Australian gold rushes a £1,000 reward as "the first actual producer of alluvial gold for the market". The following goldfields were discovered in New South Wales during July 1851: On 20 July 1851 gold was found near present-day Castlemaine, Victoria (Mt Alexander Goldfields) at Specimen Gully in today's Castlemaine suburb of Barkers Creek. The gold was first found by Christopher Thomas Peters, a shepherd and hut-keeper on the Barker's Creek, in the service of William Barker. When the gold was shown in the men's quarters Peters was ridiculed for finding fool's gold, and the gold was thrown away. Barker did not want his
Australian gold rushes managed by the National Trust of Australia (WA) states:The gold rush transformed the Western Australian economy as gold production soared from 22,806 ounces in 1890 to 1,643,876 ounces in 1900 and this was matched by the fourfold increase in WA's population from 46,290 in 1890 to 184,124 reported in the 1901 census. Gold was rediscovered near Tarnagulla on 6 November 1906 (Melbourne Cup Day), when a miner who had prospected the district for years obtained seven ounces of gold from a shaft nineteen feet (6 metres) deep. With some fairly large nuggets being found soon after, the so-called Poseidon rush,