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.
Klondike Gold Rush Wild", a novel about a sled dog. His colleague, poet Robert W. Service, did not join the rush himself, although he made his home in Dawson City in 1908. Service created well-known poems about the gold rush, among them "Songs of a Sourdough", one of the bestselling books of poetry in the first decade of the 20th century, along with his novel, "The Trail of '98", which was written by hand on wallpaper in one of Dawson's log cabins. The Canadian historian Pierre Berton grew up in Dawson where his father had been a prospector, and wrote several historical books