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Gold!
Gold is found in rocks and in the ground.
People came to look for gold in Australia.
It was called the Gold Rush.
It was a hard life digging for gold.
Some people became rich but lots did not.
Gold in California and Australia
In 1851, during the time that there was a gold rush in California, a gold rush began in Australia. The gold in California was mainly in the form of very fine grains, called gold dust.
The California Goldfields. Illustration © [2008] Jupiterimages Corporation
However, in Australia, it was not unusual for gold nuggets, some very large, to be found.
In
October 1872 Holtermann's Nugget was found. At that time
it was the world's largest specimen of reef gold. It weighed 286kg
and measured 150cm by 66cm.
The Australian gold rush begins
Small amounts of gold were found in New South Wales in the early days of the colony, but the authorities hushed it up. However, in February 1851 a man named Hargraves found gold in near Bathurst, and word quickly spread. Within a week there were over 400 people digging there for gold, and by June there were 2000. They named the goldfield Ophir after a city of gold in the Bible. The Australian gold rush had begun!
Illustration © [2008]JupiterImages Corporation
So many
people went to the goldfield that there was a shortage of people
doing other work such as farming, building, baking and so on.
Governor Fitz Roy was worried that there would be violence and
lawlessness at the goldfields, and he ordered that gold seekers
must pay for a licence in order to dig for gold.
The Victorian
goldfields
In August 1851, part of New South Wales was made a separate colony,
and was named Victoria after the Queen. Many Victorians had gone
to the goldfields, and businessmen, to keep people from leaving
the new colony, offered a prize of 200 guineas for the first person
who found gold in Victoria. 
At around the same time, gold was found
at Clunes, at Andersons Creek near Warrandyte and at Buninyong.
Towards the end of August, James Reagan and John Dunlop discovered
the richest goldfield the world has ever seen in a place the Aborigines
called Balla arat, which means 'camping place', now the
city of Ballarat. Other discoveries soon followed in Mount Alexander,
now called Castlemaine, in Daylesford, Creswick, Maryborough,
Bendigo and McIvor, now called Heathcote.
By the
end of September 1851, there were about 10,000 people digging
for gold near Ballarat. By 1852, the news had spread to England,
Europe, China and America, and boatloads of hopeful diggers arrived
in Melbourne and headed for the goldfields. Between 1851 and 1861,
Australia produced one third of the world's gold.
Click here to see a map showing the main Australian goldfields.
If you use any part of this in your own work, acknowledge this source in your bibliography like this:
Sydenham, S. & Thomas, R.Gold! [Online] www.kidcyber.com.au (2000)
Updated September ©kidcyber [2008]