By Rigby McKay

Slide 3: The first gold find and where and when it was found. Slide 4: The beginning of the Gold Rush and how it started. Slide 5: The beginning of the Gold Rush and how it started. (cont.) Slide 6: Earlier finds and why they were kept secret Slide 7: Tools and a summary about them Slide 8: Tools and a summary about them (cont.) Slide 9: Bibliography

We don't know and maybe never will know when gold was first found in Australia although one of the first significant finds was by Surveyor James McBrian in NSW Gold was first officially found in 1851 by Edward Hargraves not very far away from Bathurst. James McBrian Edward Hargraves The First Gold Find

1851: In May Edward Hargraves realised the connection in terrain between the Californian goldfields and the Bathurst area so Edward went panning accompanied by his guide John Lister at an area that Hargraves later named Ophir near Bathurst in New South Wales. Edward Hargraves (Older)

1851: Three months after Edward struck gold, Victoria had its first significant gold find in NSW. And the word spread about gold in the Bathurst and Ballarat areas and miners quickly began to pour into Ballarat and Bathurst and by 1858 years the population grew to over 60,000 people.

Lots of people struck gold before Edward Hargraves and James McBrian, but they were kept secret in fear that the British Government would claim the gold, that it would disorganising Victoria or that the rumours would cause a Gold Rush. Which, on 1851 is exactly what happened.

There were a variety of tools used in the gold fields and in this slide I'm going to name and teach you about some of them. Pickaxe: You’ve probably heard of the pickaxe. It is a tool used to break up rock and gravel to either put the rock in a cradle or to just uncover gold and get further into the mineshaft. Pan: One of the basic tools used in gold mining. What you do is simple put rock or gravel or dirt into it and shift it around, side to side. The gold (if there is any in there) will start to go towards the middle and every now and then you would look through the middle to see if there was any gold.

Cradle: a cradle is slightly more complicated and more expensive than a Pickaxe or a Pan. To use it you use a bowl to dig out rocks or gravel as well as some water and put it into the top of the cradle and rock it from side to side, and than it acts like a sifter, there are ridges (riffles) to stop all the fine sand or gold and a majority of the minerals that comes out the bottom is gravel and worthless rocks. So then you check the ridges and see if there is gold.