The Victorian Gold Discovery Committee wrote in 1854:The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of world wide fame; it has attracted a population, extraordinary in number, with unprecedented rapidity; it has enhanced the value of property to an enormous extent; it has made this the richest country in the world; and, in less than three years, it has done for this colony the work of an age, and made its impulses felt in the most distant regions of the earth.

In August 1788, convict James Daley reported to several people that he had found gold, "an inexhaustible source of wealth", "some distance down the harbour (Port Jackson, Sydney)".

[22] The first officially recognised gold find in Australia was on 15 February 1823,[note 1] by assistant surveyor James McBrien, at Fish River, between Rydal and Bathurst, New South Wales.

The Bathurst Free Press noted, on 25 May 1850, that "Neither is there any doubt in the fact that Mr M'Gregor found a considerable quantity of the precious metal some years ago, near Mitchell's Creek, and it is surmised he still gets more in the same locality.

[59]The attitude was completely different just a couple of years later in 1853 after the Victorian gold rushes had begun:Smythe's Creek, a branch of the Wardy Yallock river, is also attracting its share of the mining population, who are doing tolerably well.

Observing the migration of the population of New South Wales and the panic created throughout the whole colony, and especially in Melbourne, and further motivated by a £200 reward (equivalent to A$63,000 in 2022) that had been offered the day previous to anyone who could find payable gold within 200 miles (320 km) of Melbourne,[61] on 10 June 1851, Campbell addressed a letter to merchant James Graham (member of Victorian Legislative Council 1853–1854 and 1867–1886[62][63]) stating that within a radius of 15 miles of Burn Bank, on another party's station, he had procured specimens of gold.

On his trek, Bruhn found, on a date unknown, indications of gold in quartz about 2 miles (3.2 km) from Edward Stone Parker's station at Franklinford, between Castlemaine and Daylesford.

[74] On 24 June 1851, Frencham and Walsh lodged a claim for the reward offered by the Gold Committee for the discovery of a payable goldfield in the Plenty Ranges about 25 miles (40 km) from Melbourne.

On 1 July 1851, Victoria became a separate colony, and, on the same day, James Esmond—in company with Pugh, Burns and Kelly—found alluvial gold in payable quantities near Donald Cameron's station on Creswick's Creek, a tributary of the Loddon, at Clunes, 34 km (21 mi) north of Ballarat.

The specimens have been subjected to the most rigid test by Mr Patterson, in the presence of other competent parties, and he pronounced them to be beyond any possibility of doubt pure gold...[77]The particulars of the precise location, with Esmond's consent, was published in the Geelong Advertiser on 22 July 1851.

[83] John Worley, George Robinson and Robert Keen, also in the employ of Barker as shepherds and a bullock driver, immediately teamed with Peters in working the deposits by panning in Specimen Gully, which they did in relative privacy during the next month.

When Barker sacked them and ran them off for trespass, Worley, on behalf of the party "to prevent them getting in trouble", mailed a letter to The Argus dated 1 September 1851 announcing this new goldfield with the precise location of their workings.

[13] However, Henry Frencham, a newspaperman who in June had claimed, unsuccessfully, the £200 (equivalent to A$34,000 in 2022) reward for finding payable gold within 200 miles (320 km) of Melbourne, had followed them and noticed their work.

[13] The committee stated that "where so many rich deposits were discovered almost simultaneously, within a radius of little more than half a mile, it is difficult to decide to whom is due the actual commencement of the Ballarat diggings."

This acknowledgement is not shared by contemporaneous historians such as Robert Coupe who wrote in his book Australia's Gold Rushes, first published in 2000, that "there are several accounts of the first finds in the Bendigo area".

Protection was granted and the Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Gold Districts of Buninyong and Mt Alexander, Captain Robert Wintle Home, arrived with three black troopers (native police) to set up camp at Bendigo Creek on 8 December.

[14] It was Frencham's words, published in The Argus of 13 December 1851, that were to begin the Bendigo gold rush: "As regards the success of the diggers, it is tolerably certain the majority are doing well, and few making less than half an ounce per man per day."

A township quickly developed beside the present main road from Bell Bay to Bridport, and dozens of miners pegged out claims there and at nearby Back Creek.

It was estimated in May 1853 that about £18,000 (equivalent to $5.55 million in 2022) worth of gold, more than 113 kg (4,000 oz, 250 lb), had been sold in Adelaide between September 1852 and January 1853, with an additional unknown value sent overseas to England.

[160] The gold in the area had first been found north of the Fitzroy River on 17 November 1857 by Captain (later Sir) Maurice Charles O'Connell, a grandson of William Bligh, a former governor of New South Wales, who was Government Resident at Gladstone.

Initially worried that his find would be exaggerated, O'Connell wrote to the Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands on 25 November 1857 to inform him that he had found "very promising prospects of gold" after having some pans of earth washed.

Very few of them had tents to live in or tools to work with; and I am afraid that the majority of those had not sufficient money to keep them in food for one week...From all that I could glean from miners and others, with whom I had an opportunity of speaking, respecting the diggings, I think it very probable that a permanent gold-field will be established at, or in the vicinity of, Gympie Creek; and if reports-which were in circulation when I left the diggings-to the effect that several prospecting parties had found gold at different points, varying from one to five miles from the township, be correct, there is little doubt but it will be an extensive gold-field, and will absorb a large population within a very short period.

In June 1909, a rich find of gold was reported from Tanami... Steps are being taken to open up this field by sinking wells to provide permanent water, of which there is a great scarcity in the district.

In 1884, Edward Hardman, Government Geologist, published a report that he had found traces of gold throughout the east Kimberley, especially in the area around the present-day town of Halls Creek.

As a result of this find Anstey and one of his backers George Leake, the then Solicitor-General and future Premier of Western Australia,[216] were in November 1887 granted a 60,000 acres (24,000 hectares) mining concession for prospecting purposes.

[219][220][221] In May 1888 Michael Toomey and Samuel Faulkner were the first to discover gold-bearing quartz at the site of what became the town of Southern Cross on the Yilgarn Goldfield, about 50 km (31 mi) south-east of the Golden Valley.

[231] On 24 August 1893, less than a year after Arthur Bayley and William Ford's discovery of gold at Fly Flat, Coolgardie was declared a town site, with an estimated population of 4,000 (with many more mining out in the field).

[235] The reward for Hannan's party for discovering the best alluvial find ever made in the colony, and without knowing it one of the best reefing fields in the world, was to be granted a six acres (2.4 hectares) mining lease.

[32] The population of Coolgardie is estimated to have reached 15,000 at its peak during the gold rush, and the town boasted over 26 pubs supplied by 3 breweries, 2 stock exchanges, 14 churches, 6 newspapers, and a courthouse.

With some fairly large nuggets being found soon after, the so-called Poseidon rush, named after the horse that had won the Melbourne Cup that year, set in with "men of all ranks and professions...trying their luck on the field".