On December 12, the Boorowa Public School will relive the era of the Gold Rush at the Old Bowning Town in a hands-on project from 9:00 am.
Barry O’Mara was a driving force for this project and explained how the idea came about and how the kids will be learning.
“The kids have just finished doing a module on the Gold Rush and early settlement in Australia, and there was talk at the school of maybe doing an excursion or something like they used to do at Old Sydney Town. Bathurst was mentioned because I still believe there’s the area up there at Bathurst where school kids can visit, but I suggested to our principal, Belinda Brown, that we could just wander across the road and make use of Old Bowning Town, which is sitting there un-used at the moment other than a backdrop for the Cafe,” he said.
“It’s keeping our history alive. We can’t change it. We can learn from it, but we can’t change it.
“From my involvement in re-enactments there in the past, I scavenged a few props and a bit of clothing and then we’ve made some other additional clothing for the kids to wear so that one will be a gold commissioner who will weigh the gold for the kids, and the purchases of the license, the kids will go to him and purchase their mining right or license to go gold hunting. If they are lucky enough to find something, they’ll bring it back to him, and he’ll weigh it, and then they’ll get paid accordingly.
“It’s just basically a way of showing how the process of what happened on a gold field worked, specifically in a small gold town. We will have a couple of police officers wandering around checking licenses, as they did back in the day.
“We will have a blacksmith there with one of the kids getting a chance to be a blacksmith for the day, with some tools that we will have on site. We will use the props that are there, like the stockade and the jail for anyone that’s caught unlicensed, perhaps, so that they might spend a bit of time in the jail.”
O’Mara said that it was a few hours of educational fun for the children. It’s all you really need to keep primary school kids occupied. It’ll finish up with a morning tea that’s been kindly donated by the Cafe for the kids, which is nice as well.
“It’s a way of letting them do a little bit of hands-on living in the shoes of a gold miner or someone around that 1860s era in a New South Wales town. It’s so hands-on, I feel these always beat any kind of history book or video that they can watch.
“People can pop down and have a look, obviously they can’t participate, but if any of the parents of the children or anyone interested want to pop down, the cafe will be open so they can pull up a chair and have a little look at what unfolds.”
– Jack Murray
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