Life On The Goldfields

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Life On The Goldfields
By Debbie and Louise
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Homes

• When diggers arrived at a new goldfield buildings
  could not keep up with the expanding population.
• Those who had no houses built shacks and bark
  huts on the cities outskirts.
• The Luxuries were stone fire places so they
  werent cold and didnt have to cook on the open
  goldfields. They had wooden floors to keep their
  belongings out of the mud.

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Children On The Goldfields

• Children started work at a young age
• They played traditional games such as hide and
  seek, chasings, leap frog, skipping, hop scotch,
  marbles and top spinning
• They made their own amusement
• Boys played cricket throughout the summer
• Most children attended school
• Girls were taken as servants from the ages of 12
  -13
• Boys sometimes began work as a herd boy

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Women During The Rush

• There were only few women at the early goldfields
• Some women were diggers, some shop keepers at the
  diggings but most stayed home with their children
• There was always more men than women but it was a
  hard life for all
• The women's work was washing, ironing, sewing and
  cooking
• They made bread and served with butter or jam

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Washing Days

• It was very hard work because the clothes were
  so filthy and caked with mud
• All clothes sheets and towels had to be washed by
  hand
• These are the steps they went through ... Soaked
  the washing in soapy water, scrubbed each piece
  against a washboard to get out the dirt, they
  rinsed everything in clean water, they put the
  washing through a wringer to squeeze out the
  water and then they hung the washing out to dry.

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Dry Washing

• People in the desert found it difficult to wash
  with water so they found a different way to wash
• They put their washing on bushes for two weeks
  and than they hit their cloths with sticks

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Bath Time

• People usually just washed their faces and hands
  then they got dressed
• They bathed once a week on Saturday night
• They warmed the water in a kettle
• Sometimes they put the tub in front of the fire

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Household Tools

• Some of the household tools that they used when
  they were washing and cooking on the goldfields
  were -
• A wooden butter churn
• A variety of washing boards
• A long handle frying pan which could stand over
  the fire, it was known as a spider
• Cooking pots, tin plates ,cups and cutlery
• etc

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Bibliography

• How they lived in the gold rush area
• Daily life on the goldfields
• The gold rushes
• Growing up on the goldfields
• GOOGLE

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We hope you enjoyed Louise Debbie's Slide Show