Category Archives: history teaching resournces

How? When? Why? – The Industrial Revolution in Australia

Posted on September 14, 2018 | 4 comments

Ford Maddox Brown, The Last of England, 1855, reproduced with permission from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Student visitors to Sovereign Hill often explore this painting during our education sessions because it can tell us interesting stories about the hundreds of thousands of people who came to Australia during the height of Ballarat’s gold rush. Painted by Ford Maddox Brown, it is entitled ‘The Last of England’. If we could, we would ask these people about the skills and ideas they are bringing with them to Australia, because these are the kind of people who shaped modern Australia into the country it is today. You can watch a source analysis of this artwork here. For better or for worse, European immigrants like these brought the Industrial Revolution, democracy, and a completely new agricultural system to this land ‘girt by sea’.

Let’s explore these imported skills and ideas in more detail.

Definitions:

The Industrial Revolution is the name historians use to describe the period in history when humans radically changed the way things are made (approximately between 1750 and 1900). Instead of making things by hand, we started making goods more cheaply and in larger quantities by steam-powered machines. These new machines were also used to move these mass-produced goods (steam trains and boats revolutionised transport).
Democracy means rule by the people in Ancient Greek. It is a system of government (a way to organise our society) in which all adult citizens get the opportunity to participate in decision-making (most commonly through voting in elections to choose someone to represent their community in parliament).
Agriculture is an environmental management system that creates food, medicine and fibre for human use. While Australian Aboriginal people have been practicing agriculture for thousands of years, European colonisation brought a new system based on plants and animals that aren’t native to Australia.

Europeans realised there was gold in Victoria in 1851 at the height of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. In the same year Queen Victoria launched her Great Exhibition in London which showcased England’s new industrial technologies. Many of the six million people — equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time — who visited the Great Exhibition, were soon to join the mass migration to the Australian goldfields. They brought with them Industrial Revolution knowledge, experience and skills – many had ridden in trains, worked in factories, and believed that the ‘Age of Steam’ had made Britain the most powerful nation on Earth, and could have a similar impact on Australia.

At the start of the Victorian gold rushes, only simple hand-held and often handmade technologies (like the ones in this sketch) were needed to find gold, but by the 1860s steam-powered machines were required to extract gold from deep underground. S. T. Gill, Prospecting, from The Australian Sketchbook, c.1865, reproduced with permission from The Gold Museum Ballarat.

After the Eureka Rebellion in 1854, the muddle of goldminers’ tents that people called ‘Ballaarat’ (a local Aboriginal [Wadawurrung] word for resting place) became a more permanent city. As the easily accessible gold started to run out, these immigrants began importing steam-powered machines from Britain so they could mine for gold trapped deeper underground. This meant that Ballarat’s mining changed from an individual occupation to a company (group) project, and helped to keep people here once the initial ‘rush’ was over. Without these technologies (which among other things pumped water out of mines and fresh air in, powered elevators, and crushed quartz to extract its gold) the Ballarat gold rush would probably have come to a grinding halt.

During the 1860s and 70s, many Ballaratians invested their gold wealth in local factories and foundries to build their own industrial machinery, such as steam engines and boilers. This meant that you didn’t have to wait a long time for your steam engine to arrive on a ship from the other side of the planet, you could instead purchase it (much more cheaply) from a foundry just down the road.

The Phoenix Foundry in Ballarat – capable of smelting iron to create steam engine components and steam trains. S. Calvert, PHOENIX FOUNDRY, BALLARAT. – THE ENGINE FITTING ROOM (where Target in central Ballarat is located today) 1873, reproduced with permission from The Gold Museum Ballarat.

Many Victorian towns had been built on gold by this time, but many withered and died as soon as their gold ran out, to the point that many are now ghost towns. However, Ballarat and Bendigo are major regional cities today, and although there are still gold mines in or near both, they do not rely on gold to continue to grow. So what are the things that decided whether a town would grow, survive or die after a gold rush? We think the answer involves the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in Australia.

The decision to change the local economies and jobs in these cities from mining to manufacturing, helped these cities to continue to grow and thrive. Immigrants with experience building railways, factories, foundries, and deep mines back in Britain used their knowledge and skills to start an Industrial Revolution here. Had it not been for the gold rushes, it may have taken much longer for such steam-powered inventions to arrive in Australia.

By 1900 the Ballarat region was dotted with steam-powered machines, and the people who lived here enjoyed mass-produced and therefore cheaply-made goods. Much came from local factories, but as steam trains and ships were making product transport much faster and safer than people had experienced before, buying things from overseas became easier than ever. Tractors and other farm technologies, along with introduced plants and animals (such as wheat and sheep) were also industrialising the way food, fibre and medicines were produced, and because we could support a growing population with jobs and food, modern Australia started taking shape.

An example of a (steam-powered) company quartz mine in Ballarat. F. Kruger, Queen Mine (near Black Hill, Ballarat), 1887, reproduced with permission from The Gold Museum Ballarat.

Australia’s Industrial Revolution did have some significant environmental impacts which should be explored – namely in the way it required lots of trees to be chopped down to burn in boilers (local wood was also used to build houses and line mineshafts). This deforestation devastated local forests and caused the localised extinction of many plants and animals. Due to advances in industrial mining and transport technology, when wood couldn’t be regrown fast enough to replace what was being burned/built with, Australians started burning coal to produce power instead (once huge quantities of it were discovered). Read more about the environmental impacts of the Victorian gold rushes and Australia’s Industrial Revolution here.

While democracy – like the Industrial Revolution – was on its way to Australia one way or another, it is often argued by historians that the gold rushes and the Eureka Rebellion helped it get here faster. You can read more about this here.

Some Year 9 students learning about the arrival of steam power in Australia and visiting many of Sovereign Hill’s related museum exhibits through the education session entitled ‘The Industrial Revolution in Australia’.

In summary, we think that Australia’s Industrial Revolution was likely sped-up by the gold rushes. If you would like to visit Sovereign Hill to learn more about this topic, we offer an education session for students entitled ‘The Industrial Revolution in Australia’.

Links and References

Wikipedia on the Industrial Revolution: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

The impact of the Industrial Revolution on England: https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution

A great video about the Industrial Revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhL5DCizj5c

A Sovereign Hill Education video on the Industrial Revolution in Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVW6Xq3Pd4

An old post on the Sovereign Hill Education Blog called ‘The Industrial Revolution in Australia’: https://sovereignhilledblog.com/2013/02/06/the-industrial-revolution-in-australia/

Another old post on the Sovereign Hill Education Blog called ‘The Industrial Revolution in Australia: Part 2’: https://sovereignhilledblog.com/2013/04/29/the-industrial-revolution-in-australia-part-2/

Sovereign Hill Education Blog on the ‘Environmental Impacts of the Gold Rush’: https://sovereignhilledblog.com/2014/09/01/the-environmental-impact-of-the-gold-rush/

A history of Ballarat featuring lots of great primary source images: http://ballaratgenealogy.org.au/ballarat-history

Encyclopaedia Britannica on the Industrial Revolution: https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution

The Khan Academy on the Industrial Revolution: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/acceleration/bhp-acceleration/a/the-industrial-revolution

A Gold Museum blog about a model train made by apprentices at Ballarat’s Phoenix Foundry in 1878: https://goldmuseumballarat.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/phoenix-foundry-model-locomotive-engine/

A podcast about the environmental impacts of Ballarat’s gold rush: https://talesfromratcity.com/2018/08/12/episode-eight/

A blogpost from the MAAS (Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences): https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2018/08/29/industrial-revolution-in-australia-impact-on-manufacturing-in-the-1800s/

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Posted in 19th century, 19th century technology, Books for Teaching History, Environment, gold, history of victoria, History Teaching, history teaching resournces, Immigration, industrial revolution in australia, inventions, S T Gill, Sovereign Hill, STEM in history, The Great Exhibition, then and now, train, Uncategorized, Victorian Gold Rush, victorian history

Tagged history, Industrial Revolution, industrial revolution in australia, research, victorian history

Life before we knew about germs …

Posted on May 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

How did we get from Miasma Theory to Germ Theory in the 19th century?

The way we see the world, and ourselves in it, can completely change when new scientific theories/ideas come along. While this can be scary in the eyes of some people, for others it provides better ways of living, and exciting new opportunities to make money. Some examples of big ideas in science which have changed the world include:

The theory of evolution by natural selection, made famous by explorer and naturalist Charles Darwin in his 1859 book called ‘On the Origin of Species’. He explained that life on Earth has evolved (changed) over time as conditions (weather etc.) have changed, and as a result of the competition for resources (like food and water).
Medical technologies like anaesthetics (to make you go to sleep and feel no pain), antiseptics (to keep wounds and medical tools clean), antibiotics (to kill bacteria which cause painful and often deadly infections), and vaccinations (making us immune to certain diseases).
Understanding the role humans can play in the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ – if we put CO2 (carbon dioxide) into the air by burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and petroleum (used to make plastics and fuels for cars) this can cause the atmosphere to heat up and change the climate.

Scanning electron microscope image of Vibrio Cholerae. This is the bacterium (germ) that causes cholera, a big killer on the 19th century Victorian goldfields. Reproduced from Wikipedia Commons.

In this blogpost, we will explore the scientific idea that microscopic germs exist, and how this idea radically changed the way we treat disease and deal with human waste. We are interested in this topic at Sovereign Hill Education because the 19th century gold rushes in Victoria were happening at the same time Germ Theory became popular. It changed the way Ballarat’s doctors did their work, and is the reason sewage pipes (that Ballaratians still use today) were installed under our city.

What is Miasma Theory?

Miasma = from the Ancient Greek word for ‘pollution’.

For thousands of years, people (and their doctors) in many places around the world believed that diseases, especially epidemics (like the Black Plague), were caused by ‘bad air’ which was commonly called miasma in English-speaking countries. It was thought that breathing-in or being too physically close to bad air from rotting organic matter (like a compost heap or pile of dog poo) could cause the four liquids found in your body (blood, phlegm [like snot], yellow bile, and black bile) to get out of balance. People believed that the weather and seasons could also affect these liquids and cause sickness (click here to learn more about a related idea called Humorism). Miasma was thought to cause all kinds of diseases, from diarrhoea to chicken pox, from the flu to obesity!

A representation by Robert Seymour of the cholera epidemic of the 19th century depicts the spread of the disease in the form of deadly air (miasma). Reproduced from Wikipedia Commons.

Staying away from rotting and smelly things is smart because they can cause disease, so those miasma believers were on the right track, but it’s not the smell of these things that actually makes people sick.

In the past, when doctors treated sick people based on this theory, treatments often involved draining some of their blood. We now know that such treatments could be more dangerous than the sicknesses they were treating – for example, in 1799 it is likely that George Washington was accidentally bled to death by his doctor while being treated for a throat infection!

What is Germ Theory?

Germ = Late Middle English word (from an Old French word, originally from Latin) germen, which means ‘seed, sprout’.

While the compound microscope (from the Ancient Greek for ‘small’ [mikros] and ‘to see’ [skopein]) was invented in the 1600s, it wasn’t until the 1800s that people realised they could actually see (through Lister’s improved microscope design) that germs – also known as microorganisms – existed, and could cause disease in people, animals and plants. A number of people had already tried to replace Miasma Theory with Germ Theory, but it took the work of scientists like Louis Pasteur and John Snow in the 1850s to popularise the idea that germs caused most diseases. Support for Miasma Theory didn’t completely disappear until the 1880s because, like any new scientific idea, it took a while to catch on. And unsurprisingly, people found it hard to believe in something they couldn’t see, until the technology came along to help them see it!

The first doctor on record (named Ignaz Semmelweis) to suggest that doctors should wash their hands between patients to avoid spreading disease was completely ignored by other doctors … He eventually died in an lunatic asylum from a disease he could have avoided if only his doctor had washed his hands!! There are many scientific ideas through history which people laughed at, or ignored, which turned out to be true. You can explore some of the most fascinating ones here.

How did these changes to the way we understand disease change our lives?

S.T.Gill’s Butcher’s Shamble, 1852, shows the unclean conditions in which meat was bought and sold before the popularisation of Germ Theory and the invention of electricity (to enable refrigeration)

By the time Germ Theory became popular, the Victorian gold rushes were well underway. In other parts of the world, the Industrial Revolution was creating factories around which cities were growing. Such hives of human activity like a mining centre or industrial city pushed people closer together than they had probably ever lived before in all of human history – and of course this meant diseases could spread more easily than ever from person to person. Knowledge of Germ Theory and the medicines it made possible over the next 100 years helped cure many diseases, but most importantly it helped to create more sanitary conditions, which meant people started living in cleaner houses and communities. For the first time, we started washing our hands thoroughly after going to the toilet, sterilising surgical equipment and removing and treating our sewage to make sure it didn’t end up in our drinking water. During this time, we began vaccinating children to help them avoid the most deadly diseases of childhood such as smallpox, and cleaning our teeth and bodies through the popularisation of soaps and toiletry products.

In Ballarat, all of these Germ Theory changes reduced the death rate, particularly among children, and helped our city continue to grow. It affected the way we built the city and organised the infrastructure, like sewage treatment plants, hospitals, street gutters, and reservoirs (to collect and hold drinking water). Without Germ Theory, our lives would be just as brutal and short as those of our ancestors who lived during the rule of Miasma Theory.

Links and References

TEDed on the development of Germ Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9LC-3ZKiok

Wikipedia on Miasma Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory

Wikipedia on Germ Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

History of the microscope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscope

Learn about the job of a nightman – the human pooperscooper: https://sovereignhilledblog.com/2017/11/07/bad-19th-century-jobs-the-nightman/

Life expectancy has improved radically in the last 150 years in Australia: https://sovereignhilledblog.com/2016/11/30/how-to-cook-a-gold-rush-feast/

Sovereign Hill’s Free Educational Resources – A Guide

Posted on January 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

All of Sovereign Hill’s Education Officers are qualified and experienced teachers. When we’re not dressed up in 1850s costume teaching our visiting students, we create free educational activities to help you with your History, Geography and cross-curriculum studies at home or at school. Whether you’re studying the Australian gold rushes, the Industrial Revolution, Australia’s relationship with China, or Victorian Aboriginal history, Sovereign Hill offers a wide range of educational resources for students and teachers.

For Students

If you are a student preparing for a visit to Sovereign Hill with your class, check out this introductory video. You can also make use of our free research notes, videos, audio files and an interactive map published by Sovereign Hill Education here which might help you with projects/homework about our goldrush history. We have also published many blogposts – like this one – which can help you with your history studies; just take a look at the different ‘Recent Posts’ headings down the right-hand side of this page and click on the ones that interest you. There is also a ‘Search This Site’ bar just below the banner photo at the top which can be used to hunt for blogposts on more unusual topics. Type ‘tiger’ into the search and prepare yourself for some weird and wonderful goldrush stories!

You can learn about Victorian Aboriginal history through the free ‘digitour’ (digital + tour) of Sovereign Hill called Hidden Histories: The Wadawurrung People. This digitour features videos, a game, an interactive timeline and lots of images/quotes from the 1850s-60s. This digitour can be used on-site during a visit to Sovereign Hill, or at home/school.

Sovereign Hill Education has also made learning activities for little kids who aren’t old enough for school yet. So if you are coming for a visit with your family and have little brothers or sisters, you might like to show them this webpage.

Some ‘Social Stories’ have been published on the Sovereign Hill Education website to help visiting students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have a good time – take a look at them here along with our other Accessibility resources. If you are visiting Sovereign Hill and you have ASD, you can ask at the entrance for a special ‘Sensory Map’ to help you have a great day at Sovereign Hill (by knowing how to avoid the loud noises etc.).

We have also made some videos about Sovereign Hill which are translated into Auslan. You can take a look at them here.

Most importantly, what are you going to eat during your Sovereign Hill visit? Take a look at the different food options here.

If your teacher gives you and your friends some free-time, what can you do at Sovereign Hill apart from gold panning and bowling? Learn about all of our free-time activities here.

For Teachers

Sovereign Hill Education publishes a wide variety of resources for your Foundation to VCE students – learn about how the Victorian Curriculum links to our resource collection here.

Take the time to peruse and download some free teaching kits, or brush up on your history knowledge by reading a few posts on this Sovereign Hill Education Blog. There are also resources for children in the Early Years, EAL learners, students with ASD, a variety of maps to use before you visit with your class, and all of the information you need to plan a fun, safe excursion to Sovereign Hill at the Sovereign Hill Education website. It also features ‘Discover It Yourself’ learning activities for independent student exploration of Sovereign Hill, a dedicated page for Catholic schools, and a selection of ‘Learning Stories’ about teachers’ experiences in bringing their classes for an educational visit.

Teachers who plan to bring students on excursion/camp to Sovereign Hill are encouraged to take advantage of Sovereign Hill Education’s wide variety of education sessions; all visiting classes receive one free education session with the cost of admission. You can also contact Sovereign Hill’s Education Officers prior to your visit to discuss alternative/bespoke education sessions to suit your students’ inquiry projects etc.

The spectacular sound-and-light show ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’ is being revamped in mid-2018 – stay tuned for more information on our new and improved night-time experience! For all other enquiries about booking an excursion or school camp, call one of Sovereign Hill Education’s friendly Bookings Officers on (03) 5337 1188, email schoolbookings@sovereignhill.com.au or check out the Frequently Asked Questions webpage.

Did you know that teachers can sign up for a Sovereign Hill e-newsletter called ‘Educator News’? It provides a termly update of new free resources available from our website, new education programs for your students, along with information about special professional learning events and competitions/special offers. You can sign up here.

If you have never visited Sovereign Hill before, sound like an expert as you guide your students around the outdoor museum by taking a look at these exhibit descriptions.

In terms of selecting a date for your excursion, be aware that Sovereign Hill Education runs special education programs: to commemorate the Eureka Rebellion; to celebrate the Horse’s Birthday on 1 August; for Book Week; for Chinese New Year and much more. Simply contact us well in advance if you would like to book your class into one of these special education programs – spaces are limited and demand is high!

Throughout the year, Sovereign Hill Education also offers a range of free and costed teacher professional learning opportunities, which are listed here. Stay up-to-date with the latest offerings by following the Sovereign Hill Education page on Facebook or on Twitter @GoldfieldsEd.

Lastly, stay tuned for more information on Education Officer-led educational programming at the Gold Museum, beginning in early 2018.

Links and References

Looking for information on Sovereign Hill’s famous Costumed Schools Program? http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/costumed-school/

Want to know more about the biodiversity and sustainability learning program available at Sovereign Hill’s pastoral property, Narmbool? http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/narmbool/

An hour or two at the Gold Museum is a great way to finish a visit to Sovereign Hill: http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/gold-museum-ballarat/

Want to stay on-site at the Sovereign Hill Hotel? http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/sovereign-hill-hotel/

Learn more about ‘Blood on the Southern Cross’, our sound-and-light show: http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/sound-light-show/

Keep up-to-speed on Sovereign Hill Education’s latest news through Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sovereignhilleducation/