Life in the 1850’s

Life in the 1850’s was TERRIBLE! Woman had very different rights to men. Woman weren’t allowed to vote or dig for gold and overall, it was REALLY UNFAIR for woman! Woman had to cook and clean for men. Men dug for gold. There were lots of diseases during the 1850’s and there weren’t many cures for them. A lot if children died very young because of these diseases and some were only 10 months old. There were also lots of cave ins at the mines. There also weren’t very clean water to drink.

Gold licence

In the 1850s a lot of thing were unfair for the miners. Miners could not vote in the government. The miners had to buy miners rights to mine for gold and if they didn’t have a licence they would go to jail. The licence cost 30 shilling per month for a claim that was about 5.5 square metres.

Gold Rush

The first gold nugget that was found in Ballarat in 1851. The discovery of gold in Ballarat attracted THOUSANDS of people to the gold fields. The gold rush population peaked at almost 60,000, mostly male diggers. People traveled for months to get to the digging and some died along the way to the diggings.

 

Eureka stockade

 

In the early 1850’s, gold miners had to buy expensive licences so they could dig for gold. It was very unfair for the miners so they protested. But the government sent more police to enforce the law. This was so unfair that the miners decided to build a stockade at eureka and defend against the government. The miners made a flag that represents the southern cross and it was called the Eureka Flag.

  

Diorama

This term we have been making a replica of Sovereign Hill and we have been working in partners. We had to use lots of PLAs to finish our building. My partner was Holly and we chose the Candle Shop to build for our diorama. We had to use a lot of resilience throughout the term while we  were building our diorama. We had to use resilience because our shelves for candles kept on falling down, some of the shelves did not stick back on! At the start of the project we started painting the boxes that Holly brought in from home. We painted the box blue to represent the actual candle shop. Next we painted the inside instead of using wallpaper like a lot of people. We next started to work on the inside of our building by cutting out a piece of cardboard for the counter. We used clay to make the shelves for the candles.

My favourite part of the diorama was the start because that was when we started to plan! We looked up pictures of the candle shop and tried to make our shop look like it. The first thing I notice was that the building was painted the colour blue. We notice that they had shelves for the candles.

Another PLA we had to use collaboration because then we could work together and do the best we could do. If we didn’t use collaboration then we would be arguing all the time and then we might not get our diorama finished.diorama

What would you do if you found gold?