Australian History

Prospecting Australia

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LOL . I have checked over and will accept 1 of 2 answers, as Jervis Bay was included ,but 15 is a few more than I counted
 
Edward Hargraves was originally credited as the first to find gold in Australia (12/02/1851 - although now widely accepted gold was found prior to this date) & given a 10,000 reward for claiming it. After two enquiries, the first upholding Hargraves as the finder, which two men were later credited with the find & discovering the first goldfield?
 
Hargraves would later downplay the fact that John Lister led him to the place of discovery and neglected to mention this fact in his autobiography. He also neglected to state that his initial trip back to Sydney was based on a few worthless specs of gold or that the first payable gold (two nuggets) was subsequently found on April 7th 1851 by John Listed and William Tom.
 
Correct - Edward Hammond Hargraves (October 7, 18161891) was 34 years old when he discovered gold at Bathurst. He was born at Gosport, Hampshire, England and was known to have worked in many jobs such as a sailor, a farmer a hotel manager and a shipping agent. He was not successful at any of these jobs. Hargraves went to California during the California Gold Rush to try to make some money and again failed. He realised that the goldfields of California looked very much like some areas of New South Wales (the Macquarie Valley) which inspired him to return to Australia to prove gold could be found here.

On February 12, 1851, Hargraves found gold near Bathurst, at Summer Hills Creek, he called the goldfield Ophir, named after the Biblical city, and the Ophir Township was later established there. He was accompanied on his prospecting expedition by John Hardman Lister and James Tom, but as soon as Hargraves found gold he went to Sydney alone.

He announced his discovery and claimed a 10,000 reward for being the first person to find gold and claim it. He was also appointed Commissioner for Crown Land and the Victorian Government paid him 5 000. He only claimed 2 381 before the funds were frozen after James Tom protested. An enquiry was held in 1853 which upheld that Hargraves was the first to discover a goldfield. Shortly before his death in 1891 a second enquiry found that John Lister and James Tom had discovered the first goldfield. Hargraves was never a gold miner and instead made money from writing and lecturing about the Australian goldfields.
http://www.australianhistory.org/edward-hargraves

In reference to earlier gold finds:
Early Australian Gold Finds - The beginnings and first discovery

Although gold had been rumoured to have been found in Australia as early as 1814, the first gold fields did not appear until thirty years later. Gold discoveries were not considered blessings in the pre 1850s Australian convict society as the authorities believed gold fever could potentially cause anarchy in the small fledgling British colonies.

Most finds were kept very quiet as most finders soon found themselves accused of theft and punished violently for their trouble. As the society was predominantly criminals and convicts, this story was easier to believe than the idea that these people were just picking it up in the bush.

However, many of these people were hushed up and punished for another reason. Farmers, wealthy land owners and the authorities were afraid that if word got around that gold had been found then many of their lowly paid workers and labourers would leave their jobs.
http://www.goldoz.com.au/early_australian_gold_finds.0.html
 
Sprigg was sent by the South Australian government during 1946 to inspect abandoned mines in the Ediacaran Hills, to ascertain whether old mines could be reworked profitably using new technologies. When he discovered the fossils, apparently while eating his lunch, he realised that these fossils were very ancient, either of Early Cambrian, or possibly even of Precambrian age. He submitted a paper to the journal Nature, but it was refused. He travelled to London and presented his findings to the 1948 International Geological Congress, but failed to excite either interest or belief.[16] Subsequent work by Prof Martin Glaessner at the University of Adelaide demonstrated that they were indeed of latest Precambrian age. Although Precambrian animal fossils had been reported before, they had not been accepted universally as organic. This discovery resulted ultimately in the definition during 2004 of the Ediacaran Period, the first new geological period created in more than one hundred years.
 
Correct Duck.

For almost a century, since the time of Charles Darwin, scientists had been puzzled by an evolutionary anomalythat 600 million years ago complex life-forms of an improbable variety had suddenly burst forth on earth (the famous Cambrian explosion), but without any evidence of earlier, simpler forms that might have paved the way for such an event. Sprigg had just found that missing link, a piece of rock swimming in delicate pre-Cambrian fossils. He was looking, in effect, at the dawn of visible lifeat something no one had ever seen before or ever expected to see. It was a moment of supreme geological significance. And if he had sat anywhere elseanywhere at all in the infinite baking expanse that is the Australian outbackit would not have been made, certainly not then, possibly not ever. Thats the thing about Australia, you see. It teems with interesting stuff, but at the same time its so vast and empty and forbidding that it generally takes a remarkable stroke of luck to find it
 
Here's an easy one..

What are the names of the people who first discovered signs of gold in Australia's largest gold mine, and how did they happen to notice these signs, or rather what caused them to?
 

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