Media: DATA CD - 1 CD (464 pages)
Year: (1853) 2008
ISBN: 9781921494529
Publisher: Archive Digital Books Australasia

'The Recent Discovery of Gold in Australia' is in effect a series of papers presented to the British Parliament relating mainly to gold discoveries up to 1852 as elicited from despatches sent by Governor Fitzroy and Lieut-Governor Latrobe. The title is somewhat of a misnomer as the material also covers a wide range of other colonial activities for 1852.

Topics under New South Wales apart from gold, relate to the employment of the clergy, the establishment of the Sydney Mint, ship deserters, the organisation of the military, and aboriginal affairs. The section on Victoria includes land sales within the Geelong District, merchant ship crew desertions within Victoria, the Melbourne Mint, and the state of the aboriginal population in Victoria. The Victorian police and the 40th regiment and the HMS Vulcan are also subjects within the papers.

A whole section is devoted to South Australia along the lines mentioned for the previous colonies.

The material also embraces military arrangements within Van Diemen’s Land and the effect of the gold discoveries in adjacent colonies on the colony.

A detailed map of the SE portion of Australia from the Brisbane River around to Adelaide is included.

The papers should provide useful background information for all family historians whose ancestors resided in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia and to a lesser extent those in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in the early 1850s. While the papers do not contain many names apart from the writers, the researcher will find some lists of names such as the NSW government gold fields officials (p64) , names of Melbourne offenders 1852 and their offence (p288), soldiers and government officials on duty at the Victorian Goldfields (pp222, 314), Victorian police together with their rank, enlistment date and age (p328), gold depositers in Adelaide (p361), and the employees of the Adelaide Assay Office together with their salary and security payments (pp378, 400).

Old historical records are a valuable resource for local, family and social historians as well as for researchers in other fields of Australian history. They provide information on the environment experienced by the residents of the time and how they lived, as well as their occupations.

High quality scanned images of the whole of the original book. This CD has been bookmarked for easy navigation, and pages can be searched, browsed, enlarged and printed out if required.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Any computer using Adobe (Acrobat) Reader 4 or later
Adobe Reader 6 or later is recommended for CDs with searchable text