Golden Days on the Caledonian Diggings

Description

66 pp. by Mick Woiwod, Andrew Ross Museum, 2005.

The discovery of gold in the Stringy-bark Forest a few miles east of Kangaroo Ground in 1854, brought substantial changes to the district. Very little had survived about day-to-day living on these goldfields until the museum was presented with the Diary of Thomas Young (1821-1910) who, between June 1865 and July 1866, had carted ore between the district’s various working mines and Nickinson’ crusher in Panton Hill. In between times Thomas wrote about daily life on the Caledonian field and of how he and his wife, Brigid, raised their large family in a basic bark-and-slab hut in a bush clearing.