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protest meetings in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart, culminating in the Australasian
League for the Abolition of Transportation, formed in Melbourne in January 1351. A month
later the discovery of goid near Bathurst changed ail that and much of Australian life.
Agitation of another sort in 1850, concerning the Port Phillip citizens' desires to be a separate
colony, resulted in the British Government passing a bill in November that year, four months
after the Honeycombes arrived, which separated Port Phillip from Sydney and gave the new
colony, as well as South Australia and Van Diemen's Land, their own legislative councils, like
that in New South Wales. Three years later all four colonies were invited to draft separate
constitutions.
Victoria came into official existence on 1 July 1851, under Lt-Governor Charles La Trobe. Sir
Charles Fitzroy became the first Governor-General of all Australia, two-thirds of which at ieast
was still unexplored and unknown. The white population was about 410,000 - 80,000 of whom
were in Victoria, along with, it is said, six million sheep.
Wool, once Australia's chief export, would be overtaken by gold in 1853.
Curiously, gold had been found near Bathurst 30 years earlier. But news of the discovery was
suppressed, as the authorities thought the whole penal system would collapse and anarchy
result, if convicts were seized with gold-fever and broke their shackles to stage a gold-rush.
It was Edward Hargraves who first struck it lucky, in February 1851. He had just got back
from California, whither he had been drawn by the first great gold-rush in 1849. From what he
saw there of gold-bearing rocks, he concluded that simiiar formations existed in Australia.
Setting out from Sydney in January, he trekked across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst and on
down the Macquarie River, accompanied by a bushman, John Lister, who thought him mad -
the more so when Hargraves declared on reaching a certain creek that gold lay below their feet.
To prove it to Lister he panned some soil in a water-hole and there it was -gold!
Hargraves cried: 'This is a memorable day in the history of New South Wales! I shall be a
baronet. You will be knighted. And my old horse will be stuffed, put in a glass case and sent to
the British Museum!'
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Within two months. John Lister was with the Tom brothers when they found gold at Ophir.
Word spread, and rumour was confirmed when the discoveries were published in the papers.
'Scores have rushed from their homes,' said the Sydney Morning Herald, 'provided with a
blanket, a "damper" and a pick or grubbing hoe, full of hope that a day or two's labour would fill
their pockets with the precious metal.' This report also appeared in the English North Devon
Journal that September.
Then gold was found on 14 June, again near Bathurst, on the Turon River. Thousands of men
descended on the new gold-fields, deserting their places of work in town and country. The
ethos and occupation of the digger was born. For some it soon became a way of life.
Great was the excitement in Melbourne, also, in June, when gold was found near Ciunes, north
of Ballarat - at Castlemaine - and yet more at Bendigo.
Mining licences were instituted by the governments of New South Wales and Victoria. Costing
30 shillings a month they were much resented: non-payment resulted in a fine. Licences were
also imposed on storekeepers on the gold-fields, who were required to pay as much as £50 a
year
The Melbourne Argus summed up the situation in October 1851: The Yellow-fever rages to an
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