Australia. Guide to Australia

The discovery of gold in New South Wales in 1851 changed the course of Australian history. Brought gold from the squatter area in Bathurst Sydney, Hundreds of miners and soon went in search of gold nuggets and placer.

It turned, that the richest gold deposits in Victoria. Gold deposits so strongly attracted many people from the cities and rural areas of Victoria and New South Wales, that all other activities began to experience severe labor shortages.

In the search for gold and streamed immigrants from other countries, thereby increasing the population of Australia 400 тыс. в 1850 before 114Thdсinв 1860.

As part of the Chinese immigrants were allocated (mainly from the two southern provinces of China - Guangdong and Fujian). Their number exceeded 100 Thd. people. In the second half 19 in. Gold Rush contributed to the economic development of a very south-eastern colonies. We had to build houses, produce equipment and provide the population with bread, meat and dairy products. Prices rose, and acreage in the 1850s, has more than doubled.

Bushranger - highwaymen, operating in rural areas, singly or in gangs. Often in the gold mines mutiny broke out, sometimes directed against the Chinese miners. In 1854 there were riots in Eureka, where the troops dispersed the rebel miners, protest against police harassment and mismanagement mines.

Value of gold, produced in Victoria, 1851-1861, fluctuated greatly. Level 1852, amounting to 81,5 млн. долл., subsequently never been achieved, and in 1861 price of gold was mined 38 млн. долл. At the same time, the number of miners grew, and the mines are increasingly MillionecUSDinstallation and new techniques.

Individual prospectors, who lacked the resources to build large-scale enterprises, were forced to leave the mines to other work. Gold rush, arose in Квинсленде in the 1880s and Western Australia in 1890, evoked outflow of miners from the south-eastern colonies in the new centers of gold mining. One of them was Mount Morgan in Queensland, others - Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

At the same time, the mining industry switched to other minerals, especially silver, lead and zinc around Broken Hill in far western New South Wales and copper on the York Peninsula in South Australia.