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
Klondike Gold Rush people tried to reach the Klondike goldfields, of whom only around 30,000 to 40,000 eventually did. It formed the height of the Klondike gold rush from the summer of 1897 until the summer of 1898. It began on July 15, 1897, in San Francisco and was spurred further two days later in Seattle, when the first of the early prospectors returned from the Klondike, bringing with them large amounts of gold on the ships "Excelsior" and "Portland". The press reported that a total of $1,139,000 (equivalent to $1,000 million at 2010 prices) had been brought in by these ships, although