Young is the major inland town that grew up around a paddock known as Lambing Flat on the Burrangong Goldfield.
Established in late 1860, the Burrangong field was a golden honeypot that drew in thousands of miners.
It was a poor man’s field – alluvial diggings where with limited capital or manpower, diggers could set to working the surface ground in hopes of making their fortunes.
Such places were hard to find by the start of the 1860s, and competition for the good ground was intense.In this environment, the new field quickly became melting pot of the good, the bad and the ugly as resentment focussed on the presence of the well organised Chinese miners. Over a six month period, the Chinese were repeatedly subjected to violent threats from mobs that gathered to expel them from their claims.
This violence boiled over on 30 June 1861 in the most serious of all the confrontations. This event brought on drastic official intervention to restore order to the field, largely at the expense of the Chinese miners’ rights.
Then, no sooner did this violence subside than the bushranger scourge led by Johnny Gilbert and Ben Hall descended on the region over a two year period from 1863 – 64. The guerilla warfare that followed was especially centred upon the countyside and rolling landscapes around Murrumburrah.