Australian Gold Rush Diggers - Immigrants to Australia. Prior to Edward Hargraves' 1851 discovery of gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, Britain regarded the distant colony of Australia as little more than a penal settlement.
The promise of gold, however, attracted thousands of "voluntary" settlers in search of their fortune, and ultimately ended Britain's practice of transporting convicts to the colonies. Within weeks of Hargraves' discovery, thousands of laborers were frantically digging at Bathurst, with hundreds more arriving daily. This prompted the Governor of Victoria, Charles J. La Trobe, to offer a £200 reward to anyone who found gold within 200 miles of Melbourne.
Diggers quickly took up the challenge, and gold was quickly found in abundance by James Dunlop at Ballarat, Thomas Hiscock at Buninyong and Henry Frenchman at Bendigo Creek. Were They a Digger? Hundreds of thousands of new settlers descended on Australia during the 1850s. When Did They Arrive in Australia? Australian gold rush timeline, HSIE, Discovering gold, Gold! Year 6, NSW.
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.
The Australian Gold Rush. Www.patricktaylor.com | articles First published April 28th, 2006.
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 ~ Gold! 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. 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.
