Description:
Ballarat, in the British colony of Victoria, Australia, burst into life as an instant city in 1851, following the discovery of gold. Adventurous men and women from all over the world descended on Ballarat in the 1850s, feverishly attacking the sticky clay at Golden Point. The diggers followed the gold underground, along the course of the ancient rivers, buried by the volcanic eruptions of Mounts Warrenheip and Buninyong. On the flat, 30,000 diggers collected into small cooperatives of “mates” and desperately searched for their personal Eldorado.From the first discoveries in 1851, relations between the miners and the police sent to administer the goldfields were uneasy. The government attempted to collect a monthly license fee for the right to search for gold, but the tax conferred no rights, and licenses were inspected at the point of a bayonet. The more outspoken miners, schooled in the ways of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, led a movement to protest against the gold license. The cry of “No taxation without representation” was raised, echoing the rhetoric of the American Revolution and the Chartist movement for democratic rights in Britain. [EXTRACT]
Description:
The discovery of gold at Ballarat in 1851 conferred incredible wealth on the community, the colony and the British Empire. Ballarat was literally a city 'built on gold'. However, the immigrants who made their fortunes from gold rarely indulged in conspicuous private displays of consumption. The exception was William Bailey. His Italianate mansion, completed in 1883, reflected his great success in speculative mining ventures in the Ballarat area.