Rivers of Gold

Join the Heritage Council of Victoria as we present a ‘virtual’ talk in the Waterfront 2021 program.
As part of Melbourne Design Week, tune in to see Professor Susan Lawrence present a fascinating talk on the legacy of the goldrush’s environmental disruption on the present and future of Victoria’s waterways.
https://lnkd.in/dje3V32
#Waterfront2021 #MelbourneDesignWeek #OpenHouseMelbourne #NGV #Waterfront #Design #Melbourne

Waterfront: Victoria’s Rivers and the Gold Rush

The International Print Exchange is having its first Victorian show at the La Trobe Art Institute, View St, Bendigo, 17 February-28 March.  The opening was held in conjunction with an art-science colloquium that brought together the Rivers of Gold team with Traditional Owners, leading scholars on gold rush history and contemporary life-of-mine issues.

The Rivers of Gold International Print Portfolio and Exchange has just been reviewed on the Print Council of Australia’s blog.  The review follows the successful exhibition of the portfolio by Jennifer Stuerzl at the Queensland College of Art’s Project Gallery in Brisbane.

Plans are also afoot for the La Trobe exhibition of the portfolio in February 2020, so stay tuned.

Print Council of Australia review

We spent three days in October visiting sludge sites along the Loddon and taking soil samples for analysis.

Francesco taking pXRF readings on the Loddon at Yando

The first of the exhibitions of the prints produced for the Rivers of Gold International Print Portfolio and Exchange is about to open in Gympie, Queensland.  Jude Macklin has led this art-science collaboration as part of the Rivers of Gold project  and the Gympie show is curated by Jennifer Stuerzl of the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane.

Get in to see it at the Gympie Regional Gallery, 18 July – 11 August 2018 https://www.gympie.qld.gov.au/gallery

More information about the Collaboration, including dates for shows in other centres around the world, is at https://rivers-of-gold.com/art-science-collaboration/

Three pieces of pottery from beneath the sludge.

Field sampling with the pXRF at Newstead.

A piece of Chinese pottery buried in the gravels of the river bank.

In April we returned to the banks of the Loddon River at Newstead.  While we were doing our sampling we found three pieces of pottery in the gravels beneath two metres of sludge.  One piece of pottery is English and the other two are from Chinese food containers.  They probably came down the river from the Chinese camp at Guildford.

Rivers of Gold welcomes Francesco Colombi to the project.  Francesco has come from Italy to take up a PhD scholarship.  He will be based at La Trobe’s Albury-Wodonga campus in the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution.  Francesco graduated with a Masters degree from the University of Rome, La Sapienza in 2015 after writing a thesis on the petrography, geochemistry and isotopic composition of volcanic rocks from NE Algeria.  He is looking forward to learning more about the natural processes in Victoria’s mining soils are acting today.

On Wednesday evening Susan gave a talk in the History Seminar at ANU, sponsored by the Centre for Environmental History.  Thanks to Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin for organising.

On Monday Susan had the opportunity to visit Araluen, NSW with Dr Barry McGowan and Peter Smith, President of the Braidwood Historical Society.  We saw sand slugs in Araluen Creek and stacked mounds of gravel on the floodplains.  These are tailings from dredging in the early twentieth century.  How far downstream has it gone I wonder?