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Striking Gold: A Visual History
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From State Library of Victoria News No. 20, June 2002 - September 2002
One of the highlights of the State Library's Pictures Collection is the wonderful album of albumen silver photographs of goldrush-era Bendigo by Benjamin Pierce Batchelder. A new book, An American on the Goldfields, reproduces 52 images taken by the Batchelder Studio in the early 1860s, images that illustrate the growth of Bendigo from a rambling canvas town to a thriving, prosperous city.
In 1851, rich deposits of gold were discovered in Central Victoria, and by 1852 there were 50,000 diggers camped along the Bendigo Creek. As prosperity increased, the tent city 100 miles to the north of Melbourne became a self-supporting metropolis, and by the end of the 1850s Bendigo boasted many fine buildings. |
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In 1861, the Sandhurst (Bendigo) Town Council commissioned the firm of the American photographer Benjamin Pierce Batchelder to take a series of photographs of the new city, the object of which was to showcase Bendigo to the world at the 1862 London International Exhibition. The Argus newspaper reported:
On Saturday, Mr. Batchelder exhibited in his window a series of views taken by him...for the purpose of being forwarded to the London exhibition. They are really excellent, and will give a good idea to our antipodean brethren of how we live and that we are not all still 'dwellers in tents.
The Batchelder album, which has survived 140 years, is one of the great treasures of the State Library of Victoria. It was presented to the Library as a gift of the Commonwealth Government in 1931 after a long period languishing in the Liverpool Museum. |
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Published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold in Bendigo, An American on the Goldfields is the result of a happy collaboration between the City of Greater Bendigo and the State Library of Victoria with historians Mike Butcher and Yolande Collins. The images are superbly reproduced, and illustrate with startling clarity how Bendigo was built on top of goldmines - in some of the photographs, slag heaps are visible on one side of the road, while colonial buildings sit in stately elegance on the other. Just by looking at views of Sayer Brothers' Norfolk Brewery, the Bee-Hive Store in Pall Mall, or the Criterion Family Hotel in Mundy Street, one is transported back to that boom-time of the goldrush era. In the words of the late Bendigo historian Frank Cusack, to whom the book is fondly dedicated, An American on the Goldfields shows the 'lively civic consciousness' that is still evident in Bendigo today.
It is wonderful that these rare images of Bendigo are now accessible not only to Bendigoians, but to anyone interested in the history of this important Victorian city.
Note: An American on the Goldfields: The Bendigo Photographs of Benjamin Pierce Batchelder by Mike Butcher and Yolande MJ Collins is published by Holland House for the City of Greater Bendigo and the State Library of Victoria, and can be purchased through the Library's online shop.
Illustrations
Left: Sayer Brothers' Norfolk Brewery, Bridge Street, Sandhurst.
Right: Joseph Nash, International Exhibition, London 1862. This exhibition featured a huge pillar of gold from the Victorian goldfields. |
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