Melbourne and Gold in Early Australia
If ever there was a city that was akin to California in terms of how it came about, it would most certainly be Melbourne, why? Because both Melbourne and California came into existence due to GOLD! The beginnings of Melbourne was much like that of California, it was basically an outpost that nobody bothered about until the discovery of gold in the area more than a hundred years ago.
It is one of the reasons that most Melbourne gold buyers have had their businesses for at least 2 generations; the fact is that most of these precious metal traders stem from a long line of Australian prospectors who actually made it rich. What eventually became known as the Victorian gold rush was the start of a cycle that would last for a long time to come as people from all over the world started arriving in Victoria by the thousands and as they arrived the price of land and demand for good also increased, the Victorian gold rush made Australia an important part of the British Empire as it was producing more gold than any other country in the world. Starting from 1850, a series of discoveries in succession led to a huge influx of immigrants to Australia as news spread like wildfire.
This had a direct impact on the population boom as the entire population of Melbourne increased 5 fold within 10 years – from 75,000 residents in 1851 to a staggering 500,000 by 1861. Although it seemed like the goldfields would never run out of gold at the onset, as the surface alluvial gold diminished, gold seekers were forced to look further underground. Miners were after what was known at that time as ‘deep leads’ which were actually watercourses that contained gold buried by silting and volcanic action for centuries.
These miners needed funds and that is when they formed alliances and sold whatever gold nuggets or gold dust that they had to trade with gold buyers in Melbourne to fund their ‘deep mining’ projects. However difficulties started arising due to governance as erratic and vexatious policing and licence checks were becoming intolerable to the miners and anger and discontent started brewing among miners against the authorities, this situation eventually led to the Eureka Rebellion in Ballarat in 1854 that saw authorities abusing power and using heavy handed tactics.
The rebellion which is more commonly referred to as the Eureka Stockade was the direct result of government actions involving supervision of the gold fields. A gold miners fee (diggers fee) of 30 shillings was imposed by the Crown to secure order and prevent unauthorised mining and the penalty for mining without a license saw miners being thrown into jail for periods of up to 6 months and fined up to 6 pounds and although the fee was reduced to 1 pound, the brutality of the police (who were actually recruited from Tasmania – ex cons) was unacceptable to most miners and when push came to shove, the miners decided to fight back, the incident as mentioned earlier became known as the Eureka Stockade and although the rebellion ended badly for the miners, it initiated reforms that gave miners better venues to voice their concerns and resolve disputes.
Melbourne was not the only city that was built on gold in Australia, Castlemaine, Bendigo, Ararat and Ballarat were all founded due to the discovery of gold. The last gold rush in the region took place in Berinnga in 1910 but ceased operation within a few years as the gold standard was abolished and World War I absorbed the labour needed to mine the area. However mining was resumed in 1982 and continues until this very day.