Assignment #2: Australian Gold Rush

This assignment was a research paper about some event in world history that did not happen in the United States.  I chose the Australian Gold Rush of 1851 because I like Australia.  The format's a bit odd, but that's what he wanted.

Grade: A+

I. Introduction

The Australian gold rush of 1851 changed the country from a backwards penal colony into a formidable industrial and agricultural leader.

II. Body

If gold had not been discovered in 1849 in California, perhaps Australia would still be a wilderness populated solely with aborigines and convicts, today guarded by technology straight out of Escape from New York.  However, the gold fever sparked in California ignited the imaginations of the rest of the world--even after the world's immigrants found little more than lawlessness and poverty in the promised land.

One of these immigrants was Edward Hammond Hargraves, an Australian who had returned home after failed prospecting attempts in California.  Despite his lack of success in America, Hargraves was convinced he could locate equally prosperous gold deposits in his native land.  After all, gold had previously been found in the territory of New South Wales in 1823 and 1842, but the government discouraged mining for fear the population and economic surges would have too many unwanted side effects.  However, the discoveries in California whetted the government's appetite and when Hargraves turned up gold in Bathurst, New South Wales, in February of 1851, he was rewarded with £12,881 and a pension for life.

From all over Australia diggers came to work in the newly-discovered gold fields.  Towns were deserted.  The owners of the sheep and cattle ranches lost their hired hands.  In the cities, businesses closed down, schools emptied, and ships' crews abandoned their posts.  One report claims that nearly every adult male in Melbourne left for the Victoria mines.

Of course, news of this new source of gold also spread around the world.  Hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured into the tiny coastal cities of Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane.  In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia.  Over 300 international ships were docked at the city of Port Phillip in that year, increasing the town's population by 100,000.  More productive mines discovered at Ballarat in August 1851 and Bendigo that December and at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in the early 1890's kept the population influx steady.  In 1850, Australia's population was only 405,356; ten years later, it had ballooned to 1,145,585.

Who were these people who left their homes to travel halfway around the world to some exotic land?  By 1861, 500,000 of them had come from the British Isles, mixing English, Scottish, and Irish culture together to form a unique Australian outlook. Almost every country in the world was represented somehow, of course, but by 1861 only 7.5% of the miners were non-British--the Chinese had long been used as a cheap source of labor at the gold mines, but lingering resentment and, perhaps, fear of union led to severe government restrictions on all Asians, preventing the huge crowds of immigrants who would undoubtedly have poured in from nearby Indonesia, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines.  As a result of this ban, which was not discontinued until 1966, only about 5% of Australia's 15 million people are Asian.

One thing that almost all of these immigrants had in common, though, was a dissatisfaction with the politics of their old lands--or at least, a willingness to fight for changes in the policies of the new.  In the increasingly-large lower class, resentment was growing against the privileged upper class, and stirrings of reform and independence were apparent.  They wanted to eliminate the costly licenses needed for gold digging, lower the land prices, and earn political equality.  They were interested in making laws that benefited themselves, the common people, who had long been ignored by the government.  In these territories once thought to be the untameable last frontier, civilization was coming fast.  Vote by ballot became law in Victoria in March of 1856 and in South Australia that April.  By January 1, 1901, just fifty years after the first gold strike, Australia had declared itself an independent country.

But before any of the gold miners could even begin to think about changing the country, they had to find a way to support themselves.  Mining camps and towns appeared overnight near a new vein, then were abandoned just as quickly when the gold ran out and the citizens raced each other to the next promised site.  Most of the miners and their families just lived in tents with a fire outside the door, laboring in mines and streams with picks and shovels, hoping to strike it rich.  Most of them, however, encountered one of two extremes: a few became fabulously wealthy, but most lost everything they owned.  The camps were very similar to the ones in California with barfights and bushranging, but some historians claim that the Australian government was more effective in keeping order and reducing lynchings and lawlessness.  In fact, there was only one major riot in the entire history of the gold rush, at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat in 1854.  This direct conflict with the reigning authorities, in which four officers and thirty rioters died, helped convince people to go through the proper legal channels instead of using violence.

When the gold finally ran out--or when it had never been found at all--the miners had to find other ways to make their livings.  Many moved back to the cities and added themselves to the labor force of the growing industries and businesses, eventually forming unions and demanding better treatment in their new jobs.  Others became ranchers or farmers, often just settling down wherever they pleased.  Of course, as soon as they had established their land, they insisted upon laws that protected themselves from squatters, thieves, and high taxes, bringing law and order to previously empty territory.

All these people suddenly entering the country, putting down roots, and starting families--by 1871, more than half of the citizens were native born--radically changed Australia's economy.  People straying from the large port cities sped up the development of the country's interior, encouraging towns, communication, transportation, and foreign trade from coast to coast.  Businesses boomed as they received hundreds of thousands of new customers.  However, the early economic high, including a land boom in the 1880's, was quickly followed by a depression.  The banks loaned money like they had during the gold rush's heyday, even though gold production had decreased 50% between 1860 and 1886, and twenty-three of them failed within two years during the early 1890's.  Still, commerce, shipping, and manufacturing noticeably increased around the world as a result of the various gold rushes, which produced more gold from 1850-1875 than in all the years since 1492.

III. Conclusion

The effects of the great Australian gold rush are still apparent today.  Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane are now bustling metropolises with one to three million people each and Australia is the world's third largest producer of gold, accounting for 11% of the total yield.  In the grand scheme of things, the gold rush may have been a short-lived burst of prosperity, but the people it drew to Australia forever changed and improved the country.

Bibliography

Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 13, p. 11
Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 2, p. 747-749
Green, Timothy.  "All That Glitters," Modern Maturity Aug/Sept 1988 (SIRS)
Currie, Gordon.  Let's Travel in Australia, p. 10-11
MacInnes, Colin.  Australia and New Zealand, p. 26-27
http://www.junction.net/dms/gold.htm
http://www.minerals.org.au/facts/gold.htm
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dbeazley/gold.htm