Victorian gold
The gold rush and its impact on cultural life

ST Gill
born England 1818, died Australia 1880

Sunday on the diggings c. 1865
pencil on paper
17.5 x 25.3 cm (sheet)
The University of Melbourne Art Collection
Gift of the Russell and Mab Grimwade Bequest 1973
1973.0242

"Men accustomed to the wild freedom of bush life will not listen patiently to a half hour’s harangue without point or meaning, and delivered in a tone of monotony and lifelessness … Diggers have neither wooden heads nor rocky hearts. In town a man goes to church because it is proper and respectable; at the diggings he goes from curiosity, or a sense of duty. "

James Bonwick, Australian Gold Digger’s Monthly Magazine and Colonial Family Visitor, Melbourne, 1852.

Cited Tipping, M, An Artist on the Goldfields. The Diary of Eugène von Guérard, Victoria, 1982, p. 17.

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