Sludge

Resource Information

The work Sludge represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Randwick City Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Sludge

Creator

• Davies, Peter

Subject

• trueBusiness
• trueHistory
• trueNature
• Politics & Current Affairs

Summary

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 oozed down from Beechworth to cover thousands of hectares of rich agricultural land. Children and animals drowned in the sludge lakes that collected in mining towns. Mining effluent contaminated three-quarters of Victoria’s creeks and rivers.Sludge is the fascinating story of the forgotten filth that plagued nineteenth-century Victoria. It exposes the dirty big secret of Victoria’s mining history – the way it transformed the state’s water and land; and also how the battle against sludge helped to lay the ground for the modern environmental movement.Peter Davies is a research fellow in archaeology at La Trobe University whose work focuses on the social, industrial and environmental archaeology of colonial Australia. His previous books include Henry’s Mill: The Archaeology and History of a Forest Community and An Archaeology of Australia Since 1788, with Susan Lawrence.Susan Lawrence is professor of archaeology at La Trobe University and has spent thirty years studying the goldfields. She is the author of Dolly’s Creek: An Archaeology of a Victorian Goldfields Community and, with Peter Davies, An Archaeology of Australia since 1788

Nature of contents

dictionaries