Australian gold rushes Australian gold rushes During the Australian gold rushes, significant numbers of workers (both from other areas within Australia and from overseas) relocated to areas in which gold had been discovered. A number of gold finds occurred in Australia prior to 1851, but only the gold found from 1851 onwards created gold rushes. This is mainly because, prior to 1851, the colonial government of New South Wales (Victoria did not become a separate colony until 1 July 1851) had suppressed news of gold finds which it believed would reduce the workforce and destabilise the economy. After the California Gold Rush began
Queen Charlottes Gold Rush Office, which in 1853 appointed Vancouver Island Governor James Douglas as governor of a new Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Colonial status arrived, however, long after the rush was over. The Queen Charlotte Colony, which effectively existed on paper only since the governor's power was barely exercised in the archipelago, was quietly absorbed into the Colony of British Columbia in 1863. Queen Charlottes Gold Rush The Queen Charlottes Gold Rush was a gold rush in the southern Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) of what is now the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 1851. The rush was touched