Bücher von Susan Lawrence

Everyone knows gold made Victoria rich. But did you know gold mining was disastrous for the land, engulfing it in floods of sand, gravel and silt that gushed out of the mines? Or that this environmental devastation still affects our rivers and floodplains? Victorians had a name for this mining waste: 'sludge'. Sludge submerged Victoria's best grapevines near Bendigo, filled Laanecoorie Reservoir on the Loddon River and flowed down from Beechworth over thousands of hectares of rich agricultural land. Children and animals drowned in sludge lakes. This book is the compelling story of the forgotten filth that plagued nineteenth-century Victoria. It exposes the big dirty secret of Victoria's mining history - the way it transformed the state's water and land, and how the battle against sludge helped lay the ground for the modern environmental movement.

This overview of Australian post-contact history uses material objects such as artefacts, buildings, and landscapes. The book offers broad geographic and temporal coverage, and social themes such as gender, status, ethnicity and identity inform every chapter.