Australian gold rush
by Nathan
Gold
The Australian gold rush started in 1851 and everyone was coming to Australia to try their luck and
Mine for gold. In California the most usual gold thing to find was gold grain known as gold dust. But in Australia
The normal gold thing to find was a gold nugget if you were lucky maybe even a large gold nugget.
Searching for gold
There are two different methods on finding gold. The number one method, also the easiest method, is to
Pan for gold. You can do this by going down to a river with a pan and try panning the gold out but this method
doesn't get as much gold as the second method. The second method is to actually go underground and mine for the precious metal!!. This way is much harder than panning but it gets more gold than panning so you can basically say that this way is much more efficient than panning.
But there was a catch to mining gold you had to pay for a gold licence also known as a mining licence.
And this licence cost 30 shillings but back in those days 30 shillings was a lot of money to spend on a licence. Gold was very rare to find especially when almost all of it was mined out.
The miners were paying 30 shillings a month just to get nothing or if they were lucky they might just get one little speck of gold and that meant they basically wasted their money on nothing.
Life on the Australian gold fields
The living conditions on the Australian gold fields were very harsh because the people
Who were mining for gold hardly got any food water or not real good shelter all they had was
A tent with a gun so then they could go hunting for animals or if they wanted to protect themselves from
Any danger that lurks in the night such as a wolf that might badly hurt them. There is also another catch
The miners normally borrowed money from someone so then they could have the money to go to Australia.
When the miners got the money there kids and wives had to work for the people who they
Gave the money to and they were normally treated very harshly and got no food there is another catch that the miners had to get the money to get back to the country where they came from the beginning and this cost
More and more money that they got from their gold
Women onn the Australian gold fields
Because the living conditions were very harsh not many women worked on the gold fields it was
Mostly men who worked on the gold fields but some women went to the gold fields hardly
Any of them mined or panned for gold they mostly just cooked and gave the miners music that they sung.
It was very expensive to get an women over to Australia because if a men was already there they had to pay
More money only if that man was in her family. Many women didn't go to the gold fields because
They think that the living conditions weren't good enough for them especially if they were pregnant.
Chinese on the Australian gold fields
9:02 AM
The Chinese normally got to the gold fields from money and the money they used was
A traders money that they loaned on the conditions that their children and wife had to
Work for the trader or if the Chinese man had the money from the gold they would have to pay them
With the gold they got from the gold mines. The Chinese were treated real harsh on the Australian gold fields because they had different skin compared to the Australian's they also were treated harsh because they had different beliefs compared to the Australians and by being treated harsh I mean that they got teased or they weren't allowed to mine
With the Australians because of the difference to the Australians.
The Eureka stockade
The Eureka stockade began when miners had to buy a mining license to mine gold and if they didn't have a license
They would be stripped of there gold and would be arrested in charge of not having a mining license. This was made
Sure by having soilders going around and checking the miners every so often if they had payed 30 shillings to have a
Mining license. Many people thought this was fair But heaps of people thought this was not fair because the miners are basically mining the gold for nothing because they mine the gold and have to spend that gold to get a mining license . Due to the miners not liking this on the 30 of November they made a pile of their licenses and burned them down but the miners made a bad mistake because the soilders cam and wounded 30 people and killed 4 people
That were in the stockade many others were injured.