Australian Gold Rush: 1850 The bonanza in California was only the beginning. An Australian named Edward Hammond Hargraves, who had been there, was certain that the same geological features were to be found in his own country. Returning on the boat from California late in 1850, he predicted that he would find gold within a week. 'There's no gold in the country you're going to and if there is, that darned Queen of yours won't let you touch it,' a fellow passenger told him. The news of the fresh gold field reached England, along with the first gold, aboard the Thomas Arbuthnot. In fact, Hargraves had touched only the fringe of Australian gold. Other secondary rushes followed.
The Australian gold rush JCF Johnson, A Game of Euchre, col. wood engraving, Australasian Sketcher Supplement [Melbourne], 25 December, 1876. Image courtesy of the : nla.pic-an8927787. The gold rushes of the nineteenth century and the lives of those who worked the goldfields - known as '' - are etched into our national . There is no doubt that the gold rushes had a huge effect on the Australian economy and our development as a nation. It is also true to say that those heady times had a profound impact on the national psyche. The camaraderie and '' that developed between diggers on the goldfields is still integral to how we - and others - perceive ourselves as Australians. Indeed, mateship and defiance of authority have been central to the way our history has been told. Even today, nothing evokes more widespread national pride than groups of irreverent Aussie 'blokes' beating the English at cricket, or any other sport for that matter! The discovery that changed a nation Gold frenzy A nation transformed Racism Gold Rush
Chinese at the Australian Goldfields Chinese at the Australian Goldfields At the time that news about the Australian goldrush reached China in 1853, the country had been suffering from years of war and famine. In order to raise money for the fare to Australia, a man would take a loan from a local trader, agreeing to make regular repayments. A village in China When the Chinese arrived at the goldfields, they stayed together in large teams with a head man in charge. There was ignorance about Chinese customs and culture, and the Chinese seemed very strange and different to the European diggers. In an attempt to limit the number of Chinese at the goldfields, a law was passed in 1885 that any Chinese person entering Victoria would pay ten pounds tax, and one pound for a protection fee, the right to mine and live in the colony. Some Chinese returned home after the gold rush, but many stayed here. The inside of a Chinese temple
Gold rush history - Australia's Golden Outback The Western Australian gold rush began with the first discovery of gold in the late 1890s. News of the gold spread as fast as the region’s wildfires and soon gold prospectors were arriving to seek their fortune and set up gold rush towns in the dusty landscapes of the Kalgoorlie, Goldfields and Murchison regions. They came slowly at first, but as the finds grew so too did the population. Lonely clusters of tents and rough bough sheds were soon transformed into booming Western Australian gold rush towns. Grand hotels lined the main streets and bustling town centres soon boasted butchers, bakers, schools and churches. Many of the original townships remain and though the populations are not as huge, the character buildings and museums provide a fascinating glimpse into the wild and colourful spirit of the gold rush era. Take a journey of discovery, starting at the Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and visiting some of the region’s many museums.
1853 Gold Mining Licence | Australia's migration history timeline | NSW Migration Heritage Centre Era: 1840 - 1900Cultural background: Chinese, EnglishCollection: Powerhouse MuseumTheme:Gold Government Labour Movement Miners Riots Settlement Licence for gold mining, 1853. Courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum Collection Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia. Object Name Gold Mining Licence. Object/Collection Description Licence for gold mining, framed, paper / wood / glass, issued to J McDonnell, printed by John Ferres, Government Printing Office, Victoria, Australia, 1853. In March 1851, Edward Hargraves wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald to announce that he had found payable gold just outside the New South Wales town of Bathurst. Lambing Flat miners’ camp, c.1860s Courtesy State Library of New South Wales With so many people leaving for the gold fields, many businesses found it hard to keep operating. Although there were some remarkable discoveries on the gold fields, few people made their fortune and most drifted back to towns and cities looking for work. Bibliography Websites
Victorian gold rush Nerrena Fossickers in Nerrena Creek outside Ballarat Overview[edit] The Victorian Gold Discovery Committee wrote in 1854: The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of world wide fame; it has attracted a population, extraordinary in number, with unprecedented rapidity; it has enhanced the value of property to an enormous extent; it has made this the richest country in the world; and, in less than three years, it has done for this colony the work of an age, and made its impulses felt in the most distant regions of the earth.[3] For a number of years the gold output from Victoria was greater than in any other country in the world with the exception of the more extensive fields of California. Gold was first discovered in Australia on 15 February 1823, by assistant surveyor James McBrien, at Fish River, between Rydal and Bathurst (in New South Wales). Melbourne was a major boomtown during the gold rush. Background[edit] Gold discovered[edit] Dr.
Australian Gold Rush In fact they only got worse. A powerfully disruptive hysteria seemed to grip the State along with the rest of the country. Farmhands simply left their employers with harvests they could no longer reap and thousands of workers fled Melbourne leaving empty industries in their wake. Wages tripled due to scarce labour. Luckily however, this was not to last. And of course, lucky miners returning from the gold fields spent extravagantly easing the pressure on the suffering Melbourne. The incredible wealth that poured out of Victoria was unthinkable. Robert Coupe says in his book Australia's Gold Rushes (New Holland, 2000) that: "When the first reports of gold in the colonies were published in English newspapers late in 1851, few took much notice. This wealth brought many imports and improvements to Australia. All this extra money moving around brought criminals too. Incredibly, Victoria alone produced more than a third of the world’s gold produced in the 1850's.
Discovery of Gold Discovery of Gold - A Brief History In 1837, under pressure of a bad drought, Thomas Learmonth and a group of squatters explored the area to the north of their settlement near Geelong in search of better watered regions. On this journey they reached and climbed Mt. During the next 13 years, shepherds and their flocks roamed in the area with Buninyong becoming the service township for the settlers. The discovery precipitated a great rush to the area which in turn resulted in the rapid growth of the new town of Ballarat. In that same year, 10,000,000 grams of gold were transported under police escort to the Melbourne Treasury. In the 1860's, when the shallow alluvial deposits began to run out, companies were formed to exploit the deep quartz lodes. In 1870, wild speculation caused a recession of the mining industry and dozens of companies failed. Ballarat's last mine closed down in 1918. Ballarat was the scene of Australia's most famous civic insurrection.