Part of the series Luminaries, Women of the Goldfields, this work emerges from my research into the women of Australia’s gold rush era. While history often records their hardships, I found myself wondering what unspoken rituals and folklore they may have carried with them into this new land.

I imagined women gathering in secret — to bless the earth, to share strength, to shed the strictures of their Victorian lives. Here, a circle of women rises together, channelling the power of the feminine spirit. Their unity is embodied by true friends, whose natural connection needed little direction from me.

The scene is both an act of remembrance and invention: a vision of “bush witches” who turn isolation into communion, and hardship into luminous resilience. It honours the strength and friendships immigrant women forged with one another — unseen, yet vital threads in the story of the Goldfields.

Photographed on Dja Dja Wurrung land.

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