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. To raise money, many property owners put their houses on the market. But as there was no one interested in buying, house prices collapsed.
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. Gold! Gold Rush in Australia 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 is a soft, yellow precious metal. Australian gold rush timeline, Discovering gold, Gold and mining, SOSE Year 6, SA. The first major mineral discovery - gold - was a watershed (a turning point or landmark) for Australian society.
The initial stages of the gold rush were responsible for tremendous changes in the community, bringing Australia's first great waves of immigration from countries other than England and Ireland. Ambitious prospectors from Asia, Europe and America made the trek to the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria, and Bathurst in New South Wales, in the hope of striking it rich. This influx of people brought many social changes, including an increase in racial tensions with the persecution of some groups, notably the Chinese. Gold Rush in Australia! The transportation of convicts to Australia was phased out between 1840 and 1868.
By 1860, the continent of Australia had been divided into FIVE separate colonies (not officially states yet, mate but seperation away from New South Wales), each not seeing eye-to-eye and exhibiting more loyalty to London to each other. A major force within the colonies was the “squatocracy” – the rich officers and settlers a.k.a. opportunists who had followed the explorers into fertile hinterlands. They simply laid claim to or “squatted” upon enormous tracts of land, often 20,000 acres and more. Free for all, mate with lots of social tension. Development of Australia was at a steady but unspectacular rate. Gold was originally discovered in Australia by Rev.
[NEXT: the birth of a new nation! Australian gold rushes. An Australian gold diggings circa 1855 After the California gold rush began in 1848, causing many people to leave Australia for California to look for gold there, the New South Wales government rethought its position, and sought approval from the Colonial Office in England to allow the exploitation of the mineral resources and also offered rewards for the finding of payable gold.[2] The first gold rush in Australia began in May 1851 after prospector Edward Hargraves claimed to have discovered payable gold near Bathurst, at a site he called Ophir.[3] Hargraves had been to the Californian goldfields and had learned new gold prospecting techniques such as panning and cradling.
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.
Victoria's greatest yield for one year was in 1856, when 3,053,744 troy ounces of gold were won from the diggings.[4] From 1851 to 1896 the Victorian Mines Department reported that a total of 61,034,682 oz of gold was mined in Victoria.[5] Background[edit]