Victorian gold rush in the Melbourne "Argus" on 8 September 1851, leading to a rush to the Mount Alexander or Forest Creek diggings, centred on present-day Castlemaine, claimed as the richest shallow alluvial goldfield in the world. These discoveries were soon surpassed by Ballarat and Bendigo. Further discoveries including Beechworth in 1852, Bright, Omeo, Chiltern (1858–59) and Walhalla followed. The population of Melbourne grew swiftly as the gold fever took hold. The total number of people in Victoria also rose. By 1851 it was 75,000 people. Ten years later this rose to over 500,000. Surface alluvial gold was the first to be exploited.
Women in the California Gold Rush the California State Legislature enacted property laws that expressly undermined certain aspects of the constitutional guarantee. In particular, one statute provided that the husband had management and control even of the wife's separate property, although he could not sell or encumber the property without the wife's consent made in writing and confirmed outside the presence of the husband. California also adopted community property laws when it became a state, giving each spouse a right to half of whatever was acquired during the marriage In the early days of the Gold Rush, the indigenous people of California, including women, also panned