Eureka Reef
Today I had a fabulous tour of one of the highlights of the old Victorian Goldfields, ‘Eureka Reef’, with archaeologist David Bannear. The old mineworkings are spread over a wide area, amongst tranquil eucalyptus forest. David describes this as a ‘profound landscape’, profound for its historical, industrial, social, geological significance. Its also a battleground between those who want to preserve it as an intact industrial heritage landscape, and those who want to wipe out the past there, and reclaim and regenerate it by planting new trees and native species. With my interest in the ‘alternative nature’ of plants which colonise post-mining landscapes, I found this a really interesting debate. David also described how gold was liberating for the miner compared to copper, as they had the right to keep what they mined (unlike copper-mining, where you were slave to the mine owner). Miners also had access to land rights. The riches of these goldfields fed the British Empire and the Bank of England, as well as establishing the State of Victoria and contributing hugely to the development of Australia.
