Soon after, still richer deposits were found near the Turon and the Meroo, two other branches of the Macquarie. Here a native shepherd, in the service of Dr. Kerr, found three quartz blocks, of which the largest contained sixty pounds weight of pure gold. It may easily be supposed that the whole neighbourhood became at once the scene of active researches, which at first proved fruitless, until at length a fourth quartz block was discovered, and publicly sold for a thousand pounds. Other discoveries were made within the bounds of New South Wales; but even the richest of them were soon to be obscured by the treasures of the neighbouring colony.
As late as 1836 Port Philip had remained an unknown land, for it was not until then that its first settlers, attracted by the richness of the pastures, arrived from Tasmania. Soon a small town arose on the Yarra- Yarra, and, though badly chosen as a port, Melbourne soon rose to importance. In 1850 the district was made an independent colony, which received the name of Victoria. Here the traders and sheep-drivers now mourned over the news from Sydney. The best workmen had already left for the gold-fields, and if the exodus went on increasing, nothing remained for them but to follow the example, or quietly to await the ruin of their hopes—a patience which agrees but little with the Anglo-Saxon character.
To prevent the impending evil, a reward of 200 guineas was immediately set upon the discovery of a gold-field within 120 miles from Melbourne, and soon after the world was astonished by the intelligence of the fabulous riches of Ballarat, at the source of the River Lea. The first consequence of this discovery was that the towns of Geelong and Melbourne, both not above sixty miles from Ballarat, were immediately deserted by their inhabitants, and that, within a few weeks, more than 3,000 gold-diggers had collected on the spot, who were gaining, on an average, their ten or twenty pounds a day. But here also there was no definite resting-place, for new prospects of dazzling wealth constantly allured the crowd to new and still more distant fields of enterprise. Twenty thousand people, meeting with fair success, would migrate in a day, abandon their claims, and rush upon the new tract. The passions of human nature were roused by one of the strongest of its instincts; and madness and suicide, arising from excess of joy and wild despair, were far from uncommon occurrences. The whole order of society was inverted, and the labourer became of more importance than the employer of labour. The scum of the adjoining colonies boiled over and deluged the land with vice and crime. Bush-ranging extended over every portion of the country, and even the streets of Melbourne became the scenes of robbery and murder. The diggers were of all nations: Germans, French, Italians, American-Irish, Californians, and Chinese—these last being the best conducted of this motley population, who as early as 1860 numbered 50,000. To this strange people one of the most remarkable of the Australian gold discoveries is due. The immigration-tax, which had been vainly devised to check their influx (for they are objects of the greatest antipathy to the white gold-diggers), drove them to a surreptitious mode of entering the colony; and, landing at Gurchen Bay in South Australia, and taking a course thence over the frontier across the Grampian ranges, they came upon a deposit of marvellous richness, in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. In one of their first encampments, while picking up the roots of grass and prying for gold, they found the celebrated ‘Chinaman’s Hole,’ which yielded 3,000 ounces in a few hours. This led to the greatest rush which had ever been known in the gold- fields, for 60,000 people congregated there in a few weeks, and before a month had elapsed an immense town was systematically laid out. Shops, taverns and hotels, theatres and billiard-rooms, sprang up in the desert, like the mystic trees of Indian jugglers, and were quickly followed by a daily mail and a daily newspaper. Thus, within the space of two months, the magical power of gold converted a wild mountain gorge into a teeming city, where frontages were nearly as valuable as in the heart of London.