Canvas City in Melbourne, 1850s
I am forever grateful to Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacy who sat down in 1850-something and wrote a detailed account of her trip to the state of Victoria in Australia and then published it under the title of A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53.
I am equally grateful to Michael Hart, who invented e-books in 1971 and went on to found Project Gutenberg, making thousands of e-books available for free online, including Mrs. Clacy’s book. Thank you to those who continue this legacy.
Forgive the pun, but her book was for me a gold mine of information on what it was like for a woman in the Gold Rush of that time and place. Details, such as the route taken from Melbourne to Bendigo, with all the possible stops and dangers on the way, including how much it cost to stay at an inn, to pay for a meal, to rent a horse, etc. etc. These details added invaluable authenticity to my novel. If you want to read Mrs. Clacy’s book and find out more, here is the link: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4054/pg4054-images.html
There is a bibliography at the end of my novel where you find more online sources such as “Notes of a Gold-Digger,” “Daily life on the Goldfields,” and “Bush Cookery from Caroline Chisholm.” There is such a wealth of information online about the Australian Gold Rush and I have only scratched the surface to find a few flakes of gold for my novel. If I’d dug any deeper though, my novel would never have been written.
Please come to my launch of Maid of Gold if you are in Victoria (not Victoria, Australia but Victoria, BC, Canada)
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