Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Bark house with women & children, Gulgong area

Bark house with women & children, Gulgong area

1872
Glass photonegative

Temporary bark huts were a feature of goldfields life, as they were quick and easy to build. For a traveller, the first sign of a nearby rush town was usually the large number of trees stripped of their bark. D81, 28 May 1872, observed that:

A considerable number of married persons with families appear to have taken to gold-digging as an occupation. It is certainly not a very congenial one for them as respects the comfort and the interests of the younger and weaker members of their households.

From Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, Vol 1

“The great attraction proposed to one visiting a rush seemed to consist in the sight of a congregating together of a great many men, without any of the ordinary comforts of life, and with but few of those appliances which are generally regarded as necessaries. I was told there were 12,000 people at Gullgong, all of whom had collected themselves thither within a few months... I confess that I felt an interest in seeing a town without streets, and people collected together with houses made of canvas and rough boards,—an interest akin to that which induces others to see a criminal hung.” [Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, Vol 1 pp64-5]