Life in Mining Communities
Read’s discovery of gold sparked news to Dunedin residents and intending immigrants, informing them of gold in this area. Many left their homes and families and traveled long distances for the hope of striking it rich. These goldfields all gave rise to the construction and development of mining towns and communities. At first, these communities were temporarily built, with shops, hotels and miners huts all made from basic canvas or calico material hoisted by timber (Carryer, 1994). As the scope of the goldfields became larger, communities settled and became more permanent. The temporary canvas stores, hotels and huts previously made, were reconstructed with timber and concrete. Evidence such as material artefacts, foundations of huts and buildings, and photographs from the Central Otago goldfields provide us with information about the labour and social roles of men and women in the 19th Century. A restored Chinese Village at Arrowtown is a popular tourist attraction.
Read more about this topic: Central Otago Gold Rush
Famous quotes containing the words life, mining and/or communities:
“for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion
Larger than in life they managed—
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)