Gold in California and Australia In 1851

Gold!

Gold is found in rocks and in the ground.
People came to look for gold in Australia.
It was called the Gold Rush.
It was a hard life digging for gold.
Some people became rich but lots did not.


Gold in California and Australia
In 1851, during the time that there was a gold rush in California, a gold rush began in Australia. The gold in California was mainly in the form of very fine grains, called gold dust.

However, in Australia, it was not unusual for gold nuggets, some very large, to be found.

The California Goldfields. Illustration © [2008] Jupiterimages Corporation



The Largest Australian Nuggets
In October 1872 Holtermann's Nugget was found. At that time it was the world's largest specimen of reef gold. It weighed 286 kg and measured 150cm by 66cm. The Hand of Faith (27.2 kg), the Welcome Stranger (73.4 kg) and the Welcome (69.9 kg) are famous.

The Australian gold rush begins
Small amounts of gold were found in New South Wales in the early days of the colony, but the authorities hushed it up. However, in February 1851 a man named Hargraves found gold in near Bathurst, and word quickly spread.

Illustration © [2008]JupiterImages Corporation

Within a week there were over 400 people digging there for gold, and by June there were 2000. They named the goldfield Ophir after a city of gold in the Bible. The Australian gold rush had begun! Between 1851 and 1861, Australia produced one third of the world's gold.

So many people went to the goldfield that there was a shortage of people doing other work such as farming, building, baking and so on. Governor Fitz Roy was worried that there would be violence and lawlessness at the goldfields, and he ordered that gold seekers must pay for a licence in order to dig for gold.

The Victorian goldfields
In August 1851, part of New South Wales was made a separate colony, and was named Victoria after the Queen. Many Victorians had gone to the goldfields, and businessmen, to keep people from leaving the new colony, offered a prize of 200 guineas for the first person who found gold in Victoria. At around the same time, gold was found at Clunes, at Andersons Creek near Warrandyte and at Buninyong. Towards the end of August, James Reagan and John Dunlop discovered the richest goldfield the world has ever seen in a place the Aborigines called Balla arat, which means 'camping place', now the city of Ballarat. Other discoveries soon followed in Mount Alexander, now called Castlemaine, in Daylesford, Creswick, Maryborough, Bendigo and McIvor, now called Heathcote.

By the end of September 1851, there were about 10,000 people digging for gold near Ballarat. By 1852, the news had spread to England, Europe, China and America, and boatloads of hopeful diggers arrived in Melbourne and headed for the goldfields. Many stayed on in Australia, moving on to other Australian goldfields as the gold became harder for individuals to find for themselves.

Other Australian Goldfields
Gold was discovered in Western Australia from the 1850s onward, in Queensland in 1853, in the Northern Territory in 1865 and in Tasmania in 1877. It was not until the rich gold fields in Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie in the 1890s that the Western Australian gold rush began in earnest. South Australia was the only state where big deposits were not found.

In June 1893 gold was found near Mount Charlotte, found by three Irish prospectors. One of the three later found gold in Coolgardie. Within days, there were over 700 miners staking claims in the Kalgoorlie/Coolgardie area and by 1903 Kalgoorlie was a town of over 30,000 people. However, by the late 1890s the alluvial gold was running out, and by 1902 deep underground mining was necessary to reach the gold 1500 feet below the surface in nearby Boulder. There was a square mile of gold that was apparently the richest in the world and was known as 'The Golden Mile'.