Hoovers Gold

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[edit] General Information

History Documentary published by Others in 2005 - English narration

[edit] Cover

Image: Hoovers-Gold-Cover.jpg

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In the remote goldfields of Western Australia - a land of "red dust, black flies and white heat" - an ambitious young American geologist embarked on a remarkable career that would ultimately lead him to the White House as the thirty-first President of the United States.

His extraordinary story is told in Hoover's Gold. By the 1890s, Western Australia's goldfields were a lure for ambitious adventurers - both young and old - from the far corners of the world. In 1897, the twenty-three-year-old Herbert Hoover, on assignment from the London firm of Bewick Moreing and Company, arrived to assess the viability of the ever-growing portfolio of gold mines under the company's management.

Arriving in Coolgardie, Hoover worked feverishly, appraising mines and scouting for new prospects for the company's London investors. It was his identification of the Sons of Gwalia mine at Leonora as one "well worth securing control of" that was to be the turning point in his fortunes as well as those of thousands of Italians and other southern Europeans who were to journey to Western Australia to work in the goldfields.

Installed as the manager of the mine, Hoover contracted several Italians as underground workers with the promise that, if they proved satisfactory, the way would be open to "the employment of many more". He was determined to cut costs and undermine the growing strength of the trade union movement. He found the Italians "fully twenty per cent superior" and "the rivalry between them and the other men is of no small benefit."

In the decades to come, many Italian migrants, mostly from Italy's north, arrived in Western Australia to work in Bewick Moreing-controlled mines. The biggest and most enduring Italian community was associated with the Sons of Gwalia. It had rapidly become one of Australia's deepest and richest mines, and being sufficiently distant from Kalgoorlie-Boulder's "Golden Mile", it had developed a character and significance all of its own.

Hoover's Gold tells the parallel stories of the young Hoover and the Italian workers he championed. Filmed on location in Western Australia and the United States, the program includes interviews with some of the descendants of the original miners - John Calegari, Renzo Mazza, Margo Patroni, Lucia Raymond, John Gandini and Tony Mateljan. Some of the miners were to be caught up in the infamous anti-foreigner riots that exploded in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on the Australia Day weekend of 1934. There are also interviews with several U.S. and Australian experts - Tim Walch, Ron Limbaugh, Patrick Bertola, Richard Harley and Criena Fitzgerald, all of whom have differing perspectives on Hoover, the Italians and the Sons of Gwalia.

[edit] Screenshots

Image: Hoovers-Gold-Screen0.jpg

[edit] Technical Specs

Video Bitrate: 2001 Kbps
Video Resolution: 688 x 384 - 16:9
Video Codec: x264 (2-pass) MPEG-4 AVC
Custom Matrix: Yes (EQM AVC-HR)
Average QP: I=14.79, P=17.07 & B=18.12
Audio Codec: AAC 24 KHz
Audio BitRate: 128kbs
Audio Channels: 2 Ch
RunTime: 00:52
Framerate: 20.000 fps
Number Of Parts: 1
Part Size: 744 MB
Ripped by gavin63
Subtitles: NO TV Cap
Source: DVB SBS Channel

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