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Social historian Professor Weston Bate OAM began by examining the impact that the discoveries had on Victorian social, political and economic life. He pointed out that the 1850s saw the arrival of 300,000 English migrants out of a total migrant intake in that decade of some 400,000, and said that they indelibly influenced social life in Victoria for much of the ensuing century. The discovery of gold, he said, provided a "permanent burst of energy" to civic life in Victoria, and led to the development of a synergistic relationship between the diggers and storekeepers that at times necessarily put both groups at odds with the government. (He didn't say so, but this co-dependency between diggers and storekeepers was nowhere more evident than in the early history of the exploitation of most of the Gippsland goldfields, which were generally far less accessible on the whole than those in the western and north-central Victorian areas.) | Back |
| He characterized the Eureka Stockade movement at Ballarat -- and I'm sure I saw some of the late arrivals in the audience from that area cross themselves when he first mentioned that event -- as the "froth on the top of the very strong beer" of the democratic movement in this fledgling state that eventually (in 1871) resulted in the payment of Members of Parliament -- including the diggers' representative, Peter Lalor -- for the first time anywhere in the world. | Top |
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The major thrust of his presentation, however, was in praise of the capital-intensive nature of underground reef mining. He made the point that in its day, Walhalla distinguished itself by yielding on average one ounce of gold for every tonne of quartz crushed there, and he dated the terminal decline in the industry as stemming from 1885, after which date dividends as a proportion of the value of gold production (which had risen steadily up to that point) began to decline just as steadily. | Top |
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Finally, Professor Geoffrey Blainey AO rightly raised a laugh when he made the sardonic observation in beginning his presentation that "we've now got the theory, but they got the gold!" This led to a further laugh from his offhand suggestion that what he called the "dark greens" of the environmental movement were unreasonably and universally opposed to all mining, a suggestion that was perhaps misplaced, considering the significant, if not pivotal, role of the dearth of economically-accessible nearby timber in the final days of the industry in Walhalla, when the surrounding hills had been stripped so bare that timber had to be trucked in on tramways running as far as 30 kilometers away. He also pointed out, however, that as a result of the rush to the diggings, the new state of Victoria became home to half of Australia's population by 1859, and Melbourne remained our most populous city until after the start of the 20th century. Gold led wool for export earnings from 1850 to 1869, and the wealth that it produced made Victoria enviably independent of international borrowing to fund its critical early growth and development. In fact, in 1853, with a population of only 600,000, the wealth of Victorian importers alone paid for a full 15% of the exports of Great Britain, then the world's leading trading nation. And while Victoria led Australia in manufacturing, by 1885, there was vastly more horsepower at work in the mining industry than in all of the state's factories combined. | Top |
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