There is a bright side to being the prey of these claim jumpers we don’t end up dead like we would if they were after our share of a gold mining claim.
I wonder how many can trace their roots back to these fine specimens of failed human evolution.
Substitute the ASX for gold fields and consider how similar the behaviour of some is to that described here:
Violence, Murder, and Dispossession – The Human Cost of the Australian Gold Rush
22/04/2014 By
Moya Sharp Leave a Comment
Contributor of the week –
Violence, Murder, and Dispossession – The Human Cost of the Australian Gold Rush – By Outback Family History reader Jenni Hodge
Rushing for gold makes a few individual fortunes, and breaks the hearts and lives of many more. While it is undoubtedly true that, on a larger level, the Australian gold rush greatly aided the Australian economy and helped Australia grow from a backwater convict-dump to a player of some note on the world stage, on a personal level it was devastating to many of the families who were involved. At the first whiff of gold, the adult male population of Australia deserted homes, families, businesses, and all other responsibilities in order to flock, en mass to the goldfields. As the Migration Heritage Centre Point out, “Ship crews deserted, leaving vessels stranded in port, shepherds left their flocks, government officials, clerks, teachers and policemen left their jobs in the excitement. Soon they were joined by thousands of immigrants from Europe, America, China and New Zealand keen to try their luck.” This caused heartache and devastation among the people they left behind – and it was often not much better for the prospectors themselves. Many laboured for weeks, months, years in appalling conditions yet had to return home with empty hands and broken spirits – if they made it back at all. Perhaps worst of all was the situation met with by the Aboriginal peoples of the goldfields, who were evicted unceremoniously and often violently from their ancestral lands. While the gold rush undoubtedly had positive economic and even (in the long term) societal effects, its human cost should not be forgotten. Many of our ancestors suffered great hardships in the pursuit of this shiny rock, and the emotional scars the experiences left behind would reverberate throughout their families for generations.
Awful Conditions
Conditions on the goldfields during the height of the gold rush were appalling. Impoverished and desperate prospectors lived in cramped, squalid camps. Every day, their hopes would be dashed and their frustrations rise – with devastating results. While many have extolled the virtuous nature of life on the Australian goldfields in comparison to that of the Californian goldfields, evidence is beginning to emerge that the life of the Australian gold prospector was not as clean, calm, and sober as contemporary commentators were keen to portray it. Violence against the Aboriginal people in particular was extreme and often sadistic, revealing a cesspool of frustration and resentment bubbling beneath the surface of unsuccessful prospectors, and breaking out into ostensibly racially motivated violence. Immigrant gold miners, too, suffered greatly in this manner – yet such acts of xenophobic violence tended to go unreported.
Emotional Numbing
Indeed, it seems that much of the illusion of peaceful prospecting camps has come about simply because prospectors had become so used to violence, brutality, and the breakdown of law and order that they ceased to notice it.
As Fred Cahill says in his book ‘Black Gold’, “Testimony of how ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ life at the goldfields could be is underscored by how inured miners and other commentators became to what would now be termed horrific murders and, equally, to industrial accidents.” These young men had uprooted themselves from the familiar structures of law, order, and society which they had been trained from birth to adhere to, and taken themselves to a highly competitive, squalid environment in which nobody was a friend, and death and mutilation were the norm. For this, they would suffer the psychological consequences. Initially, they were often shocked and even traumatised by what they witnessed in the camps – but they swiftly became ‘numbed’ to the violence. They drank, they cursed, they gambled and fought. Violence broke out swiftly and easily – many lived with their nerves on a knife edge and fists would fly at the slightest provocation. Doubtless, had the gold rush come today, many returning prospectors would be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as defined by
psychguides.com, given their
tendency to sudden, inexplicable violence, their propensity to turn to substances, and their emotional numbness. Many of these young men were irrevocably damaged by their experiences in the goldfields, and the families to whom they returned would suffer the consequences. Domestic violence rose sharply in the gold rush years, and many Australian children would grow up in abject fear of their fathers”
This is really just an observation on how history repeats and what greed drives some to do to others in its pursuit.
My opinion only DYOR
FF
AKIDA BALLISTA
PS: The minute someone denies with certainty the existence of paid manipulators I know they are not to be trusted.