Victoria’s new gold rush

The gold rushes helped define Australia and built the prosperity of Victoria.

Now there’s a ‘new gold rush’, with a surge in mining activity on old reefs bringing new life to the state’s historic gold towns.

Victoria’s new gold rush

new gold rush

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of 227,444 km² (87,817 sq mi) and the most densely populated state in Australia (28 per km²). Victoria is bordered with New South Wales to the north and South Australia to the west, and is bounded by the Bass Strait to the south (with the exception of a small land border with Tasmania located along Boundary Islet), the Great Australian Bight portion of the Southern Ocean to the southwest, and the Tasman Sea (a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean) to the southeast. The state encompasses a range of climates and geographical features from its temperate coastal and central regions to the Victorian Alps in the north-east and the semi-arid north-west.

Brown coal is Victoria’s leading mineral, with 66 million tonnes mined each year for electricity generation in the Latrobe Valley, Gippsland. The region is home to the world’s largest known reserves of brown coal.

Despite being the historic centre of Australia’s gold rush, Victoria today contributes a mere 1% of national gold production. Victoria also produces limited amounts of gypsum and kaolin.

During the Australian gold rushes, starting in 1851, significant numbers of workers moved from elsewhere in Australia and overseas to where gold had been discovered. Gold had been found several times before, but the colonial government of New South Wales (Victoria did not become a separate colony until 1 July 1851) had suppressed the news out of the fear that it would reduce the workforce and so destabilise the economy.

After the California Gold Rush began in 1848, many people went there from Australia, so the New South Wales government sought approval from the British Colonial Office for the exploitation of mineral resources, and offered rewards for finding gold.