Weight Watching

It’s been said that the people who made their fortunes during the gold rushes of the 1850s were those selling the shovels, not the ones digging. These scales were used in the store of Edmund Webb at Bathurst, whose general warehouse business prospered when the gold find at the Ophir goldfields was proclaimed in May […]

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Weighing the Riches

Throughout the nineteenth century the various goldfields near Rockley all experienced a number of rushes as miners reacted to new discoveries and went in search of the latest Eldorado. Stores were established on the larger fields to supply miners with life’s necessities and where miners could sell their gold. Scales such as this one would […]

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Drysdale’s German Shopkeeper

The budding gardener in this photograph, Gustav (Gus) Friedrich Wagner (1881-1950) was the third of the six children of Peter Christian Wagner and his wife, Johanna Hermina ‘Mina’ (nee Rosler). Gus would become a mainstay of Jindera society, operating Wagner’s store for 36 years until his death and was reputedly the subject of Russell Drysdale’s […]

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