Comparing pre and post Gold Rushes of the 1850s in Australia.

For this essay so far, I have decided on focusing on a few sub questions.
- social changes
- economic changes
- political changes
In the end, I'm only going to choose 2 sub questions but I haven't decided yet which 2 I'll choose (depends on how much research I gather on each).

Right now, I've mostly found research on the impact that the Gold Rushes had on Australia afterwards but nothing on what it was like BEFORE the Gold Rushes so I can't do much comparing.

I'm finding a bit of difficulty getting good websites and I have yet to look at some books but I plan to soon.
If anyone could just list a few helpful websites that'd be really good.
Thanks in advance.

For the most reliable information, you should use the internet resources available via your school library. This way, you will be sure of choosing sources that your teacher considers acceptable and that are, indeed, reliable. For books, you can use Google Books.

Have you tried searching for "Gold Rushes of the 1850s in Australia" in Google Books and Google Scholar?

Nope. I haven't searched it up using google books or google scholar but I will now. Thanks for the advice :)

I love Google Books. It's like visiting a library with schizophrenic censors, only without having to leave your house.

This provokes Borgian images for me.

Well before the gold rushes, Australia was a continent in the South Pacific inhabited by Indigenous/Aboriginal peoples. Numerous Asian, Ocieanic, and European traders had visited the continent, but it wasn't 1770 that it was claimed for Britain by Captain Cook. Australia was used as a British penal colony starting in 1788. There were willing immigrants/settlers as well. Any discussion of Australia prior to the gold rushes would need to discuss the three group (Aboriginals, prisoners, and settlers) and what life was like for them.

Sometimes when I look for reliable sites, I'll search out .gov (is the Australian equivalent .au?) and .org endings. Here are a few on Australian history:

postcolonialweb.org/australia/colonialov.html
gutenberg.net.au/aust-history.html
australianhistory.org

Of course I haven't vetted the information contained in any of the sites.

Thanks for the websites Notoman.
I'm just a bit worried that if I discuss about the Aborignals, prisoners and settlers prior to the Gold Rushes I might go over the word limit which is 1000.

I was leaning towards what life was like in general.

The assignment is to compare before and after. The gold rushes devastated aboriginal communities. It ought not be hard to say that succinctly. To do otherwise is to ignore one of the central effects of the gold rushes.

I guess I should have said what the entire question was asking.
it says along the lines of:
"The Gold Rushes of the 1850s was an important turning point in the history of Australia. By comparing pre and post Gold Rushes, how valid is this statement?"

so for me to point out the negative effects that it had on the Aboriginal communities, how would I show it was a turning point?

From my research so far, I'm thinking that it was a turning point for the better...unless it doesn't matter whether it was a turning point for the better or worse.

Does that make sense?

Are not the aboriginal people the original Australians? Was their displacement not a turning point that entirely altered the character of the continent?


For whom? That's always the question in history. Better or worse for whom? Collapsing everybody into a single entity obscures the reality that social processes such as gold rushes have disparate impacts on different groups.

If in fact the Gold Rushes devastated the aboriginal communities, then that was clearly a turning point for both the aboriginal communities (which ever after had considerably less power in Australian society) and for non-aboriginal communities (some of which presumably had more power). How much you want to focus on this depends on how much of a change you think it was. If you believe that the aboriginals had already been fairly well devastated to begin with, and that their decline was being driven by other policies unrelated to the Gold rush as well, then you might conclude that the negative effects on the aboriginal communities were not particularly a turning point for them so much as yet one more negative influence. If, on the other hand, you find that the aboriginal communities were flourishing until the miners showed up, then obviously the impact on them is more worthy of note in your essay.

I did a bit more in-depth research on the Aboriginals and apparently some communities benefitted from the Gold Rushes whilst others were negatively impacted.

Did these mostly balance out overall? If so, the effects on the Aboriginals may not really qualify as a turning point. Or were there substantial changes in the way the Australian government dealt with the aboriginal community overall? If so, then you should probably discuss this in your essay.