The world stopped and listened in 1848 when James W Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in California. The reaction to the news was unprecedented: around 300,000 people from all over the globe flocked to the Golden State in the hope of becoming rich beyond their wildest dreams. But despite Marshall’s place in the history books, he wasn’t the first to dig up New World gold. The precious metal had already been found Down Under in the Australian colonies.
Between 1841 and 1844, geologist Reverend William Branwhite Clarke happened upon a handful of small golden nuggets on the Coxs River in New South Wales. He showed his bounty to his friend Sir George Gipps, the then-governor of New South Wales, who replied: “Put it away, Mr Clarke, or we shall all have our throats cut!” Clarke’s find was kept a secret – those back in Britain really didn’t want a gold rush, as it was feared that gold fever in Australia would trigger a convict uprising. More gold was found and ignored by the government before the start of the California Gold Rush: explorer Paul de Strezlecki discovered gold in the Victorian Alps in 1839, and William Campbell found it on his sheep run in Strathloddon, Victoria in 1840. Farmers would frequently travel to Sydney with found gold, selling it in secret to avoid talk of gold being found in the colonies.
Once news got out that someone had struck gold in Sutter’s Mill, around 6,000 Australians upped sticks and left to join the California Gold Rush. In a desperate attempt to keep people in the country, the new governor of New South Wales, Charles FitzRoy, convinced the British government to offer a reward of £10,000 to anyone that managed to unearth commercial quantities of gold. The first prospector to hit the headlines was Edward Hargraves. He had worked as a sheep farmer, a sea
