In April we continued our journey by looking at a 1950s movie made in the Benalla district about the Kelly Outbreak. I posed the theory that the last stand at Glenrowan represented a bank robbery gone wrong, unlike Ned’s previous successful robberies at Euroa and Jerilderie. The gang had been on the run for sixteen months and were broke and exhausted when they planned one last heist in Benalla, perhaps planning on moving interstate to start fresh lives afterwards. But at Glenrowan, initially intended to be a diversion of police power prior to the robbery the next day, absolutely everything went wrong that could possibly happen. The resultant chaos led to the gang’s deaths and Ned’s capture. I can recommend the recent book Glenrowan by Ian W Shaw, available in our local library, for a well-researched narrative of the gang’s last two years of mayhem.
We moved onto looking at The Big Hole in the Ground, a summary of how mining has dominated our economy and opportunities. Prospecting for gold was dominated by individuals and small groups of around five men who moved across Victoria looking for new fields throughout the nineteenth century. We looked at short videos of the Kalgoorlie gold rushes of the late 1890s comparing them to the earlier Victorian rushes in the 1850s. But Deep lead mining took over and we moved onto the more dangerous job of mining copper up to 1000feet underground for large companies. The 1912 Mine disaster at Mt Lyall in Tasmania and the 1946 strike at the Mt Isa copper mines in Queensland provided some interesting contrast to gold mining. Amazing footage exists of these incidents that helps us go back in time to better relive these incidents.
Meg Dillon
We moved onto looking at The Big Hole in the Ground, a summary of how mining has dominated our economy and opportunities. Prospecting for gold was dominated by individuals and small groups of around five men who moved across Victoria looking for new fields throughout the nineteenth century. We looked at short videos of the Kalgoorlie gold rushes of the late 1890s comparing them to the earlier Victorian rushes in the 1850s. But Deep lead mining took over and we moved onto the more dangerous job of mining copper up to 1000feet underground for large companies. The 1912 Mine disaster at Mt Lyall in Tasmania and the 1946 strike at the Mt Isa copper mines in Queensland provided some interesting contrast to gold mining. Amazing footage exists of these incidents that helps us go back in time to better relive these incidents.
Meg Dillon
RSS Feed
