History of Melbourne - 1850s Gold Rush

1850s Gold Rush

The discovery of gold led to a huge influx of people to Victoria, most of them arriving by sea at Melbourne. The town's population doubled within a year. In 1852, 75,000 people arrived in the colony and this, combined with a very high birthrate, led to rapid population growth (as well as the equally rapid dispossession of the Aboriginal populations in those areas of inland Victoria which had not already been cleared for sheep runs).

In 1853 work began on the Yan Yean Reservoir to provide water for Melbourne. Piped water started to flow in 1857. Victoria's population reached 400,000 in 1857 and 500,000 in 1860. As the easy gold ran out many of these people flooded into Melbourne or became a pool of unemployed in cities around Ballarat and Bendigo. There arose a huge wave of social unrest urging the opening of the lands in rural Victoria for small yeoman farming. In 1857 a Land Convention was held in Melbourne. Later a provisional government was formed by land hungry miners demanding land reform.

The accelerated population growth and the enormous wealth of the goldfields fuelled a boom which lasted for forty years, and ushered in the era known as "marvellous Melbourne." The city spread eastwards and northwards over the surrounding flat grasslands, and southwards down the eastern shore of Port Phillip. Wealthy new suburbs like South Yarra, Toorak, Kew and Malvern grew up, while the working classes settled in Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy.

The influx of educated gold seekers from England led to rapid growth of schools, churches, learned societies, libraries and art galleries. The first railway in Australia was built in Melbourne in 1854. Also in 1854, the government offered four religious groups land on which to build schools. These included the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and the Anglican Church. These resulted in Wesley College and Melbourne Grammar School being built in St Kilda Road a few years later. The University of Melbourne was founded in 1855 and the State Library of Victoria in 1856. The foundation stone of St Patrick's Catholic Cathedral was laid in 1858 and that of St Paul's Anglican Cathedral in 1880. The Philosophical Institute of Victoria received a Royal Charter in 1859 and became the Royal Society of Victoria. In 1860 this Society assembled Victoria's only attempt at inland exploration, the Burke and Wills expedition.

A Melbourne Town Council had been created in 1847, and one by one other suburbs also gained town status, complete with town councils and mayors. In 1851 a party-elected Legislative Council, dominated by squatter interests, opposed the notion of universal suffrage and the role of the Legislative Assembly. In December 1854 discontent with the licensing system on the goldfields led to the rising at the Eureka Stockade, one of only two armed rebellions in Australian history (the other being the Castle Hill convict rebellion of 1804).

In November 1856, Victoria was given a constitution and in the following year full responsible government with a two house Parliament. For Melbourne, the major consequence was the magnificent edifice of Parliament House, Melbourne, which was started in December 1855 and completed in stages between 1856 and 1929.

The boom fuelled by gold and wool lasted through the 1860s and '70s. Victoria suffered from an acute labour shortage despite its steady influx of migrants, and this pushed up wages until they were the highest in the world. Victoria was known as "the working man's paradise" in these years. The Stonemasons Union won the eight-hour day in 1856 and celebrated by building the enormous Melbourne Trades Hall in Carlton.