1850, the year Victoria had its first gold rush. Everybody had gold fever, it was messed up, but it was not all to bad. If you think about, the eureka stockade shaped Australia, if it wasn’t for the 15 minute fight, a lot wouldn’t have happened. Well in this unit, we have been researching this history of Australia, mostly the 1850s Gold Rush. In this unit as well we have made a diorama of Sovereign Hill, based on our camp location. If you didn’t know we went to Sovereign Hill, well everybody except me.

We got put into pairs to do the diorama meaning the most used PLA row was Relationships. In the row of relationships there is communication, collaboration and connectedness. If you didn’t know a PLA is a positive learner attribute. We created the Gold Offices which was where people exchanged gold for money. After that we made part of the eureka stockade which was where peter lalor recruited hundreds of people to create a stockade to defend against around 143 troopers, attacking because of unfair laws that the diggers broke.

I learnt about how unfair the whole system was. The only way to live in horrible conditions in these days was to strike rich. This is why most people lived in dirty tents with just enough money to survive. Most people would have to use what they made each week (30 shillings) just to keep a mining license. That price was ever changing from going from 30 shillings to 10 to 60.

We also wrote newspaper articles about what we thought could have have happened in the time. We also made it look like an actual article by using real life names. My one was about a robbery and a murder in one and some side ones like a foreign currency trickery one and an article about the eureka hotel accepting new jobs.

Imagine living in the Gold Fields. You’d be lucky to still be living for a year because of just your luck. The struggle would be real. The thing is that very little actually strike rich on the gold fields and over time less gold was found, meaning that the chance grew smaller and smaller and smaller which is the reason all gold rushes have stopped. Also along with that was the gold license, if you didn’t pay that 30 shillings in a month then you would spend the month behind bars.

During this unit we also we also programmed Sphero’s to go around the diorama. If you haven’t seen the diorama made by 5B then it will be in a video where the Sphero goes around the diorama. We figured out a way to get around the whole diorama and not miss a building on it.

If you know the PLA’s and you have been to Sovereign Hill then which PLA do you think you used?