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Gravel Pits Ballarat, 1854, by Doudiet, Charles Alphonse (1832 - 1913), courtesy of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
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Chow Chow (Chinamen on Ballarat), (1854), by Doudiet, Charles Alphonse (1832 - 1913), courtesy of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
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Ballarat 18 February 1854, courtesy of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
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Inquest - William Hyams, 1851, courtesy of Public Record Office Victoria, Victorian Archives Centre.
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Inquest - Samuel Lear, 1851, courtesy of Public Record Office Victoria, Victorian Archives Centre.
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Narrow escape at Ballarat, 18 October 1852, courtesy of Australian National University.
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La Trobe inspects the diggings at Ballarat, 16 April 1853, courtesy of Australian National University.
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Unusually severe weather in Ballarat, 13 June 1853, courtesy of Australian National University.
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Inquest - Ellen Bell, 1854, courtesy of Public Record Office Victoria, Victorian Archives Centre.
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Lydiart [i.e. Lydiard] St from Bath’s Hotel, Ballaarat, 1857, by Tingle, J., courtesy of State Library of Victoria.
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Ballarat, VIC
Gold was found at Ballarat by John Dunlop and James Regan in August 1851, followed by other finds at Golden Point to the north-west. The rush was short-lived but, with deep lead mining, a new boom began. The rich yields led Ballarat’s population to rise steadily and a more settled community meant that wealth from the goldfield was re-invested in the locality. In 1858, a party of Cornishmen found the Welcome Nugget, weighing 2,217 ounces, a then record.
Sluicing ventures were mainly unprofitable but the shallow deposits were reworked by the Chinese, who made up a significant proportion of the mining population in the late 1850s and 1860s.
At the end of 1854 the Eureka Rebellion, a brief demonstration of armed conflict again injustice, took place. Factors leading to it included the hated licence fee and the unjust administration system used by the Colonial Government to control the goldfields population.
- References
- Ballarat Times, 16 September 1854. [ Details... ]
- Ballarat Star, 11 February 1857. [ Details... ]
- Bannear, David, Heritage Victoria, Historic gold mining information, Department of Sustainability and Environment. [ Details... ]
- Moore, Bruce, Gold! Gold! Gold!: a dictionary of the nineteenth-century Australian gold rushes, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2000. [ Details... ]
