Name: Grass Widows: The Communities Connected to the Goldfields from Afar
Start: 2025-03-14T17:30:00+11:00
End: 2025-03-14T19:00:00+11:00
Location: Australian Centre for Gold Rush Collections, Bradshaw Street, Ballarat, VIC, Australia, Victoria 3350

Grass Widows: The Communities Connected to the Goldfields from Afar

The phenomenon of ‘grass widows’ of the 1850s gold rushes offer an area of understanding on how communities of people experienced the goldfields from afar.
As sweethearts left in Adelaide, or wives left in Geelong, people formed connections to the goldfields through their friends and family who went there. Women’s experiences of ‘grass widow-hood' are vital to understandings of the gendered impact of the goldfields, but also of the wide reaching effects of the gold rushes.
In a special History Matters presentation for Women's History Month, PhD candidate Sharni Brownbridge explores how women, men and families navigated the effects which the gold rushes had on family structures and what sources can tell us about them.