Government datasets can name an authority or deposit. They rarely preserve the shift notebook, annotated photograph, contractor invoice, specimen label, family map or local name that explains how a place was actually worked.
This is a research route, not a claim that every collection is known. Choose a city to see the records being sought, the people who may recognise them and the public sources already in hand.
Records sought: shift books, union material, family photographs, underground plans and correspondence connected with the Line of Lode.
Records sought: claim papers, miners’ rights, company correspondence, photographs, maps and material connected with the city’s mining exchanges.
Records sought: quartz-mining photographs, cottage histories, tramway material, shift records and family papers from the Bendigo field.
Records sought: prospecting diaries, lease maps, photographs of camps and businesses, assay records and papers from Eastern Goldfields families.
Records sought: company-town photographs, rail and smelter records, workers’ club material, school records and family correspondence.
Records sought: Mount Lyell photographs, railway papers, smelter and shift records, maps and family accounts of West Coast settlements.
Records sought: Cornish family papers, company housing records, engine-house photographs, mine plans, transport records and material from Burra’s early villages.
Records sought: Cornish association records, mine and smelter photographs, pay books, school records, engine-house material and family correspondence.
Records sought: copper-field maps, Cornish Town material, administration papers, underground photographs, equipment records and family accounts.
Records sought: miners’ rights, deep-mine photographs, company papers, family albums, tailings-treatment records and material explaining the city’s irregular mining streets.
Records sought: battery books, assay notes, shaft and mill photographs, mining-business records, cemetery research and family papers from Charters Towers and Ravenswood.
Records sought: Pleasant Creek and Deep Lead photographs, family files, rate-book references, mine and battery records, tools, newspapers and later workforce memories.
Records sought: School of Mines notebooks, mineral labels, workshop and blacksmith records, railway photographs, town albums and family papers from West Coast workings.
Records sought: mine-office papers, equipment histories, training and shift material, labelled photographs, community-business records and provenance for objects held by local families.
Records sought: mine and tramway photographs, post-office and business papers, cemetery research, workers’ tools, family maps and records from surrounding settlements.
Records sought: opal-field notebooks, blower and hoist histories, claim and camp photographs, workshop records, local publications and family migration or business papers.
Records sought: opal-field photographs, letters, camp and business records, equipment stories, audio recollections, field-name evidence and collection provenance.
Records sought: mine and smelter photographs, apprenticeship and union material, pay and staff records, equipment provenance, business records and family accounts of work and town life.
Records sought: battery records, mine and equipment photographs, contractors’ papers, transport and shop records, family albums and labelled material connected with Tennant Creek workings.
Records sought: mine-office and assay records, migrant-worker and woodline histories, cottage inventories, tramway photographs, family papers and oral histories connected with Leonora and Gwalia.
“This project is documenting the people and records around [city / working]. You do not need to donate anything or write an article. If you recognise a name, photograph, notebook, map or job, the editor would like to hear what it is and who holds the rights.”
We record who owns the item, who can grant permission, whether people shown are living, how names and dates were established, and what must remain private. A recollection stays attributed recollection; a family label is not silently promoted into a geological or legal fact.
Describe a record or make an introduction →