1854
1852

1853

If there was one issue that defined 1853 it was without a doubt that of gold licenses. Getting the balance right between the interests of the state and those of the diggers nearly led to uprisings in NSW and across the border the seeds of insurrection were brewing on the Ballarat fields.

All in all this made for a very restless year as miners moved between fields and indeed across state borders in search of the best gold and the best licensing deal.

For these were still the salad days of the fields, when easy returns from working the surface ground were to be had if you were only in the right place at the right time.

To hold fast to your ground now – or to up stakes and follow the rumours to a new field? Decisions, decisions …

Licensing tent. From collection of lithographs and sketches 1853-1874 by S.T. Gill
Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (a1833044)

The implications of NSW’s new gold field legislation passed at the close of 1852 were felt immediately on the diggings.

The strength of the new measures indicate that the government had indeed been stung by criticisms of it “giving the colony’s gold away”. Did it however have the wherewithal to actually put the new measures into practice in the face of threatening resistance from the diggers?

22nd January 1853

At a public meeting in Sofala in January a likely scenario to flow from the new measures was described as follows. “Imagine 5 or 6 men and their families come up from Sydney. The first month they pay their licenses, second month the same; third month, capital all gone, no money to pay, apprehended, and put in the lock-up. Next morning brought up and fined; and if they can’t pay the license, how can they pay the fine ? … “

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22nd January 1853

Having outlined their objections to the new legislation, the meeting then went on to develop resolutions detailing what they proposed to do about it.

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22nd January 1853

In terms of describing how the current calamitous situation had come about, the meeting was left in no doubt that it was as a result of the political clout that the squatters exercised in the NSW Legislative Council.

“This, then, is the state of the Council into whose jaws we have fallen, and this bill is – the beautiful piece of legislation they have passed for our government” thundered one speaker.

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5th March 1853

One of the significant side effects of the new legislation was to entrench some major differences in the way in which goldfields were regulated in NSW relative to Victoria which had its own separate legislation.

The NSW bill was much harsher both in terms of its punishments for offenders and also in relation to just who on the goldfields had to pay to be there. In Victoria it was just the miners, in NSW however it was just about everyone other than children under the age of 14 and their mothers.

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The introduction of the harsh new regulations in NSW came at a bad time for the local goldfields.

News in from Victoria was telling of the extraordinary richness of their new fields, and it was unwise to give restless diggers any further incentive to up stakes and head south of the border. In particular the Ovens goldfield just over the border put a spotlight on the emerging “auriferous” lands around Albury.

5th March 1853

“The news from our own mines is still very discouraging, and the new gold regulations must be got rid of or they will entirely blast the prospects of mining on this side.” – so lamented one gold buyer on the state of the NSW goldfields at the outset of 1853.

In contrast, the biggest problem facing the Ovens field in northern Victoria was how to transit nearly a ton of gold through the bushranger infested country beyond Yass and up to Sydney. To help out a specially strengthened gold escort was sent south to get the gold out!

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9th March 1853

Along its road south to the Ovens, the heavily armed escort company met with several groups that had been recently held up by a gang of some 16 bushrangers. The head of the escort, wrote of the stories they heard in a letter published in the Herald, that says much about the perils of the road at this time.

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19th March 1853

Amongst other gold news from the south came reports that the promising new ADELONG field was proving capricious and was difficult ground to work.

Again the new gold regulations were lamented as being the cause of the depopulation of the NSW diggings and asserting that if only there were as many miners in NSW as there were in Victorian then the gold returns would be equal. One major benefit noted of the new escort service to the Albury district was the effect of opening up this previous remote territory that was still so perilous for travellers.

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30th September 1853

Amidst this overwhelming mass of public opposition to the new gold regulations, parliament resumed in May with an urgent need to redress the inequities in its gold legislation.

The results of their deliberations took effect in October when all of the onerous provisions that had set NSW at a disadvantage to Victoria were removed. This largely ended the matter as far as NSW was concerned. Victorian diggers however still had their own separate license concerns that would eventually lead to the Eureka Stockade uprisings.

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So just what was the state of play on the western goldfields as the weather turned cold in May towards another winter season?

The familiar name of Edward Hargraves – once gold discoverer, now Commissioner of Crown Lands – crops up to provide an answer.

14th May 1853

Interestingly from his perspective (albeit as a government official) Hargraves had a simple explanation for the lack of diggers on the fields at this time – namely “the restless and migratory habits of diggers, and to the supposed superiority in richness of gold fields on the Ovens River”. Gold abundance south of the border it seems, not regulations, was the simple driver behind the diggers’ exodus in his estimation.

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5th March 1853

And indeed – Hargraves may well have been right. As gold reports by the end of winter show, in spite of the changes to the regulations being underway, it was the Ovens field just across the border that continued to pull the crowds of diggers.

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26th September 1853

One of the interesting consequences of State Parliament revisiting the gold field legislation was to undertake an enquiry into just who exactly did discover gold in NSW.

Their findings endorsed the claims of John Lister and William and James Tom to have actually discovered the gold field at Fitz Roy Bar while Hargraves was away in Sydney, while at the same time reinforcing the pivotal role Hargraves had played in both planning the venture, participating in it and training them in gold panning.

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Life on the goldfields …

In contrast to the “wild west” ambience that had defined the Califorian goldfield experience in the previous decade, the social order of most goldfield settings in NSW and Victoria was very well established and in keeping with the social mores of the time. Some extended accounts of life on the diggings make for insightful reading.

29th October 1853

Indeed, a strong sense of law and order runs strongly throughout the article opposite where it observes that the Sabbath was strictly observed with no one working on a Sunday and social interactions mainly concentrated on this the day off. Likewise tents were set up as churches and some schools established for children on the diggings.

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5th December 1853

When miners did congregate together after hours and on the Sabbath on the Victorian fields by years end in 1853, one topic that would have been uppermost in the minds was the ongoing cancer that were the mining licence fees. Following the changes to the NSW system of October, monthly license fees in Victoria were fixed at £1 – double those across the border.

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21st December 1853

Just as NSW gold fields had gone through a period of uproar in the wake of their new legislation going through in late 1852, so too were the Victorian fields in a state of forment over recent legislative changes by the Victorian Government. It was in these stirrings that the events which eventually led to the Eureka Stockade uprising in late 1854 began to take hold.

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well that’d be 1853 then …

One of the best things for us today about the end of year wrap up is the opportunity correspondents took to recap on the year that was and the prospects that lay in wait for the year to come.

31st December 1853

In spite of the political mayhem present on both the NSW and Victorian fields across 1853, it seems some work was done as 612,017 ozs of gold were exported that year. Given this gold sold for over £4 an ounce in Britain this represents an export income of some £2.5m. Selling this amount of gold today would nett nearly $1 billion so it was certainly something to be pleased about if you were a politician worried about the balance of trade.

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