In the 1830s, men outnumbered women 3:1 in the colony, with the predominantly male population made up of ex-convicts, soldiers and agricultural workers. The male population boomed again after the discovery of gold and the influx of men hoping to strike it rich. During this period, men outnumbered women 20:1 in some rural areas — a ratio that alarmed government officials.¹

The right kind of woman

To restore the balance of the sexes, several schemes were established to recruit women to move to Australia under assisted passage with their travel expenses paid in part or in full by the government or other enterprises.

Sound like a good deal? Well, there were strong opinions about the kind of women the colony needed. One article written by William Rathbone Greg suggested that the colony was a good place for the ‘redundant’ women of England who were ‘costly’ to maintain.² Others wanted intelligent, virtuous and godly women to help elevate the morals of the men,³ many of whom were leading rough lives on the goldfields, living in tents, drinking heavily (despite prohibition), and with poor hygiene.⁴

The digger wants a wife

So how was a digger supposed to find himself a wife? Well, there were several options.

Firstly, a man could write home and entice a woman of his acquaintance to journey to Australia with the promise of a new and prosperous life in the colony. Some men employed family members at home to act on their behalf in marriage negotiations. With letters between Australia and England taking up to four months to arrive and then another four months for a return, marriage negotiations could take a long time to come to fruition. Even then, some prospective wives voyaged from Britain on the promise of a love letter only to find themselves friendless and penniless in a colonial port.⁵

Another option was to try your luck with a shipboard romance. The wild excitement of journeying to new lands, combined with the boredom of long weeks at sea, could prove fertile grounds for romance. Single women often had an uncomfortable voyage, closely supervised and locked away from the single men by a matron who was responsible for their physical and moral wellbeing.⁶ Despite this, romance still bloomed, and then sometimes soured upon reaching land. In 1857, Miss Cameron successfully sued Mr Muir for a broken engagement forged aboard a ship from Scotland to Melbourne (The Age, 13 August 1857, p 6). The affair and the subsequent court case was covered in nearly a full page spread in the newspaper, and included reprints of the letters written by Mr Muir to Miss Cameron.

If those methods failed, then you could wait at the dock for ships to arrive and make an offer to the first woman you came across. The women arriving on the Strathfieldsaye in 1834, under the assisted passage scheme, were mobbed by crowds of men as they disembarked. A reporter for the Colonial Times wrote,

‘Of all the disgusting, abominable sights we ever witnessed, nothing ever equalled the scene which took place on that occasion… Early on Saturday morning it was known all over Town, that the free women were to be landed at mid-day…the mob waiting to witness the landing of the women, could not have been much less in number than a couple of thousand. As soon as the first boat reached the shore, there was a regular rush towards the spot, and the half dozen constables present, could scarcely open a passage sufficient to allow the females to pass from the boats. After the females had passed through the long passage, the ordeal was not over; for men singled out the girls they fancied, and went in pursuit of them.’ (Colonial Times, 19 August 1834, p 4)

Looking for love

For those not lucky enough to secure a match on the journey or at the docks, you could always put an advertisement in a newspaper, such as The Australian Journal.

‘W.W.’s search for a wife who would add to the household income was typical of the sort of women men in the colonies were looking for — a genteel lady, but also a useful one.⁷ For some single women who had travelled to Australia without family, life in the colony gave them a freer choice to marry for love, without needing to consider family expectations.⁸

One bachelor who secured a wife through the power of a well-placed advertisement was the famous E.W. Cole of Cole’s Book Arcade, who in 1875 was on the lookout for a spinster (perhaps one of those ‘redundant’ women of England?) with an astonishing list of qualities: chaste, good tempered, neat (but not overly dressy), frugal, industrious and sober.

‘Premature declaration’

Not everyone approved of the marriage-mania that was gripping Australia in the 1800s. The author of Australian Etiquette, or the Rules and Usages of the Best Society in the Australasian Colonies, which was first published in Melbourne in 1885, decried the rushed marriages of the previous years, in a segment titled ‘Premature Declaration’, they stated:

‘It is very injudicious, not to say presumptuous, for a gentleman to make a proposal to a young lady on too brief an acquaintance. A lady who would accept a gentleman at first sight can hardly possess the discretion needed to make a good wife’.⁹

The author of the book goes on to relate that the proper manner of courtship was for a young man to ask the consent of parents to ‘pay addresses’¹⁰ to their daughter. As the drive to recruit women to the colonies was primarily aimed at single women with no family ties, this insistence of the ‘proper’ rules of courtship could prove difficult.

Here comes the bride

Once you’d found your redundant, genteel lady willing to accept a proposal upon a short acquaintance, the next step was to get hitched. A ‘digger’s wedding’ was commonly thought of as a bawdy and impulsive spectacle brought about by the adrenaline rush of finding gold. The groom and his bride, who often barely knew each other, were paraded through the streets and showered with champagne. These impulsive unions were especially treacherous for young women who found themselves tethered to men without sufficient knowledge of their character and temperament.¹¹

Not all colonial weddings were strictly legal, nor did they tend to last long. The scarcity of qualified persons to officiate ceremonies meant that some couples adopted a less legally binding and more DIY ‘marriage’, such as the Scottish tradition of ‘jumping over the broom handle’,¹² or the ceremonial act of a couple each throwing a stone into a river and swearing to remain true to each other until the stone floated.¹³ The benefit to these kinds of ‘marriage’ was that when things turned sour, or the money ran out, couples were free to separate without the need of a costly and difficult to obtain divorce.

The balances of the sexes evened out towards the end of the 19th century, and men became a tad more civilised as the gold rush ended, no doubt thanks to the redundant genteel women who took a chance and journeyed to new lands.

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References

1. Rushen, E, 2010, Single & Free: female migration to Australia 1833-1837, Anchor Books Australia, Melbourne, p vii
2. Diamond, M, 1999, Emigration and Empire: the life of Maria S Rye, Garland Publishing, New York, pp 65-6
3. Rushen, E, 2010, Single & Free: female migration to Australia 1833-1837, Anchor Books Australia, Melbourne, p 137
4. Prout, D & Feely, F, 1977, Petticoat pioneers: Australian colonial women, Rigby Limited, Melbourne, pp 68-9
5. Simmonds, A, 2023, Courting: an intimate history of love and the law, Black Inc, Collingwood, Victoria, p 112
6. State Library New South Wales, n.d., Shipboard: the 19th century emigrant experience, viewed 21 August 2024, https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/shipboard-19th-century-emigrant-experience/life-board
7. Russell, P, (ed.), 1994, For richer, for poorer: early colonial marriages, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, pp 6-7
8. McClaughlin, T, (ed.), 1998, Irish women in colonial Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, p 128
9. Dent, J M, 1885, Australian Etiquette, or the Rules and Usages of the Best Society in the Australasian Colonies, People’s Publishing Company, Melbourne, p 189
10. As above, p 190
11. Russell, P, 2011, Savage or Civilized?: Manners in Colonial Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, p 206
12. Hocking, G, 2010, Gold! Off to the diggings: a pictorial history of the Australian gold rush, New Chum Press, Castlemaine, Victoria, p 134
13. Prout, D & Feely, F, 1977, Petticoat pioneers: Australian colonial women, Rigby Limited, Melbourne, p 70

Tags: Australian colonial life — gold rush — marriage — romance — weddings