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Revision as of 03:30, 14 February 2007
The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria in Australia between approximately 1851 and the early 1860s.
Background
By 1840 the city of Melbourne, in the far south of Victoria, was nearly five years old. Population growth in Melbourne and the surrounding countryside had been steady, and the population had reached around 10,000 people.
In July 1851 Melbourne's 29,000 residents celebrated as they broke away from New South Wales and the Colony of Victoria was born. Weeks later it was announced that gold had been found in Victoria. The first discoveries were by Louis Michel at Warrandyte, 30 kilometres north-east of Melbourne, James Esmond at Clunes in July 1851, and Thomas Hiscock at Buninyong, near Ballarat, on 2 August 1851.
On 20 July 1851 Thomas Peters, a hut-keeper on William Barker’s Mount Alexander station, found specks of gold at what is now known as Specimen Gully. This find was published in the Melbourne Argus on 8 September 1851, leading to a rush to the Mount Alexander or Forest Creek diggings, centred on present-day Castlemaine, claimed to be the richest shallow alluvial goldfield in the world.
These discoveries were soon surpassed by bigger ones at Ballarat and Bendigo, and more finds in a number of other locations around Victoria followed.
| Year | Population of Melbourne |
|---|---|
| 1835 | 0 |
| 1840 | 10,000 |
| 1851 | 29,000 |
| 1854 | 123,000 |
The population of Melbourne grew swiftly as the gold fever took hold. The total number of people in Victoria also rose. By 1851 it was 75,000 people. Ten years later this rose to over 500,000.
First to be obtained was the 'easy' gold(alluvial); that which was to be found on the surface. It is reported that miners when first arrived on the Mt Tarrengower fields nuggets were picked up without digging. This was followed by exploitation of alluvial gold usually in creeks and rivers. The seekers used gold pans, puddling boxes and cradles to separate this gold from the dirt and water.
When this ran out underground mining began. This was much harder and more dangerous than the panning and puddling. The mines ranged from single person, to teams and eventually large mining companies. The miners followed the underground reefs of gold. At Walhalla alone, Cohens Reef produced over 50 tonnes (1.6 million tr oz) of gold in 40 years of mining. As of February 2004, that would be worth $800 million.
Major and long lasting impact
The gold rush had a large influence on Melbourne, on Victoria, and on Australia as a whole. It touched every aspect of society and elements of it are still clearly visible today. The influx of wealth that gold brought soon made Victoria Australia's richest state by far, and Melbourne the nation's largest city.
Australia's population changed dramatically as a result of the rushes. In 1851 the Australian population was 437,655, of which 77,345, or just under 18%, were Victorians. A decade later the Australian population had grown to 1,151,947 and the Victorian population had increased to 538,628; just under 47% of the Australian total and a seven-fold increase. In some small country towns where gold was found aboundant, the population could grow of over 1000% in a decade (e.g. Rutherglen had a population of ~2'000. Ten years later, it had ~60'000 which is a 3000% increase). The rapid growth was predominantly a result of the gold rushes.&
Although most goldfields were exhausted by the end of the 19th century, and much of the profit was sent back to the United Kingdom, enough remained to fund substantial development of industry and infrastructure.
The Eureka Stockade, an armed protest or revolt over what the miners perceived as unfair policing and "taxation without representation", is widely regarded as important in Victoria and Australia's democratic development.
The gold rush is reflected in the architecture of Victorian gold-boom cities like Melbourne, Castlemaine, Ballarat, Bendigo, Ararat, Maldon and Beechworth. Ballarat has Sovereign Hill — a 60 acre (240,000 m²) recreation of a gold rush town — as well as the Gold Museum. At the other end of the spectrum are near or actual ghost towns, such as Walhalla, Mafeking and Steiglitz.
The last major gold rush in Victoria was at Beringa, south of Ballarat, in the first decade of the 20th century. Gold mining later virtually ceased in Victoria, not because there was no more gold but in the main because of the depth and cost of pumping. The First World War also drained Australia of the labour needed to work the mines. However, as of 2005 the recent increase in the gold price has seen a resurgence in commercial mining activity; mining has resumed in Bendigo, Ballarat, and exploration proceeds elsewhere, for example, in Glen Wills, an isolated mountain area near Mitta Mitta in north-eastern Victoria.
See also
References
Further reading
- Nothing but Gold Robyn Annear ISBN 1-876485-07-8
- Walhalla Heyday G.F. James & C.G. Lee ISBN 0-9596311-3-5
- Walhalla: Valley of Gold John Aldersea & Barbara Hood ISBN 0-9750887-0-X
External links
- ↑ Caldwell, J. C. (1987). "Chapter 2: Population". In Wray Vamplew (ed.). Australians: Historical Statistics. Broadway, New South Wales, Australia: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates. pp. pages 23 and 26. ISBN 0-949288-29-2.
