Victorian gold rush
The Victorian Gold Rush was a period in the history of the Australian state of Victoria that lasted from 1851 to the late 1860s. Australia's population tripled in just ten years.
overview
At that time, Victoria was the area in the world where most of the gold was found. For a time Ballarat was number one in gold production.
The discovery of gold at Beechworth , Ballarat, and Bendigo sparked a gold rush similar to that in California . At the height of this gold rush, roughly two tons of gold per week poured into the Melbourne Treasury . In the Gold Age, Victoria developed from a pure sheep breeding country to a growing industrial country with small farms. As a result of the gold rush, Victoria's population grew by leaps and bounds, and the lack of land for smallholders led to massive social tensions. These ongoing tensions and the distribution of land to smallholders culminated in the Kelly Outbreak in 1878 .
Melbourne was an important boom town during the gold rush. The city became the center of the colony, from which star-shaped new railway lines were built to the smaller towns and ports. In politics, Victoria's gold diggers introduced the right to vote for (all) men and secret elections based on Chartist principles. With the decline in gold discoveries, the pressure to implement land reform, protectionism, and political reforms increased and led to social struggles. A land convention in Melbourne in 1857 called for land reform. Melbourne became one of the major cities in the British Empire and in the world. In 1854 the Chinese followed the great gold rush. Their presence in the gold fields around Bendigo, Beechworth and Bright quickly led to import duties, discrimination, uprisings such as the Buckland Riot and murders and became the basis of the White Australia Policy .
background
In 1840, the city of Melbourne in southern Victoria was almost five years old. The population growth in the city and the surrounding area was steady and the population was around 10,000.
In July 1851, Melbourne's 29,000 residents celebrated their replacement from New South Wales and the colony of Victoria was born. Weeks later gold was found in Victoria. The discovery of Louis Michel and William McKay Aberdeen at Andersons Creek near Warrandyte , 30 km northwest of Melbourne, was honored by the new Victorian government, as were the discoveries of James Esmond in Clunes in July 1851 and Thomas Hiscock in Buninyong near by Ballarat August 2, 1851.
On July 20, 1851, the smallholder Thomas Peters found traces of gold in what is now the Specimen Gully on William Barker's Mount Alexander Station . This find was published in the Melbourne newspaper The Argus on September 8, 1851 and led to a gold rush at Mount Alexander and Forrest Creek in what is now Castlemaine , which became the richest flat alluvial gold field in the world.
These discoveries were soon surpassed by others in Ballarat and Bendigo. Further finds in Beechworth (1852), Bright, Omeo and Chiltern (1858-1859) and in Walhalla followed.
| year | Melbourne population (excluding Aborigines ) |
|---|---|
| 1835 | 0 |
| 1840 | 10,000 |
| 1851 | 29,000 |
| 1854 | 123,000 |
Melbourne's population grew steadily as the gold rush manifested. In Victoria, too, the population increased. In 1851 there were 75,000 inhabitants, ten years later there were over 500,000.
First the alluvial gold was found on the surface. There were reports that the first gold diggers in the gold field at Mount Tarrengower simply picked up nuggets from the ground without digging. After that, the alluvial gold was mainly extracted from streams and rivers. The gold washers used pans, sand boxes and cradles to separate the gold from the mud and water.
When the alluvial gold was exhausted, gold mining began underground. This was much more strenuous and also dangerous. In places like Bendigo and Ballarat, miners formed teams and syndicates and sank shafts . Arbitrary and vicious policies and license reviews increased tensions over Beechworth, Bendigo and Ballarat. These tensions finally led to the Eureka Stockade in 1854 . In the aftermath of the rebellion, a number of reforms were carried out, giving gold diggers a greater say by letting them settle disputes in mining courts and exercising more extensive voting rights.
A tent city called Canvas Town was established in South Melbourne . The area soon became a slum and was home to tens of thousands of immigrants from around the world, particularly Ireland and China, who had come to Australia to find their fortune in the gold fields. Important Chinatowns were established in Melbourne, Bendigo and Castlemaine.
In Walhalla alone, the Cohens Reef produced over 50 tons. (1.6 million ounces) gold in 40 years of mining.
legacy
Due to the gold rush, the population of Australia changed dramatically. In 1851 there were 437,635 Australians, of whom only 77,345 - a little less than 18% - lived in Victoria. A decade later, Australia's population had grown to 1,151,947, and Victoria's to 538,628 - nearly 47% of the total population and a seven-fold increase. Gold was found in large quantities in some small country towns and the population increased by over 1000% in a decade (e.g. Rutherglen with an initial ~ 2000 inhabitants and 10 years later ~ 60,000 inhabitants - an increase of 3000%). The enormous growth was mainly a result of the gold rush.
The gold rush is also reflected in the architecture of the Victorian cities of the gold boom, such as Melbourne, Castlemaine, Ballarat, Bendigo and Ararat . Ballarat has Sovereign Hill , a 24-acre replica of a gold rush settlement, and a gold museum, while Bendigo has a large operating gold mine that is also used as a tourist attraction.
The gold rush left strange cities in the tourist region of the gold fields, such as B. Maldon , Beechworth, Clunes, Heathcote , Maryborough , Daylesford , Stawell , Beaufort , Creswick , St. Arnaud , Dunolly , Inglewood , Wedderburn and Buninyong . With the exception of Bendigo and Ballarat, all of these cities were significantly larger then than they are today. Most of the population moved to other parts of the country when the gold veins were exhausted. At the other end of the spectrum, there are still ghost towns like Walhalla, Mafeking, and Steiglitz today .
The last major gold rush in Victoria took place in Berringa , south of Ballarat, in the first decade of the 20th century. Gold mining in Victoria was not abandoned because there was no more gold, but at least in part because of the depth and high cost of dewatering in the mines. The First World War also took the labor of the miners, the soldiers were from Australia from. Even more effective, however, was the ban on gold exports for Australia in 1915 and the abolition of the gold standard throughout the British Empire, which led to the death of many gold cities in Victoria. The decline in gold production was never reversed. But since 2005 the price of gold rose, commercial mining in the two large gold fields of Bendigo and Ballarat was resumed. The search for gold is also possible in other locations, e.g. B. in Glen Wills , an island mountain range near Mitta Mitta in northeast Victoria.
Web links
- eGold - Electronic Encyclopedia of Gold in Australia
- Victorian Museum
- Valhalla
- Sovereign Hill
- Ballarat Gold Museum
- Gold prospecting resumption report
literature
- Robyn Annear: Nothing but Gold: The Diggers of 1852 . Text pub. Melbourne (1999). ISBN 1876485078
- GF James & CG Lee: Walhalla Heyday . Graham Publications. Ringwood (1975). ISBN 0959631135
- John Aldersea & Barbara Hood: Walhalla, Valley of Gold: A Story of its People, Places and its Gold Mines . Walhalla Publishing. Trafalgar (2003). ISBN 097508870X
- James Flett: The History of Gold Discovery in Victoria . Hawthorn Press. Melbourne (1970). ISBN 0725600098
- Vivine McWaters: Beechworth's little Canton . Vivienne McWaters. Beechworth (2002). ISBN 0958045909
- Geoffrey Serle: The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851-1861 . Melbourne University Press. Carlton (1963/1977). ISBN 0522841430
- Carole Woods: Beechworth: A Titan's Field . Hargreen. North Melbourne (1985). ISBN 0949905259
- Diann Talbot & Andrew Swift: The Buckland Valley Goldfield . Diann Talbot. Bright (2004). ISBN 0975717006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Whaples: California Gold Rush . Wake Forest University ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Weston Bate: Lucky City: The first Generation of Ballarat, 1851-1901 . Melbourne University Press. Carlton (1978). ISBN 0522850650
- ^ David Goodman: Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s . Stanford University Press. Stanford (1994). ISBN 0804724806
- ↑ John McQuilton: The Geographical Dimensions of Social banditry Kelly Outbreak 1878 to 1880 . Melbourne (1979)
- ^ A b c Anthony O'Brien: Shenanigans on the Ovens Goldfields . Artillery Publishing. Hartwell (2005). ISBN 0975801309
- ^ ID McNaughton & Gordon Greenwood (editors): Australia: A Social and Political History . Angus and Robertson. Sydney (1955). Colonial Liberalism, 1851-92
- ^ Katerine Cronin: Colonial Casualities: Chinese in Early Victoria . Melbourne University Press. Carlton (1982). ISBN 0522842216
- ↑ JC Caldwell & Wray Vamplew (editors): Australians: Historical Statistics . Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates. Broadway (1987). ISBN 0949288292 . Pp. 23-26. Chapter 2: Population
- ^ Marnie Hague-Muir & Joan Beaumont (editors): Australia's War 1914-18 . Allen & Unwin. St. Leonards NSW (1995). ISBN 1863734619 . Chapter: The Economy at War
