Grosse, Frederick. VIEW OF WOOD’S POINT. [Picture], 1864, State Library of Victoria IAN24/02/64/8

Although not as well-known or accessible as the central Victorian goldfields, the Upper Goulburn goldfields were another stop on the well-trodden trail of gold that extended across the globe in the nineteenth century.

From the mid-1850s, small parties of miners had been working the Goulburn and Big Rivers south of Chenery’s station near Mansfield, but limited returns and difficulties getting into the steep and thickly timbered ranges meant there was less interest in this region than there was in central Victoria or further north on the Ovens goldfields.

Map of the Goldfields of Victoria, 1856, State Library of Victoria NLA00/08/56/1

From 1860 new gold discoveries on tributaries of the Goulburn River saw the trickle of gold miners—and the packers and storekeepers who supplied them—gather momentum. With them came a small number of women and families. It was a difficult journey. The tracks to the goldfields were too steep and narrow for wheeled coaches, and so travellers had to walk, ride or cling to a pack horse. Some women and children travelled in panniers strapped to the side of a pack horse as it was thought to be safer, but others made the journey on foot, sometimes in the rain and snow. Despite the rugged terrain and alpine climate, when Grosse’s engraving was published in February 1864 larger numbers of women and families had already joined the miners, packers and storekeepers and were helping to make homes, families and communities on the Upper Goulburn goldfields.

Margaret Hester nee Knopp. Family collection.

Among the families who settled in Woods Point were my great-great grandparents, John Knopp and Catherine Foley, who emigrated separately from Germany and Ireland in the 1860s. In 2006 I inherited a scrapbook that their daughter Margaret began compiling in 1884 when she was living in Woods Point. As I studied this intriguing family heirloom I became curious about Margaret and the 1860s gold rush that brought her parents to the region. My initial research on the scrapbook (now in the collection of Museum Victoria) led me to complete a doctorate in history at Monash University with a thesis on Women and Community on the Upper Goulburn Goldfields.

Within the collections of libraries, archives and museums I found accounts of women holding tight to pack horses as they were carried up and down the steep tracks that miners and packers had cut through the forest to reach the diggings. I studied illustrations and descriptions of the canvas tents and timber huts women furnished from belongings they’d carried with them, made by hand, or purchased from storekeepers on the goldfields and nearby towns. Using my family history skills, I cross-referenced birth registrations and inquest files and pieced together an informal network of mothers and midwives, some of whom had probably met on other goldfields. Reading one miner’s letters to his mother and siblings in England I was captivated by the ordinary intimacy of family life on the nearby Raspberry Creek goldfields. I scrolled through the local newspapers on microfilm and searched Trove looking for evidence of women’s work in hotels and stores, as well as their unpaid fundraising activities for schools, churches and hospitals. I may have become more than a little obsessed with one performer who entertained goldfield audiences and ran hotels, and who later found herself stranded on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) for several months in 1872. Reading men’s recollections of the Upper Goulburn goldfields, I observed that women were often depicted as flirtatious barmaids or disreputable hotel keepers, while a poet and journalist who grew up in Woods Point looked beyond these archetypes to the varied circumstances that brought her mother and other women to the region.

Louise Blake. Woods Point, 2017.

When I visited Woods Point for the first time—a township irrevocably changed by the Black Friday bushfires in 1939—I saw a different view to that of Frederick Grosse.

My Woods Point had been populated by fascinating, complex women of all ages and from a variety of backgrounds who—for short or long periods— raised their families in the timber cottages that once lined the banks of the Goulburn River, who tended the terraced gardens on the hillsides, who navigated the unmade streets at all hours to care for other women and children whose families could not afford a doctor’s fee, who worked in the hotels and stores along Scott and Bridge streets, who trod the boards or made the refreshments for the fundraising concerts that supported the churches, schools, and hospital, as well as those who found themselves deserted, destitute and imprisoned for vagrancy.

On this site you will find more stories about the fascinating women who made homes, families, and communities on the Upper Goulburn Goldfields.

If you would like more information or have stories you’d like to share, please contact me.

Image credits

Unknown photographer. Woods Point, ca. 1865. Courtesy Rudi Paoletti.

Grosse, Frederick. VIEW OF WOOD’S POINT. [Picture], 1864, State Library of Victoria IAN24/02/64/8
Map of the Goldfields of Victoria, 1856, State Library of Victoria NLA00/08/56/1

Unknown artist. Margaret Hester nee Knopp (1870-1937), n.d. Author’s collection.

Louise Blake, Woods Point, 2017. Author’s collection.

My video Letters to Aunt Patsy highlighted a letter written in 1916 by an eight-year-old girl called Lucy who lived in Woods Point, one of the gold mining towns that features in my doctoral research on Women and Community on the Upper Goulburn Goldfields. Lucy’s letter was addressed to ‘Aunt Patsy’ who edited ‘The Children’s Corner’ in the Advocate, a weekly newspaper for Catholic readers established by journalist Samuel Winter in 1868 and later produced by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. Children from around Victoria wrote to ‘Aunt Patsy’ about their homes, family life, friends, progress at school, and church activities, as well as expressing interest and support for the Catholic charities that ‘Aunt Patsy’ supported.

Like many historic Australian newspapers, digitised copies of the Advocate (between 1868 and 1954) can now be searched online using Trove. When deciding which of the ‘Aunt Patsy’ letters to feature in my Children’s Week video, I narrowed my keyword search to Woods Point, the town where Aunt Patsy herself – author Marion Miller Knowles – spent her childhood. (Marion later taught at Box Hill State School, the school featured in another of the videos on the Write on Time website.) Lucy and her siblings were among several children from Woods Point who had their letters published in ‘The Children’s Corner’, and ‘Aunt Patsy’/Marion Miller Knowles often responded with a few memories of the town and families like Lucy’s. Marion Miller Knowles retired from the Advocate in 1927 but ‘The Children’s Corner’ — and letters from children — continued under new editor ‘Kango’.

The ‘Aunt Patsy’ letters are important because they give us some insight into the everyday lives of children in towns throughout Victoria in the early part of the twentieth century, written by the children themselves. Spanning the period of World War One and the 1919 influenza pandemic, the letters are also a poignant reminder of how these events affected individual families. For family and local historians — or anyone — with an interest in family life in Victoria in this period, they are a valuable source.

My thanks to PHA (Vic & Tas) who — in partnership with the Victorian Government — produced the video, lesson plans, and Write on Time: The Forgotten Craft of Letter Writing for Kids website.

Header image:

Dale, Charles William. Woods Point [picture], 1907, State Library of Victoria H36372