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period in the history of Victoria, Australia
The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia, approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. It led to a period of extreme prosperity for the Australian colony and an influx of population growth and financial capital for Melbourne, which was dubbed "Marvellous Melbourne" as a result of the procurement of wealth.
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The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia, approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. It led to a period of extreme prosperity for the Australian colony and an influx of population growth and financial capital for Melbourne, which was dubbed "Marvellous Melbourne" as a result of the procurement of wealth.
The Victorian Gold Discovery Committee wrote in 1854:
The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of worldwide 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.
With the exception of the more extensive fields of California, for a number of years the gold output from Victoria was greater than in any other country in the world. Victoria's greatest yield for one year was in 1856, when 3,053,744 troy ounces (94,982 kg) of gold were extracted from the diggings. From 1851 to 1896 the Victorian Mines Department reported that a total of 61,034,682 oz (1,898,391 kg) of gold was mined in Victoria.
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). The find was considered unimportant at the time and was not pursued for policy reasons.
In the 1850s gold discoveries in Victoria, in Beechworth, Castlemaine, Daylesford, Ballarat and Bendigo sparked gold rushes similar to the California Gold Rush. At its peak, some two tonnes of gold per week flowed into the Treasury Building in Melbourne.
The gold exported to Britain in the 1850s paid off all of Britain's foreign debts and helped lay the foundation of her enormous commercial expansion in the latter half of the century.
Melbourne was a major boomtown during the gold rush. The city became the centre of the colony with rail networks radiating to the regional towns and ports.
Politically, Victoria's gold miners sped up the introduction of greater parliamentary democracy in Victoria, based on British Chartist principles adopted to some extent by the miners' activist bodies such as Bendigo's Anti-Gold Licence Association and the Ballarat Reform League.
As the alluvial gold dwindled, pressures for land reform, protectionism and political reform generated social struggles, and a Land Convention in Melbourne during 1857 recorded demands for land reform.
By 1854, Chinese people were contributing to the gold rushes. Their presence on the goldfields of Bendigo, Beechworth and the Bright district resulted in riots, entry taxes, killings, and segregation in the short term, and became the foundations of the White Australia policy. In short, the gold rush was a revolutionary event and reshaped Victoria, its society and politics.
There were rumours abroad about the presence of gold in Australia, but Government officials kept all findings secret for fear of disorganising the young colony. However the Colonial Secretary, Edward Deas Thomson, saw a great future for the country when Edward Hargraves proved his theory that Australia was a vast storehouse of gold. Hargraves had been in the California gold rush and knew gold country, when he first saw it, round Bathurst. The news spread and soon the race was on from coast to gold fields. Flocks were left untended, drovers deserted their teams, merchants and lawyers rushed from their desks and entire ships' crews, captains included, marched off to seek their fortunes.
In March 1850, William Campbell of Strath Loddon, found on the station of his brother-in-law, Donald Cameron, of Clunes several minute pieces of native gold in quartz. This was concealed at the time but on 10 January 1851, Campbell disclosed it. Others had found indications of gold. Dr. George H. Bruhn, a German physician, whose services as an analyst were in great demand, had been shown specimens of gold from what afterwards became the Clunes diggings. In spite of these and other discoveries, however, it was impracticable to market the gold, and James Esmond's "find" which was made on Creswick's Creek, a tributary of the Loddon River, at Clunes on 1 July 1851, was the first marketable gold field.
A party formed by Mr. Louis John Michel, consisting of himself, Mr. William Haberlin, James Furnival, James Melville, James Headon, and B. Groenig, discovered the existence of gold in the quartz rocks of the Yarra ranges, at Andersons Creek, near Warrandyte, in the latter part of June, and showed it on the spot to Dr. Webb Richmond, on behalf of the Gold Discovery Committee on 5 July.
The third discovery was by Mr. Thomas Hiscock, a resident at Buninyong; induced by the writings of the Rev. W. B. Clarke, and by the discovery of Brentani's nugget in the Pyrenees district two years before, he had kept a constant lookout for gold in his neighbourhood. He discovered an auriferous deposit in the gully of the Buninyong ranges now bearing his name, on 8 August 1851, and he communicated the fact, with its precise locality, to the editor of the Geelong Advertiser on the 10th of that month.
Dr. George H. Bruhn, a German physician, in the month of January, 1851, (i.e. before Mr. Hargraves' discovery at Summerhill) started from Melbourne to explore "the mineral resources of this colony'. During his lengthened tour, he found, in April, indications of gold in quartz about two miles from Mr. Barker's station, and on arriving at Mr. Cameron's station was shown by that gentleman specimens of gold at what are now called the Clunes diggings. This information he made widely known through the country in the course of his journey, and communicated to Mr. James Esmond, at that time engaged in erecting a building at Mr. James Hodgkinson's station. Dr. Bruhn forwarded specimens, which were received by the Gold Discovery Committee on 30 June 1851.
The Gold Discovery Committee awarded £1000 to Michel and his party; £1000 to Hiscock, as the substantial discoverer of the Ballarat deposits; £1000 to Campbell as the original discoverer of Clunes; £1000 to Esmond as the first active producer of alluvial gold for the market and £500 to Dr. Bruhn.
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 as the richest shallow alluvial goldfield in the world.
These discoveries were soon surpassed by Ballarat and Bendigo. Further discoveries including Beechworth in 1852, Bright, Omeo, Chiltern (1858–59) and Walhalla followed.
The population of Melbourne grew swiftly as the gold fever took hold, as did the colony's total population: from 1851 to 1861, it grew from 75,000 to 500,000.
Surface alluvial gold was the first to be exploited. It is reported that in 1851, when the first miners arrived on the Mount Alexander goldfield, near Castlemaine, nuggets could be picked up without digging. Then followed the exploitation of alluvial gold in creeks and rivers, or deposited in silt on river banks and flats. The gold-seekers used pans, sluice boxes and cradles to separate this gold from the dirt.
As surface alluvial gold ran out, gold seekers were forced to look further underground. Miners discovered so-called deep leads, which were gold-bearing watercourses that had been buried at various depths by centuries of silting and, in some Victorian goldfields such as Ballarat, volcanic action. They also began to exploit the underground gold reefs which were the original sources of the gold. Deep mining was more difficult and dangerous. Places such as Bendigo and Ballarat saw great concentrations of miners, who were forming partnerships and syndicates to enable them to sink ever-deeper shafts. Coupled with erratic and vexatious policing and licence checks, tensions flared around Beechworth, Bendigo and Ballarat. These frictions culminated in the Eureka Rebellion in Ballarat in 1854. Following that uprising, a range of reforms gave miners a greater say in resolving disputes via Mining Courts, and extended electoral franchise to them.
As gold-rush immigrants flooded into Victoria in 1852, a tent city, known as Canvas Town, was established at South Melbourne. The area soon became a massive slum, home to tens of thousands of migrants from around the world who arrived to seek their fortunes in the goldfields. Significant Chinatowns became established in Melbourne, Bendigo and Castlemaine.
At Walhalla alone, Cohens Reef produced over 50 tonnes (1.6 million tr oz) of gold in 40 years of mining.
News of the gold discoveries in the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria in 1851 quickly arrived in the provinces of Southern China. By the end of 1855, more than 19,000 Chinese immigrants, particularly from the Guangdong province of China, were estimated to be working on the Victorian goldfields of Ararat, Ballarat, Ovens, Bendigo, Castlemaine and Maryborough. By 1858 this number increased to roughly 33,000 and Chinese miners were estimated to have made up approximately one fifth of Victoria's miner population. Figures suggest that Victoria's Chinese population began to dwindle after 1858. This is likely due to a decrease in the number of new gold discoveries in Victoria during this period.
Like European gold diggers, the majority of Chinese miners in Victoria worked either independently or with a partner upon arrival. As gold however became harder to find in Victoria's goldfields the Chinese population of Victoria began to form their own mining cooperatives and companies. An unofficial 1868 census on the Chinese population in Victorian gold districts suggests that 660 out of the 765 Chinese miners in Daylesford and half of the 4000 Chinese miners in the Oven District had "form[ed] themselves into small companies" by 1868.
A minority of Chinese miners in Victoria were also employed by European mining companies. The 1868 census on the Chinese population in Victoria suggests that 700 Chinese miners in the Oven District were working for European companies which were paying their employees £1 to £2 per week. Smaller numbers of Chinese miners were also reported to be working for European companies in Maryborough, Ballarat and Daylesford.
The rapid influx of Chinese migrants into the Colony of Victoria aroused large amounts of anxiety within Victoria's European population. On April the 14th 1855, The Argus, a daily newspaper in Melbourne, described the growing Chinese population within Victoria as an "invading army" whose presence will "subject the community to the demoralizing influence of their ideas".
In June 1855, the Victorian government passed 'an act to make provision for certain immigrants'. The act sought to limit the number of Chinese immigrants that a vessel could carry to one for every ten tons of shipping and required the ship's master to pay a £10 poll tax for each Chinese passenger it carried. The act however failed to reduce the number of Chinese arriving on Victorian Gold Fields. By landing at the port of Robe in the colony of South Australia and travelling more than 400 km across country to the Victorian goldfields, Chinese gold seekers were able to successfully evade the restrictions of Victoria's immigration act.
In November 1857, the Victorian government passed 'an act to regulate the residence of the Chinese Population in Victoria'. This act required all Chinese residing in Victoria to obtain a £1 license which had to be renewed every two months for an additional £1 in order to remain in the Colony of Victoria. The residence tax was, however, reduced in February 1859 and repealed in 1862 due to Chinese protests against the legislation, increasing levels of tax evasion, and a downturn in Victoria's mining population.
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