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
Porcupine Gold Rush their employees. The mines peaked between the 1940s and 50s, but continue to produce gold to this day, although the many smaller mines have been consolidated into a small number of larger holdings. By 2001, 67 million troy ounces of gold have been mined from the Porcupine area, making it by far the largest gold rush in terms of actual gold produced. For comparison, the well-known Klondike Gold Rush produced about 12 million troy ounces. The Porcupine rush, along with the Cobalt Silver Rush and Kirkland Lake Gold Rush, all in the early 20th century, drove most of the settlement