Please note this event is limited to 35 attendees due to the nature of the event. There is a waitlist.

This talk and walk will start by looking at two sisters Jane and Harriet Mason who settled in the Ironbark area with their mother in the 1850s. The lives of both Jane and Harriet allow us to explore middle-class families in nineteenth and early twentieth century Bendigo. A different world is revealed when we also trace the history of their neighbours whose families worked underground in the mines. Selina Whicker gave birth 16 children between 1858 and 1884. Widowed in 1886 she lived in Ironbark to her death in 1926. In a small stone and rubble cottage she raised fifteen of her children to adulthood. Our walk will compare the differing life experiences of middle and working class women in Ironbark an industrial mining community.