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      “As Good as Cash All the Time”: Trapping Rabbits in South-Eastern Australia, 1870–1950

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          Abstract

          The rabbit industry was a boon for thousands of workers in the bush of south-eastern Australia between 1870 and 1950. While different forms of trapping required experience in specific methods to maximise income, little capital was required to get started. Contrary to their depiction as precarious proletarians constantly falling prey to the vicissitudes of climate, season and global markets, many rural workers were successful rabbiters enjoying high earnings and easier work. Rabbiting ended the continual search for low-paid, seasonal farm work and deprivation during winter months. Rabbiters and their families enjoyed relative financial security and severe economic downturns had little impact on the rabbit industry. The rabbit industry caused labour shortages across all types of rural work and reduced the ranks of the reserve army of labour in the bush. Different rural dwellers, from clergy to wheat lumpers, used these shortages or rabbiters’ high earnings to secure higher pay. By making farming uneconomic in many areas, rabbit plagues made the impetus to trapping all the greater. These findings warrant a radical revision of the accepted wisdom about the nature of life and labour in rural Australia.

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          A settlement amply supplied: Food technology in nineteenth century Australia

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            “Improvising Nomads,”

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              They All Ran Wild

              Eric Rolls (19771969)
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                labourhistory
                Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History
                Liverpool University Press
                0023-6942
                1839-3039
                November 2016
                : 111 (ID: labourhistory.issue-111 )
                : 125-148
                Article
                labourhistory.111.0125
                10.3828/labourhistory.111.0125
                b7a1d55b-cffb-40b9-ba18-a46386cdf2bd
                © 2016 Australian Society for the Study of Labour History
                History
                Categories
                OTHER ARTICLES
                Custom metadata
                en

                Economic history,Social policy & Welfare,Economic development,Labor law,Labor & Demographic economics,Cultural studies

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