Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Small gold minehead without shelter and seven miners, Gulgong

Small gold minehead without shelter and seven miners, Gulgong

1872
Glass photonegative

English novelist Anthony Trollope visited the Gulgong goldfield in October 1871 and described its miners:

Of the men around me some were miners working for wages and some were shareholders, each probably with a large stake in the concern. I could not in the least tell which was which. They were all dressed alike … The yellow, clay-stained fustian trousers which have never made and never will make acquaintance with the wash-tub, invest the lower extremities of every two men out of three …

Miners working for wages were paid from £2 10s to £3 a week.

From the Australian Town and Country Journal, 16 March 1872

The diggers wear mostly a fancy twill shirt, mole-skin trousers, a rough felt hat, and 6s 6d bluchers. Give each a tin billy and a pair of blankets ; give to some a tent, and you have the external appearance of the great bulk of the population of Gulgong. The mole-skin trousers are of a yellow cast from the colour of the wash-stuff out of the shafts. If a loafer's trousers happen by accident to have a whitish hue, he will take care to roll them in some of this wash-stuff as a make believe to the townspeople and police that he is actually at work in a golden hole. [Australian Town and Country Journal, 16 March 1872, p13]