Abstract 150 years ago, the carefully-planned Presbyterian settlement of Dunedin was torn apart by the discovery that nearly every stream in Otago was laden with gold. The population exploded, adding the accents of Greece, Tipperary, Victoria, California, Guangdong and the King Country to the Scots burr which had been predominant. Almost immediately a myth of identity emerged, typified by goldfields balladeer Charles Thatcher’s ‘Old Identity and New Iniquity’ and boosted by the histrionics of a press enamoured of the romanticised machinations of the Otago goldfields ‘digger’. This popular mythology conflates the imagery of California, Victoria and early Gabriel’s Gully to perpetuate stories of desperate, gold-mad miners swarming across the province fighting, drinking and whoring away sparse winnings in a vast and lawless land, where bodies float down the Clutha, diggers battle corrupt police and vast fortunes are won and lost. This thesis seeks to construct a de-mythologised account of the rush for Central Otago gold, examining the engineering processes, social dynamics and communal relationships implicit in the development of claims, the construction of goldfields structures, the growth of towns and the emergence of financial networks. This explains and reveals the social, technological and economic developments of the gold rush that wrought a profound change on the Otago landscape and to New Zealand’s history. Focussing on the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s historic reserve at Bendigo as an exemplary site, this thesis focuses on the people of the goldfields who left traces of themselves in archives, letters, newspapers, court records and in the heritage landscape to explain their mining, commercial and family lives, and concludes by exploring the remnants of their existence in the relic-strewn ghost-town. By elucidating the depth and breadth of relationships, processes and lives of the residents, miners and merchants, I refute the pervasive myth of innocent simplicity around the era to replace it with a surprisingly complex reality. This complexity is revealed in the new conclusions I draw around the myriad processes behind identity formation, rush events, water race construction, quartz mine development and labour relations, merchant finances and heritage remnants.

The integration of disabled children into regular schools is a current educational and social issue causing widespread interest, concern and debate throughout Australia. The most controversial and innovative adoption of integration policy has occurred in Victoria since the release of the Collins Report in 1984. The present study was conducted in 26 State primary schools in the Bendigo area of the Loddon Campaspe Mallee region of Victoria where disabled children had been integrated in regular classrooms with the assistance of a paid teacher aide during 1988. The purpose of the study was to survey the concerns of those teachers into whose classes children with disabilities had been integrated. The Stages of Concern (SoC) dimension of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (C-BAM) was chosen as the research methodology. C-BAM was developed at the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education, University of Texas at Austin, and for the purpose of this study, the methodology consisted of a questionnaire of 35 standardized items (the Stages of Concern Questionnaire), and a School Survey. The study set out to identify the concerns of teachers (ii) toward integration, and to establish reasons why teachers are at particular stages of concern. Factors included teachers' age, gender, number of years of teaching experience, qualifications and in-service training. Other issues related to the disabled children themselves, the school, and factors such as availability of resources, funding levels, and access to support systems. This study developed from the policy document Integration in Victorian Education (the Collins Report, 1984). Since then, the Ministry of Education has published two additional booklets (in January and February, 1987), which partly address some of the issues included in this thesis. These include resourcing, in-servicing and the legal implications of the innovation. The analysis of the data points to major shortcomings which will jeopardize the implementation process and the likely success of the innovation. A number of recommendations have been suggested, with particular reference to the pre-service and in-service training of teachers, and issues relating to funding and resources. The findings have implications for all classroom teachers, as potentially all are required to accept disabled children into their classes. The results and recommendations also have relevance for the Ministry of Education, whose responsibility it is to ensure that the integration of disabled children into regular classes is fully supported at a government level, and for training institutions, whose task it is to provide appropriate pre-service and in-service programs for present and future classroom teachers.

Thesis (PhD--Anthropology)--University of Auckland, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.