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Life on Spring Creek

~ A blog by Jacqui Durrant

Life on Spring Creek

Category Archives: Gold rush clothes

A gold digger’s guide to attire from top to bottom

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold mining, Gold rush, Gold rush clothes, Gold rush firearms, Ovens diggings, Pre-Raphaelites

≈ 5 Comments

In terms of dress, the gold diggers weren’t merely practical. Especially in the early days of the gold rushes of 1852-3, many diggers consciously cultivated a certain style, which was a reflection of the new society in which they lived. 

I_Have_Got_It_1854

Eugene von Guerard, I Have Got It! (1854) (State Library of Victoria)

Reader’s note: This blog post is divided into three sections. 1. What the diggers wore. 2. The deeper social meaning of their clothing and general appearance. 3. Some side-reflections on the consumption and ecological sustainability of clothing then compared to now.

Basic Digger’s Wardrobe

When I say ‘the digger’s wardrobe’, I mean ‘clothing’; for as Seweryn Korzelinski, who came to the Ovens diggings in January 1853, wrote, ‘There are no spare clothes, hence no need for a wardrobe.’ [1] I’m also referring specifically to men of non-Chinese background. [2]

It’s a relatively easy matter to learn about how gold diggers dressed. Artists S.T. Gill and Eugene von Guerard made detailed paintings, and you can see from their illustrations that the typical gold digger wore:
– a hat (usually a felt or ‘cabbage tree’ hat with a smallish brim, worn with a black ribbon for a hat band), or sometimes a soft cap;
– an under-shirt;
– an over-shirt or ‘smock’, commonly of ‘alpaca’ or serge fabric, with a closure on the front of 2 or 3 buttons at the neck;
– a coat (sometimes waterproof);
– a neck-kerchief (tied either around the neck or under the collar);
– heavy cotton ‘moleskin’ trousers, light canvas trousers, or woollen trousers (either with a straight button-up fly or button-up drop-down front; no external pockets or belt loops);
– a belt (leather or a piece of rope), or sometimes a waist sash;
– ankle-length lace-up leather boots, often worn with button-up gaiters held in place with ‘bowyangs’ (a string or cord tied around the calf over the trousers), or less commonly Indian rubber boots, or calf-length leather boots; and
– to complete the look — a clay pipe, some guns or a bowie knife.

Blackhill_21_Feb_1854

Eugene von Guerard, sketch at ‘Blackhill, 21 February, 1854’. (State Library of Victoria)

There is only one item that is rarely illustrated, perhaps because the artists didn’t like to hide the faces of their subjects: a veil of gauzy material worn from the hat (nota bene historical reenactment people!). Visiting Beechworth in 1854, Mary Spencer wrote of the Ovens diggings, ‘We met many diggers, curiously attired; many wear veils, some brown or green, to protect their eyes from the glare of the sun and the dust and flies.’ [3]

Thomas Woolner — the Pre-Raphaelite artist who came to the Ovens diggings in November 1852 — further explained, ‘The day has been very warm and of course choking dusty: this is bad, but the greatest pest we have to withstand is the common domestic fly: these pernicious wretches torment the day from dawn to sundown and make it essential to wear a veil, but that afflicts me more than the pest brutes themselves, rending the senses smothered in closeness…’ [4]

A few other points worth noting:

Over-shirts were often in bright colours of blue, red, laterally striped, or sometimes checked. Under-shirts seem to have been horizontally striped. Wrote Mary Spencer of the miners at Spring Creek: ‘They wear a loose ‘blouse’ or ‘frock’; some blue, some red, as fancy dictates. The gentlemen seldom wear cloth, but a kind of alpaca.’ [5] ‘A kind of alpaca’ could have been a reference to woollen serge, or an actual alpaca or alpaca-blend fabric. Alpaca was very popular on the Californian gold diggings, probably because it is hardwearing, and is warmer and has greater wicking ability (i.e.: to evaporate moisture) compared to sheeps’ wool.

The ‘cabbage tree hat’ was a kind of finely woven straw-coloured hat made from the boiled, dried and bleached leaves of the Livistona australis, also known as the Cabbage-tree Palm. It is known as the first distinctively Australian headwear.

WashingOutAGoodProspect_Antoine_Fauchery

This image of diggers by Antoine Fauchery shows the basic clothing worn by gold diggers. Taken in 1858, the diggers here are probably less theatrical in their attire than those of the 1852 gold rush, when ‘new chums’ conspicuously dressed as ‘gold seekers’. (State Library of Victoria)

The social meaning of a digger’s attire

Simply listing what the gold diggers wore is really only half the story. As I mentioned in an earlier post ‘Loose air and swagger’ — Beards of the Beechworth Gold Rush, in the first flush of the Victorian gold rushes, diggers crafted their personal appearance in ways that went beyond the merely practical. Their clothing — at least by my conjecture — expressed a set of values that were particular to gold rush society: a robust social equality, independence, and freedom.

Seweryn Korzelinski, who came to Spring Creek in January 1853, paints an extraordinary picture of his experience of the Victorian gold diggings thus far: one in which everyone dressed in essentially the same manner, so that previous social status could not be readily discerned:

…this very large society comprises men from all parts of the world, all countries and religions, varying dispositions and education, all types of artisans, artists, literary men, priests, pastors and soldiers, sailors, wild tribesman with tattoo markings, and those deported for crimes — all mixed into one society, all dressed similarly, all forced to forget their previous habits, leanings, customs, manners and occupations. All forced to follow their new occupation and to live the monotonous lives of the miners.

As they dig shafts next to one another, their outward appearance does not signify their previous importance, worth or mental attainments. A colonel pulls up earth for a sailor; a lawyer wields not a pen but a spade; a priest lends a match to a Negro’s pipe; a doctor rests on the same heap of earth with a Chinaman; a man of letters is carries a bag of earth; many a baron or count has a drink with a Hindu, and all of them hirsute [i.e.: hairy], dusty and muddy, so that their own mothers would not be able to recognize them. Many a one would not, a short while before, bother to look at a fellow with whom he now works. He we are all joined by a common designation: “DIGGER”. Only various shades of skin colour and speech denote nationality and origin, but it is impossible to guess previous station in life or background. [6]

The socially-levelling effect of life on the diggings was notable, especially to British-born immigrants who had come from a society in which the social stratification was pronounced. Clearly, many diggers were self-aware of the physical ‘metamorphosis’ that they undertook on the diggings, and revelled in the sense of being ‘incognito’ rather than being seen as fitting into some predetermined social order.

clay_pipe_Stanley_Athaneaum

A clay pipe of the type many gold diggers used, which was subsequently dug up beside the Stanley Athenaeum [shown to me by Friends of the Stanley Athenaeum].  ‘…if I walked into your house,’ wrote Englishman Edward Ridpath from the Ovens diggings, probably sometime in 1853, ’till I spoke, you would not know me, my hair, beard, and moustache are of eleven months growth, I wear a broad brimmed … hat, blue serge shirt, moleskin trousers, a pair of Indian rubber knee boots, and a belt with a bowie knife attached thereto, the incognito would be further aided by seeing a short black clay pipe in my mouth.’ [7]

The gold rushes usurped the social order in a number of ways, one being that if you were successful, it was neither because you were ‘born to rule’ nor because you were self-made (in the sense of having built a business or career); and equally, if you were unsuccessful, no one could say it was because you were lazy, feckless or irresponsible. Whether a digger was rich or poor could not be attributed either to social status nor personal merit; it was simply a matter of luck. This release from the bondage of crushing social stratification on one hand, and the overwhelming personal responsibility for one’s situation on the other, must have come as a great relief to many. That no one could readily discern where you stood on the social ladder by immediate appearances was a part of this liberation.

However, not everyone interpreted the outward appearance of the diggers as simply representing a new-found social equality (perhaps burgeoning, perhaps temporary — at the time, no one could be certain). Thomas Woolner wrote:

the people … mostly wear beards, carry firearms and are immensely independent: they dress something like the prints you have seen of the red French Republicans, much of that loose air and swagger. [8] 

When Woolner described the diggers at the Spring and Reid’s Creek diggings as dressing something like the ‘red French Republicans’, he was referring to recent events: the French revolutionaries of 1848 who had overthrown King Louis Philippe to create the second French Republic. These were the kind of people who insisted on liberté, égalité, fraternité by the application of force.

As Woolner alludes, a part of the ‘loose air and swagger’ of the gold seekers came not merely from their clothes, or that they had broken free of the daily ritual of shaving, but from the fact that they were well-armed. Wrote William Howitt upon leaving Melbourne for the Spring Creek diggings, ‘On Wednesday, about noon, we got under way; and with such a show of big dogs, rifles, pistols, and bowie-knives as must have daunted the most heroic bushrangers.’ Although such weaponry had a practical side — Howitt felt it necessary to qualify, the ‘daunting’ of bushrangers — when people encountered the diggers en masse, their appearance smacked of revolutionary spirit. Even the beards were symbolic of a new social order, for they were worn by the type of men who no longer deigned to let the upper classes presume to be their betters: these men constituted their own ‘hairystocracy’. [9]

In their red and blue shirts, with their neck-kerchiefs and jaunty hats; firing guns into the night sky and lighting their pipes from whichever fire they pleased, the diggers were dusty and dirty… but the one thing they were not, was drab.

A side note on clothing and ecological sustainability

In 1852, clothing was probably cheaper than ever before, due largely to the Industrial Revolution. Since the turn of the century, more and more fabrics were being made on ‘power looms’, rather than being hand woven. These new looms could be used by unskilled labourers, so the wages for skilled weavers plummeted. By the 1850s there were 3/4 million power looms in Britain.

Two quick historical asides:

  • At the time when power looms were being introduced, a group of English textile workers, aggrieved at the destruction of their livelihoods, protested the fact by smashing these looms and burning textiles factories. They became known as the ‘Luddites’ (a term we still use today — mistakenly — to refer to someone who rejects new technologies, rather than someone protesting their job being automated). The Luddite rebellion (which lasted from 1811 to 1816) was eventually quelled, especially after a show trial saw the instigators sentenced to either execution, or transportation to Australia.
  • These troubles of the Industrial Revolution never reached the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, where on the island of Harris and Lewis (two names; one island), the crofters continued to weave a woollen fabric called ‘tweed’ on pedal-powered looms in their own homes, as they continue to do today. Yes — Harris tweed costs a bit more than other fabrics, but it is still handmade in someone’s house!

Back to the 1850s. Despite the increasingly industrial nature of its production, clothing on the gold diggings was far more sustainable than today. All the materials used were natural plant fibres and gums (linen, cotton, rubber), animal fibres (sheeps’ wool, alpaca, silk), fur (mainly possum skin) and leather. Some fabrics were especially long-lasting and hardwearing, because of their long fibres; in particular fabric made from hemp or flax (linseed), such as canvas. All were readily biodegradable when discarded. Obviously, there were no synthetic polyesters, nylons or polar fleeces manufactured from non-renewable petroleum derivatives.

Quite unlike today’s throw-away fashion, people on the gold diggings mended their clothes. Although there were women on the diggings who charged men for the privilege of having their clothes washed and mended for them (‘a great many bring their wives and children with them, as the former are very useful in washing and cooking, they wash other men’s clothes for which they demand 12/- per doz’ [10]), some men mended clothes themselves. American digger Gordon Tucker was not alone when he wrote in his diary on Sunday 12 February, 1854, ‘Mending shirts all day’ [11]; for miners weren’t permitted to dig on a Sunday and aside from religious observance there was little else to do but cook, chop wood, and clean and mend clothes [12]. Washing clothing by hand was, of course, the only option, but the act of hand-washing and air-drying gave those clothes greater longevity that what our commonly machine-washed and dried clothes have today. We could all learn a little, and waste less, from their example.

Notes

[1] Seweryn Korzelinski, Memoirs of gold-digging in Australia, translated and edited by Stanley Robe, foreword and notes by Lloyd Robson, University of Queensland Press, 1979, p.59.
[2] Chinese miners wore quite different attire, but I am yet to find any reference to a Chinese gold seeker on the Ovens diggings during the actual ‘rush’ of 1852-3. It seems they came later, and in considerable numbers, once the rush had subsided. I’m also consciously not addressing the issue of what women wore.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.58.
[4] Thomas Woolner, in Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: His Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall, London, 1917, p.21.
[5] Mary Spencer, op cit.
[6] Seweryn Korzelinski, op cit., p.55-6.
[7] Edward Ridpath, Journal of Edward Ridpath, and transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53, MS 8759 State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4. Also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853, signed by commissioner Hood. (Hood arrived between the 22 and 26 February 1853, [see Argus 1 March]). Second volume of two, p.49.
[8] Thomas Woolner, op cit., p.18.
[9] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, 1855, opening paragraph of Chapter V.
[10] Ridpath, op. cit., p.28
[11] Gordon Tucker, Journal, 1853 Apr. 12-1857 June 6. Manuscript 10649, State Library of Victoria. This entry: Sunday, 12 February, 1854.
[12] Edward Ridpath, op cit. p.48.

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A gold rush swag

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Californian gold rush, Gold rush, Gold rush clothes, Gold rush food, Gold rush swag, Ovens diggings, Spring Creek diggings, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

You’ve heard the term ‘swag’ — the minimalist belongings that a gold seeker carried with him to the diggings. But what was in it, how much did it weigh, and what indigenous kit was included?

EugenevonGuerard—Aborigines

Eugene von Guérard, Aborigines met on the road to the diggings, 1854 (image/collection: Geelong Art Gallery). Aboriginal people trading possum skin cloaks with a gold seeker, who has laid down his swag — comprising a bed-roll, billy and tools.

Numerous guides of the time — the Lonely Planets of their day — advised prospective gold seekers as to what to take to the diggings in their ‘swag’ or ‘traps’ (trappings). The most basic advice reflected the experience of the tens of thousands of ‘miner ’49s’ who had travelled overland from the East coast of America to the Californian goldrush only a couple of years before, where the trail became littered with unnecessary cast-offs. The key advice was this: travel light.

James Bonwick (in Notes of a gold digger and gold diggers’ guide, 1852) recommended diggers only to take what they could carry:

• hard-wearing clothes
• strong boots
• waterproof coat and trousers of oilskin
• a roll of canvas ‘for your future home’
• good jacket for Sundays
• pick, shovel and panning dish
• a cradle ‘may be carried in parts without much trouble’. (You can read about the cradle in this earlier post, Cradling for Gold in the Woolshed Valley).

William Williams, a gold digger who came to the Ovens diggings, gives us an idea of how much this kit actually weighed: ‘We started from the McIvor [i.e.: Heathcote, central Victoria] … carrying about sixty pounds weight including Grub, Blankets, Tin Dishes, Pick and Shovels, etc, this being our first attempt at carrying a ‘swag’ as it is termed in the colonies…’ [1] In metric measure, this was roughly 27 kilograms.

Unlike Bonwick, Williams also mentioned ‘grub’, the key components of which were sugar, tea, flour and salt (fresh food was generally picked up en route), which of course necessitated equipment for cooking and eating. Mrs Campbell, who lived at the Commissioner’s camp on the Spring Creek diggings (May Day Hills) in 1853, offered an overview of what a gold seeker might carry with them, including cooking implements: ‘As the digger is a migratory animal, he contents himself with few of the comforts or even necessaries of life. A small unlined tent, or rough bark hut, serves for his dwell­ing, while his furniture consists of a couple of blankets, which he spreads on the ground, a kettle, an iron pot, a pannikin [i.e.: tin mug] and tin plate, and knife and fork.’ [2]

William Williams, however, had no need of an iron pot or kettle, because he had a piece of equipment that would become synonymous with the swag — the ‘billy’. ‘[G]ot up before sunrise’ he wrote, ‘— boiled the “Billy” (a small tin pail that is used for boiling water for tea, or boiling a bit of mutton, or boiling a shirt, etc. The “billy” is an indispensable companion on a journey (it is preferred to a kettle or pot because it is so much lighter) boiled the “billy”, ate our bit of Damper, etc and started…’

Just as the billy had a multitude of uses, the gold panning dish did double-duty as a bowl in which to mix dough for bread or damper, and the neck-kerchief may have even doubled as a pudding cloth (not to mention arm sling or wound dressing). However, those travelling and working as a team often had a camp oven between them —  the workhorse of the goldfield’s kitchen. Some were designed to hang above a fire, but many had three legs so that they could sit in a fire with coals placed underneath. Many also had a flat top with a lip, which could hold coals on top to create all-round heat.

Potjie4-1

A camp oven, also known as a dutch oven. (Image: Digrpat, via wikimedia commons).

Another essential bit of kit — so essential as to be taken for granted and therefore was never mentioned except in advertisements, was the means to light a fire. Diggers routinely lit their pipes and cooking fires from other peoples’ fires, but when that opportunity didn’t present itself they had to resort to their tinderbox, or use some congreve lucifers — early friction matches tipped with phosphorous, which were only just beginning to replace tinderboxes during the 1850s.

As for accommodation, many gold seekers en route to the diggings expected to sleep out under the trees, or under a wagon if they were travelling alongside one. On the diggings, those who did not have tents adopted an indigenous solution: the mia mia.

En route to the diggings, gold seekers passed through several indigenous countries, and were able to glimpse the ways of life of various Aboriginal clans. This included their use of temporary shelters made of bark, branches, leaves and grass.

While visiting relatives at Bontharambo near Wangaratta, English woman Mary Spencer explained as best she could: ‘I cannot describe the bush. It means such an extent of country covered with trees; some large, some small, no sign of human habitation except here and there a few camps or tents; some inhabited by blacks, who construct their huts by placing poles in position and covering them with the outer bark of the trees.’ [3]

mia_mia

Unknown photographer, circa 1907-1915 (Image: Art Gallery of NSW, accession #520.2014)

The gold seekers quickly adopted the term ‘mia mia’ for such shelters — the word coming from the Wathaurong (Wadawurrung) people who lived near present day Geelong. Some diggers favoured mia mias over tents, no doubt as they were free, and could be easily rearranged depending on wind direction.

Thus William Howitt noted the adoption of indigenous dwellings by miners on the Spring Creek diggings in early 1853: ‘…there are huts of mingled boughs and sheets of bark; and here and there simple mimies, in imitation of the mimi of the natives; that is — just a few boughs leaned against a pole, supported on a couple of forked sticks, and a quantity of gum-tree leaves for a bed.’ [4]

And then there was the bedding. Assembling his items of bedding was one of the final tasks artist Thomas Woolner undertook before heading off to the Spring Creek diggings in the Spring of 1852: ‘After breakfast I went into the cottage to arrange my traps: my bed will consist of a piece of green baize [a coarse wooden fabric], one blanket and a waterproof coat to place on the ground as protection against the damp….’ [5] Some miners even carried Indian rubber blankets against the damp, particularly as exposure to damp ground was thought to bring about rheumatism.

In the height of summer, it wasn’t necessary to carry more than one or two blankets, but the gold seekers quickly opted for something superior to wool blankets — in fact, an option so superior that they immediately became a feature of gold fields life: the possum skin cloak.

nma-img-ci20041109-011-wm-vs1_o3_640

Possum skin cloaks (the above is a reproduction of one that came from Echuca in 1850). [Photo: National Museum of Australia]. Thankfully many talented artists are making these again.

Often referred to as a ‘rug’ by gold seekers, possum skin cloaks were traditionally worn by Aboriginal peoples throughout south-eastern of Australia. They were (and continue to be) made from brush-tailed possum pelts (as many as 60 or 80), trimmed and sewn together with kangaroo sinew. Traditionally, a person would be given one as a child, and the cloak would be added to as a person grew. [6] They were decorated with patterns imbued with significant cultural and spiritual meaning, and there was much importance around the making of the cloaks and their wearing. Some were handed down through generations as heirlooms.

From the perspective of a gold seeker, a really top-notch ‘opossum rug’ rubbed with a protective and decorative layer of fat and ochre, was a significant bit of kit because it was waterproof, said to be as warm as a half dozen blankets, and exceptionally light to carry (in fact, it is difficult to describe how surprisingly light and soft they are). Therefore, the indigenous art of making possum skin cloaks was widely recognised among the gold diggers, and the cloaks themselves were a highly valued inter-cultural trade item. [7]

The comfort that possum skin cloaks offered travellers in the bush can be felt in this vignette written by Phillip Johnson as he was travelling to the Ovens diggings:

‘In the course of a few hours I fell across a couple of bullock drivers who were quietly reposing on their opossum cloaks, and enjoying that cheapest and at the same time the most consoling luxury in the bush, their pipes; in the midst of a wilderness they were at ease & evidently at home..’ [8]

And again, the splendid luxury of a possum skin cloak is almost palpable, when reading this description by George Wathen:

‘I was soon asleep on the ground, by the fire, under an overbowering banksia, wrapped in the warm folds of my opossum rug.  For a night bivouac, there is nothing comparable to the opossum-rug.…’ [9]

Many of us are still familiar with, if not users of a few of the items in a gold rush era-swag: the billy and the camp oven especially. But sadly too few of us are familiar with the possum skin cloak. You can see them in on display in Albury Library Museum encased in a glass vitrine, and yet you will still not gain a real sense of why this is a truly magnificent and luxurious a piece of kit. However, there is one on display in the Falls Creek Museum that you can actually touch (as I did last Friday), and I encourage you to seek it out.

Notes

[1] William Williams, ‘Notes of a Journey from the McIvor to the Ovens River’, MS8436, State Library of Victoria, no date, p.1.
[2] Mrs A. Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, p.97.
And as an aside, for those unfamiliar with the term, a ‘pannikin’ is a tin camping mug — the word being derived from the Flemish ‘cannikin’ being the diminutive of ‘can’. So just as a small can was a ‘cannikin’, a small pan became a ‘pannikin’.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.40.
[4] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Sydney University Press facsimile edition of an 1855 imprint, 1972, p.252.
[5] Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: His Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall, London, 1917, p.19.
[6] This piece of information I recently learned from Wiradjuri woman Tammy Campbell.
[7] Fred Cahir, ‘Dallong – Possum Skin Rugs, A Study of an Inter-Cultural Trade Item in Victoria,’ The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no. 4, 2005.
[8] Phillip Johnson, Journal 3, Document 5, 1852, National Library of Australia, MS.7627, p.4.
[9] Wathen, The Golden Colony, or Victoria in 1854: With Remarks on the Geology of the Australian Gold Fields, p.131

‘Loose air and swagger’: beards of the Beechworth gold rush.

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold rush, Gold rush clothes

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Beards, Clothing, Style

Beards are back. Take a walk down the main street of Beechworth today, and you’ll see everything from your Hemingway sea-captain-look to your full-length bushranger. In fact, in terms of beards, Beechworth is starting to resemble the gold rush of 1852. And back then, as now, the beards weren’t all about practicality: for when a man grows a beard, he cultivates a style and attitude to go with it.

blackhill21feb1854 cropped.jpg

Diggers at Black Hill, 21 February, 1854, sketched by Eugene von Guerard.

It’s certainly true that on the gold diggings, growing a beard was more practical than attempting to shave, and yet beards were also emblematic of a man’s transformation from ‘new chum’ to digger. As a journalist in the Geelong Advertiser explained of an early scene on the Ballarat diggings, ‘Shaving is entirely dispensed with – all have turned ‘beardies’; soaping a chin, might lose a “nugget,” so beards luxuriate, and a ferocious crop of moustaches are coming on… Everyone is transmogrified, and the scene whirls on as though it were a dream or a phantasy.’ [1]

As historian Robyn Annear has observed (in her awesome book Nothing But Gold: The Diggers of 1852) the beard was not simply a practical response to working conditions but involved the conscious cultivation of a particular sartorial style [2], which today we might think of as ironic. Diggers were quite conscious of their own changed appearance, and some cultivated this change more than others. Englishman Edward Ridpath was clearly enjoying his own ‘transmogrification’, when he wrote from Spring Creek:

A resident of eleven months at these diggings has made some alterations in my appearance, it may perhaps raise a smile on your countenance on telling you that, by strangers with whom I have accidentally conversed, I have been mistaken for both a German and an American!! I am certain that if I walked into your house, till I spoke, you would not know me, my hair, beard, and moustache are of eleven months growth, I wear a broad brimmed crab hat, blue serge shirt, moleskin trousers, a pair of Indian rubber knee boots, and a belt with a bowie knife attached thereto, the incognito would be further aided by seeing a short black clay pipe in my mouth. [3]

Beards and long hair, like the Bowie knife and pipe, were a part of an overall ‘look’ that was an outward expression of freedom and independence. As Thomas Woolner — a Pre-Raphaelite artist who came to Spring Creek in November 1852 with the dream of striking it rich, or at the very least, temporarily escaping London’s caustic art critics — explained,

One can scarcely tell without looking closely that he is not in England. Everything seems arranged in much the same way: the people are the chief difference. They mostly wear beards, carry firearms and are immensely independent: they dress something like the prints you have seen of the red French Republicans, much of that loose air and swagger. [4] 

(Meanwhile, back in London, fellow artist Dante Rossetti practically begged Thomas Woolner and his friends for hand-drawn selfies ‘in your present disguises’. Rossetti expected nothing short of a ‘metamorphosis’ to have taken place. [5])

While some diggers dressed more flashly than others, in general, their style promoted social equality. In this context, hirsuteness — especially in the form of a shaggy beard — was a social leveller, and a symbolic release from social expectations. As Seweryn Korzelinski said of his fellow diggers,

…their outward appearance does not signify their previous importance, worth or mental attainments. A colonel pulls up the earth for a sailor; a lawyer wields not a pen but a spade; a priest lends a match to a Negro’s pipe; a doctor rests on the same heap of earth with a Chinaman; many a baron or count has a drink with a Hindu, and all of them hirsute, dusty, and muddy, so that their own mothers would not be able to recognise them. [6]

I’m uncertain whether the spirit that went with growing a beard in 1852 compares to the current resurgence in beard-growing today. I have a feeling that today’s beards are nostalgic for earlier times when men had (or are imagined to have had) greater freedom. One thing I can say: right now, a bunch of blokes I know are having a beard-off; a competition to see not who can grow the longest beard, but simply who can keep a beard the for longest time, and not cave into pressure to shave. And yes, they do have something of a loose air and swagger.

[1] ‘The Ballarat Diggings’, Geelong Advertiser, 16 September 1851, p.2.
[2] Robyn Annear, Nothing But Gold: The Diggers of 1852, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999. Don’t ask me the exact page number right now!
[3] Edward Ridpath, Journal, transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53? [manuscript MS 8759], State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4 [Box also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853], p.48-49.
[4] Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: His Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall, London, 1917, p.18.
[5] D. G. Rossetti, in a letter to Thomas Woolner dated 16 April, 1853, in Woolner, p.51.
[6] Seweryn Korzelinski, Memoirs of gold-digging in Australia, translated and edited by Stanley Robe, foreword and notes by Lloyd Robson, University of Queensland Press, 1979, p.55.

 

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Recent Posts

  • Who were the First People of the Broken River?
  • Aboriginal ‘Kings’ of Benalla
  • Massacre on the Broken River
  • Aboriginal place names around Wangaratta and beyond
  • Revisiting the forgotten world of Victoria’s alpine valleys and ranges: the case for restoring our ancient open woodlands

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