Weighing up new opportunities

Scales acquired by Phillip and Hannah Blashki for weighing and measuring pieces of metal and jewellery. Phillip and Hannah Blashki arrived in Melbourne as free settlers from Poland in 1858. Seeing opportunity in trading jewellery on the goldfields they moved to Geelong, living there for seven years but eventually relocating to Melbourne.

Denied full democratic rights in Europe, the discovery of gold drew young Jewish men, many from Germany, to Australia. The greatest impact of the Gold Rush was felt in Victoria, where the Jewish community grew from two hundred in 1850 to three thousand in 1860.

Many traders and hawkers moved out of the cities to establish businesses that provided goods and services to the miners. However, for most it proved too difficult to maintain Jewish life in rural areas and they either assimilated or returned to the urban centres.

By the 1860s, 60 percent of the Australian Jewish population were living in the capital cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne, while the remainder lived in rural areas mainly in NSW and Victoria.