Ballarat West’s mining story

A SECOND volume in Doug Bradby’s series, The Astonishing History of Ballarat hit the shelves of bookshops across town on Friday afternoon.

This volume sees Bradby tell the story of mining and development in Ballarat West between 1856 and 1883, and particularly the arrival of industry.

Volume one, released in December 2017, had a specific focus on 1851 to 1855 – the discovery of gold in Ballarat East and the challenges of chasing buried rivers.

Both volumes have been timelessly and whimsically illustrated by Carson Ellis, a former history student of Bradby’s at North Tech.

Bradby said this series is all about the people of Ballarat who had no clues how to find gold within the flat land, but still brilliantly found it.

He hopes readers will reflect as they follow the journey of the mining community.

“They weren’t angels, but they weren’t devils either. They did achieve some incredible things and left a democratic community,” he said.

“The Ballarat goldfields are unbelievably complex. Miners were thinkers, then they were hard workers. I don’t think it’s about luck.”

Bradby has lived and breathed Ballarat mining history all his life.

While a student at Urquhart Street Primary School, he would play on mullock heaps, knowing his grandfather had built Poppet Head frames for mineshafts.

He’s lived opposite the Buninyong Gold Mine in an original miners’ church for 40 years and enjoys constant research, devouring the National Library’s digital Trove database.

Bradby is looking forward to volume three of his series in 2019, which will cover the final phase of Ballarat’s mining boom – the quartz era – 1883 to 1920.

The Astonishing History of Ballarat is available at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, the Ballarat Shop, Crawford’s Pharmacy and booksellers across the CBD.