Goldfields and the gothic : A hidden heritage & folklore
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Generations of Australians have grown up with the legend of Eureka and the familiar images of the gold rush in central Victoria. However, underneath these commonly known stories lies a stranger and darker past. As well as colonists, pioneers, soldiers and rebal miners, the colonial goldfields were home to spiritualists, secret societies, ghost-hoxers, bunyip legends and murderers. There are also the stories of those often forgotten in the goldfield histories - Indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, homosexuals, and the mentally ill. 'Goldfields and the gothic' is an anthology by local historians of the long buried legends, histories and folklore of the Victorian goldfields and their legacy today. Every historian has a collection of strange, buried pieces of history; this work begins the task of bringing them into the light.
Homosexuality on the goldfields
- Authors: Pola, Brian , Waldron, David , Waldron, Gabriel
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Goldfields and the gothic : A hidden heritage & folklore p. 87-101
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: There has been significant new literature on the experience of women and lesbians on the Goldfields but very little has been published on the experience of homosexual men. However, despite being a capital offence until 1864 and a criminal act until the 1980s, records from the mid-ninteenth-century indicate there was a well-established, perhaps even flourishing, culture of male homosexuality on Victoria's Goldfields. This culture had its origins in the long established and distinct underground 'gay' subculture of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century of Great Britain, 'Molly houses'. These illegal bars and taverns, essentially served a function as the gay bars of their day.
Playing the ghost : ghost hoaxing and supernaturalism in nineteenth-century Victoria
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Goldfields and the gothic : A hidden heritage & folklore p. 19-30
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Ghosts have long been a popular subject in central Victoria. Even in the late Goldfields era, belief in ghosts, ghost stories and hauntings were popular subjects for entertainment and attracted significant attention in the printed press and public gatherings and lectures. In a sense Ballarat was a 'haunted' city from very early in its coloniel history. With such a demand and popular interest in ghosts, Ballarat also became a hot bed of spiritualism and ghost hoaxing. This paper examines the history and context of ghost hoaxing in nineteenth-century colonial Victoria with a focus on Ballarat and the central Victorian region.
Playing the ghost : Ghost hoaxing and supernaturalism in late Ninteenth-Century Victoria
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria Vol. , no. 13 (2014), p.
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- Reviewed:
- Description: On the night of Wednesday 29 May 1895, two young ladies were approached by a spectral figure clad in black robes, with arms and face covered in phosphorescent paint. This individual frequently patrolled the area around Sturt Street and Dana Street in Ballarat attempting to harass young women. A search of newspaper articles from this period indicates a wide-spread proliferation of ghost hoaxing, referred to as ‘playing the ghost’, between the 1870s and World War I, with a particular focus on the Ballarat region in central Victoria. This extraordinary behaviour occurred in the context of the rising popularity of spiritualism, which challenged traditional notions of the role of the dead, as well as a similar proliferation of ghost and monster hoaxing in Britain, perhaps best exemplified by the character of Spring Heeled Jack. This paper examines the phenomenon of ghost hoaxing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Victoria through its reportage in the print media of the era, with a focus on the causes and legacies of the phenomenon in the broader cultural context of central Victoria and the Goldfields region.