Australian gold rushes been found on his station at Clunes in March 1850. Bruhn also explored the countryside and found quartz reefs in the vicinity. "This information he promulgated through the country in the course of his journey." One of the people to whom Bruhn communicated this information was James Esmond who was at that time engaged in erecting a building on James Hodgkinson's station "Woodstock" at Lexton about 16 miles (25 km) to the west of Clunes. This then indirectly led to the first gold rush in Victoria from Esmond's subsequent discovery of payable gold at Clunes in July 1851. Bruhn also
Otago Gold Rush Only a few years later, most of the smaller new settlements were deserted, and gold extraction became more long-term, industrialised-mechanical process. Previously gold had been found in small quantities in the Coromandel Peninsula (by visiting whalers) and near Nelson in 1842. Commercial interests in Auckland offered a £500 prize for anyone who could find payable quantities of gold anywhere nearby in the 1850s, at a time when some New Zealand settlers were leaving for the California and Australian gold rushes. In September 1852, Charles Ring, a timber merchant, claimed the prize for a find in Coromandel. A brief gold rush