ALEXANDRE JULIEN DUCHENE was not even four years into a fourteen year sentence in Van Diemen’s Land in 1840 when Major D’Arcy Wentworth, the Police Magistrate at Launceston, described him as ‘a man of most exemplary conduct’. Edward Hammond Hargraves, was less than two years into enjoying his claim to have started the Australian gold … Continue reading Duchene / Hargraves
Charles La Trobe
Ten Thousand Fathoms Deep
Eighteen fifty-one was the year in which Port Phillip was separated from New South Wales and became Victoria. It was also the year in which the great Victorian gold rushes started. Many historians, and even a greater number of non-historians, believe these two events occurred within weeks of each other simply by coincidence. However, the … Continue reading Ten Thousand Fathoms Deep
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1849 The Rush That Never Started: Forgotten origins of the 1851 gold rushes in Victoria
Many people have the impression that the Victorian gold rushes not only began in mid-1851, but also occurred in response to discoveries earlier in that year near Bathurst, west of Sydney. Not so! The Victorian gold rushes of 1851 were a direct consequence of a largely forgotten gold discovery two years earlier in the Pyrenees … Continue reading 1849 The Rush That Never Started: Forgotten origins of the 1851 gold rushes in Victoria
Historia Incognita 