[Narrator] Everybody loves gold, right?
It’s shiny, it’s pretty and it’s worth its weight in,
well, gold.
So you’d think New South Wales Governor George Gipps
would have been thrilled when, in 1844,
Reverend William Clarke showed him some gold he’d found,
but ...
[George] Put it away, Mr Clarke,
or we shall all have our throats cut!
[Narrator] The government had responded
with similar hostility to the gold finds
of James McBrien in 1823.
♪ La la la La la ♪
And Polish scientist-explorers John Lhotsky in 1834
and Pawel Strzelecki in 1839.
[Man] Wombats, destroy!
[Narrator] The government feared gold fever
would trigger a convict uprising.
But it changed its tune after 6000 Australians
left to join the Californian Gold Rush in 1849.
Gold was the new black, and the government announced
a reward for the discovery of commercial quantities of it.
Edward Hargraves had farmed sheep near Bathurst,
harvested sea cucumbers in the Torres Strait,
and worked as a sailor, publican, shopkeeper
and steamship agent, all by the age of 33.
It was time for a career change,
and gold prospecting sounded fun.
Hargraves, who’d rushed to California
to stake his claim on the goldfields,
rushed back to New South Wales
to claim his stake of the reward.
Everybody laughed when Hargraves announced
he’d strike it rich near Bathurst,
as it was just like California.
But Hargraves would have the last laugh.
He enlisted local boy John Lister,
who’d already found gold in the area
but naively neglected to tell anyone about it.
On 12 February 1851, Hargraves followed Lister
down Lewis Ponds Creek and his luck panned out.
[Edward] This is a memorable day
in the history of New South Wales.
I shall be a baronet, you will be knighted,
and my old horse will be stuffed,
put in a glass case, and sent to the British Museum.
[Narrator] Hargraves’s tiny specks were a flash in the pan,
but Lister and his friends, the Tom brothers,
made larger finds.
Hargraves told them he had to leave on urgent business,
and, oh, could he have all the gold they’d found?
Hargraves’s urgent business was rushing to Sydney
to dud them out of the reward.
As the reward’s size was dependent on gold produced,
Hargraves told every man and his dog about the find,
even though Lister begged him not to.
Fortune seekers flocked to a tent town
Hargraves named Ophir, after King Solomon’s
legendary city of riches.
There they hit pay dirt,
and so Australia’s first gold rush was born.
[Man] Gold, gold to Australia, gold!
[Narrator] A line of would be gold-diggers
stretched the 250 kilometres from Sydney to Ophir.
Towns emptied.
Teachers deserted their students.
Sailors left their ships stranded.
Charlotte Godley complained the loss of her runaway butler
had forced her to open her own front door.
Some struck it rich during the gold rush
that swept through New South Wales and Victoria
from 1851 to the late 1860s.
One miner put a five-pound note
between two pieces of bread and ate it.
Others showed their appreciation
for visiting international artists
by showering them with flowers, and nuggets.
[Woman] Ouch, that really hurt!
[Narrator] But many diggers threw away their jobs
and families for a pipedream.
Those who returned from the goldfields empty-handed
were described as mortified, half-starved,
and crestfallen fellows,
gaunt, savage, ragged, and reckless.
Gold transformed Australia, with the population quadrupling
to 1.7 million by between 1851 and 1871.
Agriculture flourished, with new mouths to feed
and ex-miners seeking a future on the land.
And gold allowed helped democracy take root,
as highlighted in our videos on the Eureka uprising
and secret ballot.
The riches of the rush were reinvested in modernising cities
and massive railway and irrigation projects
to open new farmlands.
Australians soon had the highest standard of living
on Earth.
Hargraves, too, got rich,
and refused to share his 10,000 pound reward.
In 1890, a New South Wales Legislative Council inquiry
found that Lister and the Toms were
undoubtedly the first discoverers of payable gold
in Australia. But Lister didn't get to enjoy his victory,
having dropped dead on the day he was due to give evidence.
The inquiry’s report was quietly shelved,
and everyone still talks about Hargraves as the gold guy.
But who said history is fair?