Victorian Gold Rush - Legacy

Legacy

Australia's population changed dramatically as a result of the rushes. In 1851 the Australian population was 437,655, of which 77,345, or just under 18%, were Victorians. A decade later the Australian population had grown to 1,151,947 and the Victorian population had increased to 538,628; just under 47% of the Australian total and a seven-fold increase. In some small country towns where gold was found abundantly, the population could grow by over 1000% in a decade (e.g. Rutherglen had a population of about 2,000. Ten years later, it had approximately 60,000 which is a 3000% increase). The rapid growth was predominantly a result of the gold rushes.

The gold rush is reflected in the architecture of Victorian gold-boom cities like Melbourne, Castlemaine, Ballarat, Bendigo and Ararat. Ballarat has Sovereign Hill—a 60 acres (24 ha) recreation of a gold rush town—as well as the Gold Museum, while Bendigo has a large operating gold mine system which also functions as a tourist attraction.

The rushes left the legacy of quaint Victorian towns in the Goldfields tourist region like Maldon, Beechworth, Clunes, Heathcote, Maryborough, Daylesford, Stawell, Beaufort, Creswick, St Arnaud, Dunolly, Inglewood, Wedderburn and Buninyong. With the exception of Ballarat and Bendigo, many of these towns were substantially larger than they are today. Most populations moved to other districts when gold played out in a given locality.

At the other end of the spectrum ghost towns, such as Walhalla, Mafeking and Steiglitz still exist.

The last major gold rush in Victoria was at Berringa, south of Ballarat, in the first decade of the 20th century. Gold mining ceased in Victoria, not because there was no more gold but in part because of the depth and cost of pumping. The First World War also drained Australia of the labour needed to work the mines. More significantly, the prohibition on the export of gold from Australia in 1915 and the abolition of the gold standard throughout the Empire saw many gold-towns in Victoria die. The slump in gold production never recovered. However, as of 2005 the recent increase in the gold price has seen a resurgence in commercial mining activity with mining resuming in both of the major fields of Bendigo and Ballarat. Exploration also proceeds elsewhere, for example, in Glen Wills, an isolated mountain area near Mitta Mitta in north-eastern Victoria.