Most Victorians still believed that progress came mainly from the minerals in the rocks, the richness of the soil, and the sun and rain. But now these omens of progress were sober. The economic boundaries of Victoria were closing in. The future of gold seemed dubious, the farming seasons were proving to be drier than in the pioneering years, and the prices of wool and wheat were low. And yet most years of the 1920s and 1930s were permeated by an optimism stemming from new technology and new products.

Bendigo was the hope of gold mining. Its mine-managers took pride in the depths at which they were winning gold from the hard rock. One shaft, Victoria Quartz, went down vertically almost a mile, and another fifty-three shafts each went down more than 2000 feet, making Bendigo one of the deepest fields in the world in 1914. Deep workings were expensive, and to ventilate them was difficult, and hundreds of Bendigo miners had their life cut short, breathing in the particles of sharp white dust which were churned up by their mechanical rock drills. The temperature of the rock increased as the shaft descended, and so the temperature in the deep shafts even in the heart of winter was too hot for comfort. Fortunately, few miners worked at such depths.