A Post-Wilderness National Park: Naturecultures of Destruction and Recuperation in the Castlemaine Goldfields Translated title: Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History, Summer 2017, no. 17: A Post-Wilderness National Park: Naturecultures of Destruction and Recuperation in the Castlemaine Goldfields

Abstract

This article tells a story of how the cultural values and resilience of a mined landscape has been a motivation for listing it as a National Park. In the 1850s, the area that is now included in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park was devastated by intense goldmining practices. These, and later mining phases, left the area scarred, denuded, and thoroughly altered. Despite the destruction and changes, life asserts itself in new and continuing forms to create an emergent multi-temporal, multilayered landscape; a hybrid intermingling of overlain histories and natures that constitute a post-wilderness national park.