Gold Rush
BY ASHLEY TIMMERMANS
How did the Australian gold rush change AUS?
The Gold Rush made Australia a multicultural nation and another one of the
main effects of the gold rushes was on the growing agricultural industry.
Many men who worked on the farms, sheep and cattle stations simply
downed their tools and left. Workers, owners, roustabouts (a unskilled
labourer or casual labourer), stockmen, jackaroos (a young man working on
a sheep or cattle station to gain experience). Many left their jobs for the lure of the goldfields. Often women and children
were left to tend the stations their husbands left behind. As a result,
Aboriginal labour became more popular. The gold rushes saw the rise of
loyal Aboriginal stockmen and jackaroos who were willing to work long and
hard for perhaps less pay than their predecessors.
Because major gold discoveries were made in Victoria, this newly separated
state suddenly found itself very wealthy. Businesses boomed, together with
the population, and more people settled further out from the established
towns, sparking interest and enthusiasm in exploration. Victoria's
newfound wealth was directly responsible for the well-equipped but badly
managed exploration of Burke and Wills, which ultimately resulted in their
deaths.
How did the gold rush effect/form Australia
Melbourne used to be one of the poorest places on
earth before the gold rush but when the gold rush hit
Australia Melbourne was one of the richest! As well
as a population boom, people from all over Europe,
America, the Middle East, and China were attracted
to the Australian gold rush. Most of them brought
nothing but a will to work hard and the skills they
had attained in their home countries. Many of them
never saw any gold but their skills proved to be
invaluable to the formation of Australia as a country
that could stand up on its own.
How it started.
In 1788, A convict by the name of James Daley claimed
that he had found gold in Port Jackson, Sydney. On the
pretence of showing an officer the position of his gold
find, Daley absconded (leave hurriedly and secretly,
typically to escape from custody or avoid arrest) into the
bush and received 50 lashes. Still insisting he found gold,
he produced a specimen of gold ore. Governor Arthur
Phillip then ordered Daley to be taken down to the
harbour to point out where he had found the gold. Before
being taken down to the harbour, however, on being
warned by an officer that he would be put to death if he
attempted to deceive him. Daley confessed that his story
was “a falsehood”.
Continued...
He had manufactured the specimen of gold ore that he
had exhibited from a gold guinea and a brass buckle
and he produced the remains of the same as proof.
He then received 100 lashes and hung for break and
enter.
Victoria
Gold was found at Port Phillip (Victoria) by a shepherd.
About April 1847 a shepherd took a sample of ore about
the size of an apple, that he believed to be copper, into
the jewellery store of Charles Brentani in Collins Street,
Melbourne, where the sample was purchased by an
employee, Joseph Forrester, a gold and silver smith. The
shepherd refused to disclose to Forrester where he had
obtained the nugget, but stated that "there was plenty
more of it where it came from" on the station where he
worked about 60 miles (96 km) from Melbourne. The
sample was tested by Forrester and found to be 65 per
cent virgin gold. A sample of this ore was given to
Captain Clinch who took it to Hobart.
Ballarat
On 21 August 1851 gold was found at Ballarat, Victoria in Poverty Point by John
Dunlop and James Regan. Ballarat is about 10 km (6m) from Buninyong and
upon the same range. John Dunlop and James Regan found their first few
ounces of gold while panning in the Canadian Creek after leaving the
Buninyong diggings to extend their search for gold. However Henry
Frenchman, a newspaper man who in June had claimed, unsuccessfully, the
£200 reward for finding payable gold within 200 miles (320 km) of Melbourne,
had followed them and noticed their work. As a result, they only had the rich
Ballarat goldfield to themselves for a week. By early September 1851 what
became known as the Ballarat gold rush had begun, as reported from the field
by Henry Frencham, then a reporter for the Argus (Henry Frencham claimed in
his article of 19 September 1851 to have been the first to discover gold at
Ballarat [then also known as Yuille's Diggings] "and make it known to the
public“, a claim he was later to also make about Bendigo, and which resulted in
the sitting of a Select Committee of the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1890.)
Continued...
In the report of the Committee on the Claims to Original Discovery of the
Goldfields of Victoria published in The Argus (Melbourne) newspaper of 28
March 1854, however, a different picture of the discovery of gold at Golden
Point at Ballarat is presented. They stated that Regan and Dunlop were one of
two parties working at the same time on opposite sides of the ranges forming
Golden Point, the other contenders for the first finders of gold at Ballarat being
described as "Mr Brown and his party". The committee stated that "where so
many rich deposits were discovered almost simultaneously, within a radius of
little more than half a mile, it is difficult to decide to whom is due the actual
commencement of the Ballarat diggings." They also agreed that the prospectors
"had been attracted there (Ballarat) by the discoveries in the neighbourhood of
Messrs. Esmonds (Clunes) and Hiscock (Buninyong)" and "by attracting great
numbers of diggers to the neighbourhood" that "the discovery of Ballarat was
but a natural consequence of the discovery of Buninyong".
in 1858 the "Welcome Nugget" weighing 2,217 troy ounces 16 pennyweight.
(68.98 kg) found at Bakery Hill at Ballarat by a group of 22 Cornish miners
working at the mine of the Red Hill Mining Company.
Licences
Diggers on the goldfields needed a licence to mine,
because the gold that they were mining was classified
as her majesties gold because technically it was on
English soil because Australia was a colony of
England. A lot of the people did not like the idea so
in protest they started the Eureka Stockade in which
27 people were killed (22 miners and 5 policemen)
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Australian gold rush brang an economic
wealth to Australia as well as more than a million people
and their skills, Diggers then went on to protest about the
licences they needed to buy to be able to mine, they
launched the Eureka Stockade and that event was the
birth place of democracy in Australia.
The birth of democracy was important because now the
people of Australia had a right to vote for change, not
many countries have that sort of democracy, this ability
to vote led the citizens of Australia to develop a pride in
the country and the willingness to work hard in order to
build Australia as a nation.
Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_gold_rushes
#1788:_A_hoax
http://www.oldtreasurybuilding.org.au/vault-1-goldfield-gold-deals
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australianstory/austn-gold-rush
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_did_the_Australia
n_gold_rush_shape_Australian_history