam-powered workshop, from the late nineteenth century, has been recreated here at Sovereign Hill, where you can get an up-close look at the rare trade of the wheelwright as one step in an early industrial process. Here we see the impact of the Industrial Revolution and a move towards a more ‘mass production’ approach to pieced construction in the late nineteenth century Wheelwright. The carriage makes its way through a series of specialised trades towards the back of the building in a form of piecework.

Mr Proctor’s business continued to grow throughout the nineteenth century. Around 1883 he withdrew from the business, all the fittings of his business being up for sale in 1885. He passed away in Melbourne in January 1886, survived by his wife and children.

Want to know more about nineteenth century wheelwrights?

Pictured: The Sovereign Hill wheelrights team during the hot tyring process. Photograph by Chris Fitall.

Video of hot tyring process

Making and using transport on the goldfields

Worshipful Company of Wheelwrights

Wheelwright George Sturt’s Memoir

Written by Sovereign Hill Education Officer Sara Pearce

When you visit Sovereign Hill living museum, you can immerse yourself in what life was like in Ballarat during the goldrush. As you wander through the museum, you travel in time through the different phases of the goldrush, from the chaos of the diggings (1851-54), to the industrialisation of gold mining in the steam precinct (1860s – 1890s).  

The diggings area is a small microcosm of what the goldfields would have looked like at the start of the goldrush in 1851. Before the goldrush, Ballarat was a sheep farm, and prior to 1838, this was undisturbed Wadawurrung Country.    

When tens of thousands of people from all around world flooded into the area from 1851, there were no buildings or infrastructure in place to support them. The population was mostly itinerant – just passing through – here to try to find gold, and then they’d leave. The gold seekers built a temporary ‘tent city’ to survive.  As these early structures were not intended to last, they did not survive for very long.  

So how did Sovereign Hill know what the goldfields looked like during this period if none of it survives today? In the early 1850s, photography was in its infancy and quite cumbersome; materials were expensive, the process time-sensitive, and the chemicals required needed to be imported from overseas. With so few surviving photographs capturing this period, artists recording what they were witnessing on the goldfields are invaluable to our understanding of what the goldfields might have looked like.  

One of the most celebrated goldfields artists is Samuel Thomas Gill. Gill was born in Somerset, England, in 1818. He trained as an artist in London before migrating to Australia with his family in 1839. He set up a studio in Adelaide painting portraits of people as well as “horses, dogs… with local scenery.” 

Albumen print of S.T. Gill in Albums of photographs of actors, actresses, singers, music hall artists and others, 1854-ca. 1910, vol. 6. State Library of New South Wales collection, FL517206.  

Gill struggled to make a decent living as an artist and declared bankruptcy in the 1840s. When the Victorian goldrush kicked off, along with thousands of others across Australia he packed up his life and ventured to the goldfields to try to change his fortune. While he didn’t find gold, the melting pot of cultures, eccentric characters and oscillating fortunes on the goldfields offered Gill rich stimuli for his art.   

In his sketches and paintings from the period, he recorded the rapidly transforming landscape he was witnessing. They allow us to experience this very specific time and place from Gill’s perspective. We have utilised Gill’s paintings to recreate structures, scenes and characters from the goldfields here at Sovereign Hill.  

Butcher’s Shambles 

Left: Butcher’s shambles near Adelaide Gully, Forrest Creek, ST Gill, 1852. State Library of Victoria collection, H7828. Right: The recreated Butcher’s Shambles in the Sovereign Hill diggings.   

From 1835, Aboriginal people across Victoria were violently removed from their lands by settlers to establish farmland. Many settlers were breeding sheep to harvest their wool, our most lucrative export before the goldrush. By the start of 1851, there were around 77,000 people in Victoria, and six million sheep. In February, disastrous bushfires known as the Black Thursday fires resulted in the death of over one million sheep, reducing the sheep population to five million by the start of the goldrush.  

Sheep were also utilised for their meat, with many settlers surviving on stew made of mutton – sheep over 12 months old, a gamier, fattier meat – with damper. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables led some on the goldfields to suffer from scurvy, a vitamin c deficiency which could lead to bleeding gums and lost teeth.  

Gill continued to paint his specialty of horses and dogs, including them in many of his goldrush images – such as the small dog in the image here.  

Sly Grog Shanty 

Left: Sly Grog Shanty, S.T. Gill, 1852-3. Sovereign Hill Museums Association collection (96.0115.24). Right: Sovereign Hill’s recreated Sly Grog Shanty.  

When word broke about the discovery of gold, all but two of 40 policemen in the colony resigned to join the goldrush. Tens of thousands of people from all around the world were swarming the goldfields. The stakes were high, leading to tensions and crime as unlucky diggers resorted to desperate means. One of the strategies the colonial government introduced to try to bring order to chaos was banning the sale of alcohol on the diggings. This certainly didn’t mean there was no grog, and here we have recreated a ‘sly grog’ tent depicted by Gill which not so subtly advertises ‘other drinks’ along with soups, meals and coffee.  

The Government Camp 

Left: Diggers Licencing, St Gill, 1852. Sovereign Hill Museums Collection, 96.0115. Right: Government camp at Sovereign Hill.  

Gill captured many scenes of the attempted governance of the goldfields, including the use of Native Police and military ‘Pensioners’ brought over from Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) to fill the police void created at the start of the goldrush. In Diggers Licencing, Gill depicts diggers lining up at the government camp to purchase their gold license (sic). From 1851 to 1855, diggers were required to purchase a gold license to have the right to find gold. The price of the licence fluctuated over this time, sometimes raised to increase government revenue, and ultimately reduced due to mostly peaceful agitation by diggers over this period, such as protests, petitions and civil disobedience. 

The License Inspected, ST Gill, 1852-3. State Library of Victoria collection. 

By the end of 1854, the licence was £1 per month. This may not sound like much today, but £1 in the 1850s has the equivalent buying power of around $1,000 in today’s money. You had to pay for the licence even if you didn’t find gold, leaving unlucky diggers worse off after a month of back-breaking work. If you were caught on the diggings without a licence, you would receive a £5 fine for your first offence, £10 for your second, even £15 for a third. Troopers were able to keep half of the first fine, so were incentivised to charge diggers with licence evasion to line their own pockets. This resulted in unfair tactics and harassment of diggers, fuelling tensions that ultimately led to the Eureka uprising.  

Gill’s captivating depictions of the goldfields established him as a successful and well-known artist. Sadly, his success exacerbated his indulgence in alcohol. The quality of his work slipped leading to less commissions. In 1880, he collapsed on the steps of the Melbourne General Post Office, apparently from an ‘aneurysm of the aorta’. Destitute and with no wife or children, he was buried in Melbourne cemetery in a pauper’s grave. In 1913, the Historical Society of Victoria raised subscriptions to erect a large tombstone, which marked in stone Gill’s legacy as ‘the artist of the goldfields.’

Written by Sovereign Hill Education Officer Ellen Becker