Sometime in the 1830s or 1840s a shepherd named Macgregor found gold near Wellington in New South Wales. Blainey reports that he eventually brought a sample of his find to a Sydney dealer named Cohen. The discovery was famed among gold seekers, with Edmond Hammond Hargraves learning of Macgregor’s fortune while in San Francisco; Blainey suggests that this information may have inspired him to return to New South Wales, where he made the first officially recognised discovery of gold in Australia.
