Queer Goldfields advises that the articles presented as part of this project may include past attitudes and may contain information which may be culturally insensitive. It may include words and terms which are offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people of African or Asian descent and LGBTIQA+ folk.
These articles are a record of the past and it should be viewed and interpreted in that context. It may include images and names of deceased people. This material does not reflect the views of City of Ballarat or Federation University.
The first phase of the Queer Goldfields project was a collaboration between the City of Ballarat and Federation University.
Federation University is now the sole owner of the Queer Goldfields project.
One of the important discoveries this project has made is that there are recorded instances where gender diverse people are taking actions to affirm their gender beyond clothing and hairstyles. We have found instances of a people assigned female at birth regularly shaving their upper lip to obtain a moustache and others binding their chest to give it a flattened appearance.
Queer Goldfields would like to thank the following people for their assistance with this project (acknowledgements are in alphabetical order):
Jacobin Bosman, PhD candidate, University of Melbourne
William Dealy, for sharing his research on Ellen Maguire, The Great Eastern at the Australian Queer Archives History Conference
Nicole Jenkins, Australian fashion historian: https://nicolejenkins.com/
Dr Robert Reid, Australian theatre historian
Thanks also to:
Bendigo Historical Society:
https://www.bendigohistory.com/
Friends of Coburg Cemetery: https://friendsofcoburgcemetery.com/
Rosemary Reddick, President and the Friends of Cheltenham and Regional Cemeteries Inc. www.focrc.org
Adele Thomson, Facilities and Property Officer
Warrumbungle Shire Council
Carmel Turner and the Friends of the Colbinabbin Cemetery: Friends of the Colbinabbin Cemetery | Facebook
Our sensitivity readers:
Vanessa Bowen
Gabriella Labucci
Dr Sean Mulcahy
Dr Sophie Pilbeam
Anabel Pitt
Cheryl Szöllősi
Richard Watts, OAM
We would also like to acknowledge:
The Australian Queer Archives for all the hard work they do preserving LGBTIQA+ history and for their annual AQUA history conference https://queerarchives.org.au/
The State Library of Victoria for making their collection of images out of copyright free and available to use https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/
The Victorian Collections website for making accessible items from museums, archives, historical societies and galleries all around Victoria https://victoriancollections.net.au/
and Museums Victoria for so generously sharing their collections out of copyright too https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/
And finally, many thanks to local artist Leticia Yates whose research into a cross-dressing party at Lake Wendouree in the 1980s (through the Queer-ways: Retracing Queer Footprints project, by LUCIANO and George Keats: https://www.queerways.au/) and the subsequent artwork she painted inspired this project.
Please reach out to us at pride@ballarat.vic.gov.au if you cannot find an answer to your question on this page.
We looked for articles in Victorian papers from 1800-1900 that laid out circumstances that could imply that the people featured were, in modern phrasing, LGBTIQA+.
Terms and ideas about identity change all the time, and thus for historians, it is very difficult to assign modern labels to historic people. While we may see them as gay men, or lesbian women, or transgender or non binary people, they might not have seen themselves that way.
Compounding this, people from history rarely wrote journals about themselves detailing their sexual preferences or gender identity. This means we only have 'secondary' sources, meaning we can only glean details of their lives through other people's accounts of them, which are always tinged with the writer's biases, as well as the biases from the society, class and culture those writers come from.
So we've called this the Queer Goldfields project, deliberately choosing to use the word 'queer' to encompass the mysterious people, the strange people, the unusual people as well as the LGBTIQA+ people.
The Queer Goldfields project recognises the difficulty of assigning modern terms to historic people, but our decision to do so is influenced by the project itself. We are researching and presenting stories of our queer ancestors, to ensure they are remembered and to show that LGBTIQA+ people have always been present in every society. Thus to make it easier for our modern readers, we have assigned modern labels to the stories we have found and the people they refer to.
Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/
Trove is a website that holds scans of almost every newspaper ever printed in Australia, since newspapers were first printed. It is a single point of entry to a treasure trove of artefacts, curiosities and stories from Australia’s cultural, community and research institutions.
Trove connects a visitor or researcher to their site to digital collections from hundreds of Trove Partners across Australia, including libraries, museums, galleries, the media, government and community organisations and more.
Not at all! This is only a sample from newspapers in Victoria. There are more articles, histories and people to find from Victoria, from other states and from all over the world!
There are massive gaps in the knowledge about pre-colonisation Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander life, including detailed information about genders and sexualities.
In consultation with First Nations people, we decided that including articles about Indigenous people published during 1800-1900 and written with colonial biases of the time were not appropriate for this project.
While the primary focus of this project is on people in Victoria from 1800-1900, it is important to recognise that people on the goldfields were also exposed to stories about LGBTIQA+ people interstate and overseas through the newspapers.
Learning about different sexualities and genders helps people understand their own, and helps them feel less alone in the world. So including articles they might have read about similar people in other places was important in this project too.
This is a limitation of the website software we're using. While we'd love to have the articles displayed in chronological order, the website loads them up in order of the date the post is published. Currently, this can't be changed, but we are looking to find solutions.
Because words like 'lesbian' and 'gay' were not used in the time period we are looking at, it can seem like an impossible task to find articles about LGBTIQA+ people. But there are lots of search words you can use to find them. Please be aware that some of these terms can be hurtful to modern people.
Search terms included:
If you are just interested in Victorian people, you can click on the tag Victorian (VIC), or you can see people from other states in Australia (AU)
You can also see people in specific Victorian towns:
Our international folks can be found on the International tag, or by country:
These articles were all copy and pasted from the various newspapers on Trove, which displays them as they were originally printed, in thin columns. While we have attempted to change the formatting to a wider line that is more suited to a website, we may have missed a couple.
The photos are mostly from the State Library of Victoria's collection. There are also photos from the Museums Victoria's collection and from the Victorian Collections website.
Where possible, we have used photos of the actual people in each article. However, a lot of the people featured were not photographed, or if they were, their photos have been lost to history. In these cases, we have used photos of unknown people from the collections above. Whether the photo is of the actual person or an unknown person is clearly stated under each image.
That's exciting! We're always glad to find out more about LGBTIQA+ people in the past. The person needs to have been born between 1800-1900 and/or appear in a Victorian newspaper or other reference of the time. If your person fits these criteria, we'd love to hear from you! Please email us at pride@ballarat.vic.gov.au
While we have worked hard to ensure that all photos are out of copyright and of unknown subjects, if you wish to request having a photo taken down, please let us know via email to pride@ballarat.vic.gov.au
Copyright © 2024 Queer Goldfields - All Rights Reserved.
Need support?
QLife on 1800 184 527 or qlife.org.au/get-help 3pm-midnight every day.
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN on 13 92 76 or 13yarn.org.au
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