The story
In 1851 Edward Hargraves, who had returned from California, announces a gold find at Ophir in New South Wales, and within months much larger deposits are found at Ballarat, Bendigo and other fields in the new colony of Victoria. People pour in from Britain, Ireland, the United States, Germany and China. Victoria, with the largest goldfields, yields around a third of the world's gold in the 1850s.
Britain's Australian colonies, founded as a penal settlement in 1788, had grown slowly around wool. News of California's 1848 gold rush created a worldwide army of diggers. The colony of Victoria, separated from New South Wales in 1851, had just 77,000 settlers, and its miners ran away from their jobs. Australia's settler population rose from about 430,000 in 1851 to about 1.15 million in 1861, and Melbourne became one of the largest and richest cities in the British Empire. The rush brought tension. Diggers resented the high license fee, leading to the Eureka Stockade at Ballarat in 1854, and anti-Chinese feeling that led to Victorian laws restricting Chinese arrivals, a root of the later 'White Australia' policy. Gold wealth helped end convict transportation to the eastern colonies in 1853, funded railways and universities, and brought Australia's first great manufacturing and political growth. Gold also sped the dispossession of Aboriginal people.
Why it mattered
- It more than doubled the settler population and made Melbourne and Victoria the economic center of Australia.
- It led to the Eureka Stockade of 1854 and to broader suffrage and political reform in Victoria.
- It created anti-Chinese feeling and laws that fed into the White Australia policy at Federation in 1901.
- Its wealth funded the infrastructure and institutions of the colonies that federated in 1901.
Sources
- Australian gold rushes Britannica
- Gold rushes National Museum of Australia
- History of gold mining in Victoria Victorian Government
Community notes
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