Black Gold - Fred Cahir

It is an interesting story how I came to read this book.  It all started with the Clare Wright Eureka book that I reviewed here.

I was fascinated by an incidental phrase in Wrights book and so I contacted her to clarify.  Here is our email exchange:

Hi Ms Wright,

I am writing because I have recently finished reading your book "The forgotten rebels of Eureka"; I am a history teacher teaching Year Nine history in country Victoria.

I read your book primarily because I didn't know a lot about mining history in Australia, and I had to teach the Eureka Stockade as part of the national curriculum, and I wanted to bone-up on recent scholarship.  I'd not taught history in a number of years...I have found your book a fascinating read, is exquisitely well written and indeed a rollicking tale. Your book has piqued my interest and, as such, I have a question in which I hope that you can point me in the right direction.

On Page 136, you state this:

"The only miners and traders on the goldfields you do appear to have been genuinely exempt from license holding were the Wathaurung."

You have a section a little further on in the chapter that states how both aboriginal men & women were gold-mining. Also, in the chapter 'winners and losers' you expand upon the perceptions in which the aboriginal people were held.

My questions are simple ones; why were the local aboriginal clans with exempt from license holding?  Has comparable research to yours, been done in regards to aboriginal involvement in the Stockade? If so, can you recommend some reading.

Thanking you,

Matt Harris

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your email and your generous feedback.  I'm glad you enjoyed my book.

Re your interesting query: my sense is that because indigenous people were not counted as people (e.g.: not included in the census or regarded in any way as citizens) they were de facto exempt from licensing holding.  They did not technically exist.  Although there are accounts of Wathaurung people engaged in mining, I have not come across evidence of them taking out a licence or being fined for not holding one.

The expert in this field is Dr Fred Cahir who teaches at Federation University in Ballarat.  His book Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 is worth a look.

As you are a teacher, I should also let you know that I have a Young Adult version of my book coming out in August.  It is aimed at a secondary school audience, mindful of the national curriculum.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm.

Clare

So that is how I came to read Fred Cahir's "Black Gold".  It is available free to read as an electronic download here.

This book is fascinating too - the background in mining that the Indigenous Australians have is fascinating.  Chair states that "...much evidence shows Aboriginal people quarrying for crystal, greenstone, sandstone, obsidian, kaolin, ochres and basalt across Victoria."  But what about that heavy yellow metal that gripped the interest of so many people, from so many places?  Did Aboriginal people seek that?  Cahir interestingly states that "[t]here are instances of gold nuggets being found associated with old Aboriginal sites, well away from auriferous reefs. The Watchem Nugget from near Maryborough (1904) and the Bunyip nugget from near Bridgewater, east of Bendigo, may both have been carried to their recorded place of discovery by Djadjawurrung people."

  

Cahir has an interesting section on Indigenous and Chinese relations, this section was particularly interesting:

"The reverend Arthur Polehampton, who spent much time in the Western district of Victoria in the 1850s, considered that ‘The blacks are said to have a strong prejudice against the Chinese, whom they accuse of being neither black nor white’, and a Ballarat Star correspondent reported in 1862 on an ‘exchange of insults’ between an Aboriginal and a Chinese man in Avoca. Similarly, Peter, a Djabwurrung man, was imprisoned for a week in December 1866 at Ararat for ‘assaulting a Chinaman whilst drunk’." 

There is a wonderful section under the chapter heading of Co-habitation, in which Cahir exemplifies Indigenous cultures focus on kinship and the resuscitated kin relationship.  This is a syncretic belief from Indigenous pre-colonial times and Christianity.  This explains some of the willingness to help with gold location, even without rewards.  Cahir then goes on to explain the extent of the environmental damage that alluvial mining left in its aftermath and how this indigenous peoples dislocated.  I must confess that there is some very fair and balanced writing about Government and the Missions.  Chair is so evenhanded here and, particularly shares some interesting insights into the missions and the role of Aboriginal Christians.  Much to the churches chagrin some did not view the Aboriginals worthy of delivering the message too.

"... there was a degree of discord in Christian circles about the fate of Aboriginal people. Some pronounced that ‘Australian aborigines were mere beasts in human shape ... and that no efforts made to evangelise the aborigines of Victoria could be successful’." 

Others viewed it very differently:

"Other prominent Christians considered that ‘the condition of the aborigines is that of dying men’ and as all men are created in God’s own image, they could be ‘saved [from extinction and damnation] only by divine interference’."

Some Aboriginal Christians held radical beliefs about the importance and the truth of Christianity:

"Missionaries, including Daniel, an Aboriginal man from the Lake Hindmarsh region, firmly believed they were acting in the best interests of Aboriginal people, and that to be ‘raised’ in Christianity was compensation for their losses as a result of British colonisation." 

Really fascinating book, in quite an unexpected way.  I think that it is an important read.  Cahir states that one of the reasons for writing the book was to encourage others to look at the shared history that white and black Australians have in regards to mining and forge a common history in view of reconciliation.  My specific question to Clare Wright was never answered - however, it has been an interesting tangent to stroll down.
4 Stars

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard

I've been a little bit busy of late and have not had time to write on the blog - however, I have tried to keep up with my reading.  This too, is hard when the work gets a little on top of you.  I've been away on two back-to-back camps and it was tiring.  However, I have been reading little by little none-the-less.

A box of books that my school library were getting rid of appeared mysteriously in the staffroom a few weeks ago.  Take what you want was the requirement and rummaging through the box I stumbled upon a copy of Stoppard's brilliant play.

I remember seeing the 1990 movie with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in the early 1990's - the Blackburn Video shop had a VHS copy.  I think that I was the only one who ever hired it.  In those days I was a young Music student at an Arts University in Melbourne.  I'd just discovered Beckett and I had been introduced to Phillip Glass and Salvador Dali. I had a big Dali on the wall of my room and booked tickets in 1993 to see 'Einstein on the beach' when the first world tour arrived in Melbourne.  I listened for many hours to John Cage's beautiful Prepared Piano Sonata's as I discovered Minimalism, Surrealism and other forms of post-modernity in the arts.  So Stoppard's play appealed to me.

Re-reading this play, some twenty-two years later was interesting.  I was able to put things in better perspective, now that I have read Francis Schaeffer and particularly Hans Rookamakker.  My study into the worldview concept that began in 2005 - ten years ago - reading James Sire's 'Naming the Elephant' has put me in better stead to understand the place of this form of Art and view it, understand it from my perspective rather than a worldview forced upon me - as it was when I was younger.

The magnificent writing and fantastic humour of Stoppard's play strike you clearly at the beginning of the work.  It is a marvellous dialogue between out two protagonists (maybe victims, maybe solipsists)  as they discuss probability, socialism, existence and knowledge.  It is a scream to read and too many lines that could be quoted.

I stopped in Act 2 to read (selectively) Hamlet again.  Having the luxury to do that - which you don't in a theatre or watching the movie - made the read better and creates a burgeoning respect for Stoppard's play.

Lots of themes in this play are mentioned, issues of ontology, epistemology, logic and insignificance and many of these themes I mention in reading other works.  In this one - I just think that it is funny and clever.

5 Stars - Brilliant.