This entry seeks to place cultural landscapes on a par with more recognised forms of historical evidence. The term cultural landscapes refers to the remnants of the built environments established as a consequence of gold discoveries and the collateral visual, oral, and documentary material that assists in their interpretation. The study of cultural landscapes is especially useful for any historical analysis of the Mount Alexander and Ballarat diggings.
Cultural landscapes represent the physical expression of a ‘society’s interaction with its environment’. In this model, the remnants of human interaction with the environment in which the diggers lived and worked become a large-scale artefact, allowing the attitudes of goldfields communities in the second half of the nineteenth century to be evaluated. Material culture is incorporated into the historical analysis of the gold seeking era.
This idea of considering a physical landscape (such as Braidwood in New South Wales or the central Victorian goldfields region) as a cultural landscape is an appropriate one for historical analysis of the gold rush era. It is a particularly effective approach when used in conjunction with material culture and folk memory. In order to bring greater meaning to the history of the diggings it is necessary to consider them as a source of material culture, and as a human landscape inscribed with cultural significance.
It is worth noting that, by definition, unaltered or natural landscapes – such as the Daintree rainforest or Wilsons Promontory – do not constitute cultural artefacts as they are not embedded with human meaning.
