San Francisco Gold Rush

The first settlers arrived in Australia 35,000 years ago during the great ice age. The sea levels lowered between Indonesia and New Guinea and created a land bridge that would allow nomadic tribes to cross from Southeast Asia. Like many other humans of that epoch, they were hunters and gatherers and traveled from place to place in search of young creatures. Thousands of years after these drifters arrived; the glaciers thawed and brought up the seas once again, which kept the citizenry of Australia permanently in that esteem. The Aborigines or the Australian Aboriginals inhabited Australia before the English settlers. Aborigines occupied most of Southeast part of the continent on the shoreline, as well as all parts of the continent. Their …show more content…
He studied the geologies of his country and came to the conclusion that where he existed in Australia had the same features of San Francisco. He was seen to find gold that which he exercised in his district of Bathurst, New South Wales in 1851. Edward would call his gold claim Ophir, and would attract just over 100,000 prospectors in the first four months. The gold he discovered would start a gold frenzy in Bathurst and by 1852, he would yield just over 850,000 ounces of gold. The state of Victoria, not happy with most of its population moving to New South Wales offered 200 pounds for any gold discovered within 200 miles of Melbourne. Six months later they discovered gold in Ballarat and Bendigo Creek. Australia started to experience an influx of immigration from all regions of the world. America, Europe and China; by 1861 370,000 immigrants migrated to Australia with China makes up 3.3 percent of Australia’s population in 1852. During the 1850’s, the state of Victoria alone contributed over one-third of the world’s gold and went from a population of 400,000 to 1.9 million. Australia supplied over one-thirds of the world’s gold and with all that gold it built the country’s economy and started huge investments that brought in big businesses. As a result of all the gold miners traveling back and forth, Australia finally built a railroad system and telegraph company. During the 1860’s Australia started to charge a miner’s fee called a gold-seekers license, if you wanted to dig gold you would have to pay. The license is a way for the government to tax the digger weather they found gold or not. Governor Hotham had his Gold Commissioned Police force conduct license checks twice a week, which started an enormous uproar within the miner community to protest and to fight against the authorities.