In October 2022, Heritage Hokitika invited Julia Bradshaw to give a talk at their AGM on ‘Women in the West Coast Goldfields’. Many of you will already know Julia, from her time as the Director of the Hokitika Museum and she is well known for her books on West Coast and South Island history.
Julia’s talk focused on the lives of seven immigrant women who came to the West Coast and describes the challenges they faced in adapting to life in this new, and extreme environment. Here they constituted only about 15% of the total population but were over-represented in establishing themselves as businesswomen and entrepreneurs.
This event took place at the Hokitika RSA and was filmed by the Hokitika Museum.
Julia is the Senior Curator Human History at Canterbury Museum, and she has worked in Museum sector for about 27 years, including many years as the Director of the Hokitika Museum. She has a special interest in the New Zealand’s gold-rushes, Chinese, women, remote places ,and she has had five books published on these topics. She is currently researching European use of pounamu, Chinese-European marriages and the lives of women during the gold-rush.
