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Explore the impact of the gold rushes on Australia and uncover the stories of the diggers at SBS GOLD! The topics below detail the varied results of the gold rushes on the young colonies of Australia, and use newspapers, diaries and memoirs to uncover the personal experiences of those caught up in the rush.
Discover the stories, explore the rich visual database and interact with the Flash features to learn more about the Australian gold rushes.
This site is a VCC project. About the contributors. |
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Early gold discoveries in Australia were kept quiet as many feared a gold rush would plunge the largely convict population into chaos and lawlessness. However the rush to California depleted the new colony’s small population and forced the authorities to think differently about Australian gold. Self styled knight in shining armour Edward Hargraves rode to the colony’s rescue. His well publicised discovery of gold in NSW marks the beginning the Australian gold rush, the mass migration and the frenzy that ensued. |
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Gold Interactive Map
Follow the discovery of gold around the country with our interactive map.
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Bushrangers on the roam
Villains or heroes? Uncover the details of Australia's most notorious bushrangers.
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Golden Technologies: patents from the gold rush
Explore the history of gold technology as miners tunnelled deeper into the earth.
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| Legacy of Indigenous art |
| Drawings by a young Indigenous boy named Oscar remain as an extremely rare Aboriginal record of Queensland during the gold rush. |
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To search for gold is to look for the moon at the bottom of the sea. Taam Sze-Pui (Tom See Poy)Palmer River 1877-82
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Some of the early theories about the origin of gold suggested that it was produced by volcanic heat, that it grew from a certain kind of clay, that it was created by lightning, or that in ancient times it had rained gold.
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One ounce of gold weighs roughly the same as half a Mars bar, but can be compressed into a block of one cubic centimetre.
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Alchemists believe that base metals such as iron or lead can be transformed into gold.
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There are four standards for the purity of gold: 22, 18, 14 and 9 carats.
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The value of gold reached an all time high in 1980 when it was worth nearly $900 per oz.
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The Egyptians worshipped gold as the flesh of the gods.
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The value of gold reached an all time high in 1980 when it was worth nearly $900 per oz.
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If all the gold ever made in the world to this point was made into a thin wire of 5 microns (millionth of a metre) diameter, then all the gold would stretch around the circumference of the world 72 million times.
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India is the biggest gold jewellery market in the world.
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There is a bank in Oman, which has gold doors. The gilding of doors goes back to ancient times when fire gilding and subsequently mercury gilding techniques were used on alloys containing gold to produce a gold-rich surface layer.
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Gold has always been recycled due to its' inherent high value. Today, at least 15% of annual gold consumption is recycled each year.
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The earliest gold jewellery dates from the Summer civilisation in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq around 3000BC.
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Films about gold include, 'Goldfinger' starring Sean Connery, 'The Italian Job', and 'The Maltese Falcon'.
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The Chinese believed that gold was the yang energy of the sun, whilst silver was the yin energy of the moon.
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