Talk:Australian gold rushes

This article was nominated for deletion on 17 November 2011 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

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Comment

need larger article for such a big thing in Australian history.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.31.189.177 (talk • contribs) 06:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Deleted in-article critique

With the gold rushes came the construction of the first railways and telegraph line, multiculturalism and racism, the Eureka rebellion and the end of penal transportation to the east coast of Australia. *Please revise. These elements can't be attributed to the gold rush, they're merely circumstantial. The histiography used here is flawed; it resembles high school history. [1]

Please consider revising the article. Htra0497 19:59, 15 November 2006 (AEST)

Where is article

on this page there was a mann with a hatof page title on main page?! Lead para only. Is there an edit war here? There are numerous edits and no main section. Can sombody with info to hand fix this stub? Fred 10:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For that matter nothing about western australia and tasmania in the 1890's make it a very NSW and Vic article... worthy of australian regional rivarlies issues here... SatuSuro 11:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

to the places with 'the' before them, e.g. 'at the Turon'. Is this intentional? It isn't consistent throughout the article. Valkyrian (talk) 05:02, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Section issues

I restored a deleted section: Discoveries of gold in Australia before the rushes. This is, in a sense, only an introduction to the main topic, but does provide useful information. I am not too thrilled by the list formatting, however. A good copy edit is needed. However, the main topic is sadly neglected in the article! Just me! (talk) 06:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BIAS

This article is Victorian centric - and as there is the title Australian - there is no mention of Tasmania, Western Australia - as if they didnt exist - strongly suggest this is either:-

Re-named- early Australian gold rushes - to favour current content
Re-written to include the excluded states, locations and rushes

Satu Suro 05:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, not surprised you discovered the same thing independently. It's not even well-written, it doesn't talk about the major social and cultural changes which came as a result of the gold rushes. Orderinchaos 10:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article fails miserably

This article offers only very poor coverage of its topic!

The lead paragraph notes some additional minor gold rushes which occurred "in northern Australia" in the 1880s and 1890s, long after the main rushes of the 1850s:

To Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria
To Bathurst in New South Wales

which were both influential in attracting thousands of immigrants, many of whom stayed to work in other careers.

The lead paragraph also ignores the main rush of the 1890s, to Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie in Western Australia.

The main Victorian gold rushes were the direct cause of the rapid growth of Melbourne, which became the wealthiest city in the Australian colonies, a pre-eminence it maintained for decades, until after successful Federation of those colonies as the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Consequently Melbourne served as the provisional capital, until the new planned national capital could be built at Canberra, in a part of the country far from both Sydney and Melbourne.

The 90s rush to the Kalgoorlie area also brought new people and economic activity to Western Australia. Some who arrived planning to prospect for gold, instead became settlers, opening stores or hotels, getting timber from the forests of the southwest, or raising livestock or grain, to meet the needs and appetites of the miners. (As far as I can tell, my maternal grandmother's parents were among these "entrepreneur settlers", which is part of the reason I exist at all, and am an Australian.)

As commented by others, there's also no coverage at all of the many minor gold rushes in Australia. Instead, we have what appears to be a very peripheral topic, individual gold discoveries, treated in list format with unnecessary detail and significant omissions, which gives an unbalanced picture. Sure, every gold rush starts with a discovery; but not every discovery sparks a gold rush!

[Disclaimer and aside: I don't know how to make the following point except by telling a story from my own experience. I'm sure a trained historian would approach this issue quite differently. But I tell this story, not because I'm a significant player, but because even I, many years removed from those events, was deeply touched and affected by them, and have been for half a century. What then has been their effects on the nation as a whole? I hope some historian, somewhere, has been able to suitably assess and relate the impact of the gold rushes on our nation's cultural, political, economic and imaginative life. End of disclaimer; story follows:

As a schoolchild, I'd often visit the Queen Victoria Museum (in Launceston, Tasmania where I mostly grew up) during my lunch hour. The Museum then displayed (and may still) a complete Chinese "Joss House", left behind by Chinese miners in Tasmania (See NOTE below) when they moved on (or died out? I'm not sure ...). This article has no information whatsoever on the gold rush that brought these Chinese miners to Tasmania. Nor on the contributions that seeing the Joss House had on impressionable youngsters!

The Joss house was a small wooden temple where various "josses", or religious statues, were kept and prayed to, decorated with many beautiful artifacts in colourful silks, rare woods and intricately carved ivory, and where the Chinese would practice divination. Seeing this place of worship and its beautiful furnishings was a major influence on awakening my sense of the beautiful in the arts and crafts. It was thus instrumental in many of my subsequent life choices, increasing my passion for the visual arts and has had significant ripple effects on many other people with whom I've shared this passion. And I'm only one of the multitude of Australians touched, directly or indirectly, by our gold rush history.

NOTE: An object lesson for would-be folk historians: I was positive the Chinese were on the goldfields, but only recently learnt they were mining tin! So do make sure of your facts! And while it spoils my specific example of goldfields history being relevant to me now, it doesn't invalidate the general principle, does it?

End of aside.]

This article fails to canvass the effects of the various gold rushes on the subsequent history of the nation, its earlier settlers and older (in Tasmania, possibly its original) inhabitants.

This article fails miserably. I hope some Wikipedia editor has some good historical reference material with which to write a generally useful article - at least an overview - about the Australian gold rushes.

History is important. If we fail to learn its lessons, we can fall so much more easily into the abandoned mine shafts which litter our (physical and cultural) landscape in uncounted numbers.

yoyo (talk) 17:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is a timeline not an article

This is a great timeline of the gold rushes in Australia. But it isn't really an article on the important social/economic/political changes that the gold rushes brought to Australian History. There needs to be an article like that and then this needs to be just a link. In Australia Grade 5s are taught about this at school yet this page has way too much information and yet not enough information to be of any use to such students. This is a real shame. What would be better is if the information related to the gold rush on the History of Australia page was expanded. Sir Langan (talk) 04:31, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Grade fives

This page is missing some very important facts needed for assessment. Therefore this page is and is not suitable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.4.58 (talk) 01:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Bendigo 1851

@Araratic: Great work. IMHO it is time for a separate article with a summary in this one. Thoughts? Downsize43 (talk) 01:50, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I agree with a separate article. Though I will be a bit busy in the next few days so I may not be able to work on it much. ~ Araratic | talk 02:43, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Edward Roper

@Eothan: Please Add your reference to the caption. Downsize43 (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Darling Downs

The Moreton Bay Courier 1849 Sep 8 page 3b says "Gold has been found long ago on Darling Downs" http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3715402 Does this warrant inclusion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.7.217.191 (talk) 23:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Currency conversions...

I really like the conversions and think they help put the historical prices in at least an approximate perspective, but I think the prices should be prefaced as US$ to avoid confusion with A$, right? Maybe AUD conversions make more sense, even if they are a little bit more out of date. Thoughts? Electricmaster (talk) 09:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, since I originally added them :-) ... they're already in Australian dollars, but I've added currency prefixes everywhere to make that clear (along with fixing some rounding). Graham87 (talk) 15:21, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]