Streets of Gold Trivia Quiz

Answer: Warrandyte

There is some dispute as to the first discovery, but Louis Michel was awarded a prize by the new state government as the official first. James Esmond's discovery of gold at Clunes may have actually occurred a few days earlier. A few weeks later, the discovery of gold near Ballarat by Thomas Hiscock uncovered more extensive deposits, and led to the gold rushes that were to have a massive impact on the developing state.

The main gold rush area was north and west from Melbourne. Near the end of the 19th century, when those fields had been exhausted, gold mining in the Warrandyte area increased, and continued until the 1960s.

Answer: 300,000

Once word leaked out, the streets of Melbourne became virtually deserted, but overseas arrivals more than replaced the missing miners. The need to import and supply massive amounts of equipment to supply the miners led to economic growth for the young city of Melbourne (which had been established in 1835), turning it from a rural outpost into one of the major cities of the British Empire.

It should be pointed out that the population figures explicitly exclude the Aboriginal population. The rapid population growth during the gold rush era led to increased dispossession of Aboriginal people from their lands, an aspect of the time which is not frequently discussed.

Answer: Castlemaine

Thomas Peters, a station hand, made the discovery which was published in the "Argus" (a Melbourne newspaper) on 8 September 1851, and caused great excitement because it was clear that there was a significant amount of gold to be found in the region. The mining settlement that formed eventually became the city of Castlemaine, named by the goldfield commissioner in honour of his uncle, Viscount Castlemaine. The Mount Alexander deposit proved to be one of the richest shallow alluvial goldfields in the world, producing around four million ounces of gold. Because of the shallow nature of the deposits, they were mined out very quickly, pretty much within two years, and the rush moved elsewhere. At the peak of the frenzy, Castlemaine's population was actually larger than Melbourne's, because anyone who could get there did! The rural isolation in the picture quickly disappeared.

The other answers were also gold-mining centres during the 1850s.

Answer: Resentment and distrust - they weren't like 'us'

Australian racism has a long and shameful history, and the treatment of the Chinese miners is a clear instance of it. They were seen as being a threat because of their cultural differences (including food, religion and clothing), suspected of plotting to bring in their families and overrun the European colonists, and generally seen as being morally inferior.

There was an almost constant state of tension in the goldfields, and several recorded incidents, such as the Buckland Riot of 1857, in which miners took it on themselves to settle the Chinese problem in their local area with brute force.

This antagonism was enshrined in the White Australia Policy, a term that describes a series of acts passed by the Australian government to restrict Asian immigration, the first of which (the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901) was one of the first Acts of Parliament after federation.

Answer: Alluvial gold

Alluvial gold is found in the loose soil and rock matter called alluvium. A concentration of alluvial gold is called a placer deposit, and that, along with the larger nuggets of which men dreamed, is what the earliest gold discoveries usually involved.

The gold was separated from the mixture using various methods, most of which involved using water to remove the soil and leave the gold behind. The term used to describe the process identifies the type of equipment used - pans, cradles, sluices and puddling boxes were all common.

Answer: Reef gold

The alluvial deposits had been formed from the erosion of underlying reefs of quartz and gold. Obtaining the gold from the underlying rock required digging holes, called shafts, down which miners descended to break the rock into pieces that could be returned to the surface for crushing and then extraction of the gold. The exact technique depended on the terrain, but commonly involved sinking a shaft then extending horizontal search tunnels, called drives. If nothing was found at the first level, the shaft was sunk deeper, and the process repeated. This deep lead mining was physically much more demanding than alluvial mining, and led to the development of syndicates who would work as a team. A shift would usually involve at least two men, one digging and one at the top hauling up the buckets of mixture to be processed.

The mine in the picture was in Queensland, but it typifies those to be found elsewhere at the time.

Answer: Battle of Eureka Stockade

Miners grew increasingly to feel that they were being exploited through unfair taxation without representation (a miner's license imposed by a government which they were not eligible to influence), as well as experiencing what they perceived to be persecution from the officials who enforced the license. The Ballarat Reform League was formed to demand that miners be given the right to buy land and to vote, and that license fees and the tax on the gold they found be reduced. A lengthy period of civil disobedience came to a head when Peter Lalor was elected to lead the group, and settled on active rebellion. The Battle of Eureka Stockade took place on 3 December 1854, and led to the death of over 30 people. While the rebellion did not succeed in its initial intent, the public support for the rebels during their trial did lead to the introduction of full white male suffrage for the Lower House of Parliament shortly afterwards. The fact that such a highly qualified description of increased voting rights was seen as a major achievement tells you something about the social structure and government of the time.

This is a very abridged and superficial summary of a complex event, which is often called the birth of democracy in Australia.

Answer: Southern Cross

The Southern Cross, (probably) designed by Henry Ross, was flown over the Eureka Stockade as a symbol of defiance, replacing the Union Jack. After the battle, the victorious colonial forces cut it down, and hacked it severely. The tattered remnant can be seen in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.

Held by many as a symbol of democracy and nationalism, the Southern Cross has been proposed as an alternative national flag whenever the issue is debated.

Answer: Welcome Stranger

The Welcome Stranger nugget was found only 3 cm below the surface near the small town of Moliagul. Its original net weight was about 72 kg (over 150 lbs). Because there were no scales available capable of weighing such a large nugget, it was broken into three pieces by a local blacksmith. As of 2011, it remains the largest single nugget ever found.

The other three nuggets were also discovered in Victoria's 'Golden Triangle', a region where some of the purest alluvial gold and largest nuggets in the world were found.

Answer: Sovereign Hill

Sovereign Hill features tours of gold mines, including a recreation of the Red Hill mine where the Welcome nugget (largest in the world at the time, but beaten shortly after when the Welcome Stranger was discovered) was found in 1858. The main street of town has been (roughly) reconstructed based on the original East Ballarat area that burned down in 1860 and was replaced with a new centre of town. The costumed staff are thoroughly versed in local history, and the venue is a popular educational destination for school children studying the gold rush era.

The other attractions can be found on the Gold Coast, well north of the Victorian goldfields.