THE GLOBAL PICTURE YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE GOLD RUSH
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA (1851-69)
In 1885, when visiting English journalist George Augustus Sala dubbed it “Marvellous Melbourne”, Vietoria’s capital was enjoying a boom. Here was a growing southern city that was reputedly the world’s richest - at least until a financial crash in 1893 brought an abrupt end to an era of brash boosterism.
To understand the swagger of so many Melburnians at this time, it helps to go back to 1850. This was the year when pastoralist, politician and financier William Campbell (1810-96) discovered gold on the station, or landholding, owned by his brotherin-law, Donald Cameron.
It wasn’t the first time gold had been discovered in Victoria and the two men didn’t immediately make the find public for fear of a gold rush impacting on their work as livestock farmers, but Campbell would subsequently be awarded a cash prize for being the first man to discover gold in Victoria.
By 1851, the genie was out of the bottle. As reports of further discoveries circulated, gold fever took hold. The scale of what happened is revealed in the growth of Melbourne. Between 1851 and 1854, its non-indigenous population shot up from 29,000 to 123,000. A vast tent city, Canvas Town, grew up in South Melbourne.
At first, the goldMount Alexander goldfield. Then there was alluvial gold in creeks and rivers, relatively cheap to recover by panning. As these deposits ran out, mining took over in earnest.
