Australian Gold Rush Essay

The Gold Rush gave anybody that heard about it gold fever. For many, this may have been a good and positive outcome. Unfortunately, it was a curse to those who underestimated and misused the land.

The Australian Gold Rush started around 1851 and brought gold diggers from around the world. They tried to strike it rich, but caused environmental damage to the land they now call home.

Gold was found in Australia by Edward Hargarves who went to Australia as a prospector and to his instincts, found shiny gold flakes in a pan next to a creek in New South Wales on Feb 12, 1851. Hargreaves publicly announced the gold find on Mar 3, 1851 and soon around 300 people rushed to Australia to bring all their tools, supplies, and medicine that may not

Remedies to try and stop disease didn’t work well due to the lack of proper toilets, clean water and drainage systems that led to outbreaks and disease. Medicine from the 1800’s was proven to be ineffective against these diseases. The wealthier miners were more resistant to these diseases because of proper sewage disposal and medicine.

Accidents on the goldfields became very common. Children who helped their parents would easily die from cave-ins, mudslides, and poor air ventilation resulting in asthma and carbon monoxide poisoning. Some miners would accidentally fall down mine shafts and get seriously hurt, not knowing medicine and health safety practices. In rare cases, some shaft miners would encounter groundwater that would flood their shafts before they could get out, resulting in the death of the shaft

Miners could buy items like ham, eggs, fabric, and tea. Mining boots were among the legacy of the gold fields.

The tools that the gold miners used during the Gold Rush were pans used for testing the ground. Panning was a simple technique that is still used today to find small flakes of gold. To pan, a miner would take a small amount of soil or gravel that may contain gold. The miners would then add water to the pan and mix it in a swirling motion. The swirling motion would swell out the muddy water, and afterwards, swirling gold flakes would be left behind in the pan. Miners used a pickaxe to break up hard soil or gravel. A pick ax is a T shaped hand held tool used for prying it’s sharp head into hard soil, and typically has a wooden or metal handle.

The miners used a shovel to dig up dirt. The shovel had a heart-shaped metal edge with a long wooden handle, mainly used to scoop large amounts of dirt into buckets.

A trowel is a specific triangular metal edge with a short wooden handle used by miners to scoop small details from mine