By Tess Mitchell |
Women's Role on the Gold fields
Families in 1851 we're pretty poor so their husbands went to live and work at the diggings, to leave the women to do all the work. Most women stayed home to support their families and look after the children, because there weren't many women present on the gold fields. Some women worked at small shops at the digging site selling liquor, jam etc. Work included cooking, washing and ironing. They made many staple food items like bread, butter, jam as well as clothing. A typical day of a women in the gold fields is waking up at dawn to re-stoke the fire, make simple breakfast, milk the cows and separate cream and churn the butter. Then they would usually work in veggie patches, as well as knitting items and washing clothes.
Women's rightsThere were 600,000 people who arrived in Victoria between 1851 and 1860 and only 160,000 women were among them. Women came to Australia because they felt the country offered a chance for a better life, and they could live more freely. In fact thats exactly what happened, women living in Australia lived a more active and happy life that they would've in England.
Anastasia Withers Anastasia withers was born in Bristol and is the daughter of Me and Mrs Spain. She was married to Samuel Edward in 1841 and had daughter together and when she was only 15 months old they sold their Manchester shop and commenced to Victoria. On the year they arrived at Melbourne, 1851, their son was born Samuel Edward Junior. They then travelled to the gold diggings in Bendigo, in which Mrs Withers was the woman on the fields. During 1853-54 in the great diggers' uprising Anastasia sewed the Southern Cross flag with the help of Anne Duke and possibly Anastasia Hayes who was the wife of Peter Lalor's mining mate Timothy Hayes. It was rumoured that the authorities were actually looking for Anastasia as the maker of the rebel flag, so the family fled to Moyston where Samuel set up an orchard (which was called Bristol Orcahrd after Anastasia's brith-place). She died in 1889 at the age of 64 after Samuels death on 1883, they both died at the same age and were buried at Moyston.
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FactsThere was a major imbalance of genders on the goldfields starting with only around 10 women as apposed to 600 men, but as years when on there was more of balance and women were treated better.
To see women on the hold fields was seen to be a rare sight because gold digging was basically for men. Anne DukeAnne Duke was born in County Meath, Ireland and is the second youngest daughter of James and Bridget Gaynor. She came to Australia with her family on the bounty emigrant ship William Sharples and arrived at Sydney in 1842. A few years later they moved to Bendigo, she was one of the women who helped sew the miners' flag used in the Eureka Stockade while she was nine months pregnant. Anne Duke was present during the battle and it was said that she was dodging bullets behind a trunk in the Duke tent.
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