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Digibook from ABC Education

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Video from ABC Education

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Resources for Primary and Secondary Students - ABC Education

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4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

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ABC Education Digibook

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Resources for Primary and Secondary Students - ABC Education

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4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

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Storylines from various convicts and their families. Multi layered text.

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Go Lifelines to explore a sample of the convict lives, told in film, song and image.

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Bennelong (See 1790s

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SBS website

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Images of children going about their daily lives, in later colonial years (after 1880)

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PHOTOS of children in colonial Australia can look idyllic but there was a darker reality behind most of the scenes frozen in monochrome.

Photos were - with the exception of some portraits of the gritty streets of Sydney and spartan bush life - the indulgence of the middle and upper classes capturing their kids at play.
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But working-class kids in colonial times knew the meaning of tough. They were barely schooled, underfed and used as factory slave labour from age eight.

Author Edwin Barnard has written a book looking at the lives of the largely forgotten element of the colonial period; working class children.

From the evidence uncovered in his research, it's clear that children were working from as young as eight "on the factory floor, tending machines and doing quite menial jobs".

The alternative to unemployment was starving to death, and life was very much "closer to the edge and survival wasn't a guarantee".

Mr Barnard said getting hold of the information was difficult, as the working class rarely had the time to document their lives, let alone children of the time.

"Life was too difficult and short for kids to write a diary - the recollections are mostly people looking back at their lives," Mr Barnard said.

"The voice of working class people whose voices were generally not told - both in text and photographs.

"They didn't get asked their opinions as it wasn't considered worth recording."

Mr Barnard wanted to expose the lives of the working-class during the colonial era of 1788-1900 in Australia because "most of what we hear of these histories is of the privileged elite whose voices are recorded".

Trawling through the National Library Collection for just over a year, he said an unexpected picture of people's lives emerged.

For instance, boys up until the age of six wore dresses for ease of toilet training, and "children were dressed like small adults".

Unlike today's booming baby fashion economy, there was according to Mr Barnard "not much attention at all paid to fashion".

"What you got as a child was a small version of what the parents wore, or hand-me-downs from other family members," he said.

By the time the diaries were written, they were from the perspective of a middle-aged person reflecting on their childhood.

"They had often married, made a fair amount of money and could sit back, look at their lives and write about it," he said.

"That's the only way to hear these voices. I'm always struck how little survived, and it's really sad how little we really know about people's lives."

Many of the official records of the time don't fully reflect what living in Sydney during that time period was truly like.

"Living in Sydney at that time was a desperate place that must have been a terrible time, but it's just not written down and recorded," he said.

"Any official records gloss over any of the issues."
* Spinning Tops & Gumdrops, written by Edwin Barnard, NLA Publishing. RRP: $44.99. Available now

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Working class kids who knew meaning of tough

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PHOTOS of children in colonial Australia can look idyllic but there was a darker reality behind most of the scenes frozen in monochrome. Photos were - with the exception of some portraits of the gritty streets of Sydney and spartan bush life - the indulgence of the middle and upper classes capturing their kids at play.

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Working life from colonial times to today

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Working life from colonial times to today

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A collection of resources in a digibook. Look out for jobs specifically from the 1800s.

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Resources for Primary and Secondary Students - ABC Education

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4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

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Interactions between Europeans and Aboriginal Tasmanians

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Interactions between Europeans and Aboriginal Tasmanians

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Video.

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Resources for Primary and Secondary Students - ABC Education

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4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

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James Ruse was the first convict to successfully 'experiment' with farming, leading to expansion of agricultural land in the colony.

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Images of the changing face of Australia's rural landscape.

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John Macarthur was a free settler who imported sheep in order to breed them for the use of their Merino wool. He was very successful in running his enterprise from Elizabeth Farm.

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Images of the changing face of Australia's rural landscape.

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The Berrys were granted 10,000 acres near the Shoalhaven river, which was later known as "Coolangatta Estate". Their farms exports (sales) included thoroughbred horses, cedar (wood), tobacco, cattle and cheese.

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Images of the changing face of Australia's rural landscape.

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George Wyndham became extremely famous by becoming a pioneer of the wine industry. His farm near the Hunter Valley grew many things, but his most successful was growing different types of grapes which could be made into wine.

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Images of the changing face of Australia's rural landscape.

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When a large holding of land is used for rearing livestock (cattle), it is called a Station. Life was very different on a Station.

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Images of the changing face of Australia's rural landscape.

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Detailed information about what life was like in farming homes.

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Images of the changing face of Australia's rural landscape.