Sludge
Subtitle: disaster on victoria's goldfields
By: Lawrence Susan & Peter Davies
Publisher: La Trobe University Press
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Carlton, Vic
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9781760641108
Subjects: Gold mines and mining; History; Environmental aspects
Description: Everyone knows gold made Victoria rich. But did you know gold mining was disastrous for the land, engulfing it in floods of sand, gravel and silt that gushed out of the mines? Or that this environmental devastation still affects our rivers and floodplains? Victorians had a name for this mining waste: 'sludge'. Sludge submerged Victoria's best grapevines near Bendigo, filled Laanecoorie Reservoir on the Loddon River and flowed down from Beechworth over thousands of hectares of rich agricultural land. Children and animals drowned in sludge lakes. This book is the compelling story of the forgotten filth that plagued nineteenth-century Victoria. It exposes the big dirty secret of Victoria's mining history - the way it transformed the state's water and land, and how the battle against sludge helped lay the ground for the modern environmental movement.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: 1. Sludge; title: 2. Mining; title: 3. Water; title: 4. Fist fights and water rights; title: 5. The sludge question; title: 6. Turning the tide; title: 7. Aftermath; title: Conclusion.