Gold Discovery in Bendigo

Bendigo Victoria

It is generaly acknowledged that Mrs John Kennedy and Mrs Patrick Farrell, wives of workmen on the Ravenswood run, found gold at ‘The Rocks’ - now an identified location that can be visited at the junction of Bendigo Creek and Maple Street. The discoverers are honored nearby in Golden Square through a steel sculpture to our pioneer women, erected 150 years later in 2001.

The name of the creek that subsequently gave its name to the goldfield and township is widely believed to derive from an employee of the sheep run who was handy with his fists and nicknamed “Bendigo” after the Nottingham prize-fighter William ‘Bendigo’ Thompson (his nickname having been corrupted from the biblical ‘Abednego’). The central area of the field was named Sandhurst in the early 1850s but this was never popular with the original miners. The publicity in Europe in 1851-2 was about the Bendigo goldfields and many overseas investors did not connect Sandhurst with a goldfield. ( In the early 1890s as part of a drive to attract outside capital, pressure was exerted on the City Council to revert to the original name. A poll was held, a large majority favored the change and Bendigo again became the official name of the city).

The first ‘rush’ had taken place in November 1851 when miners at Castlemaine (Forest Creek) heard of the new discovery. Alluvial gold was found in the area of its first discovery (present day Golden Square) and then the miners followed the gold down the creek to what is now Epsom and up the creek to the present suburb of Kangaroo Flat. Further discoveries were soon made in the tributary creeks at Eaglehawk and Diamond Hill.

As a result of the rush of people to the area, the Gold Commissioner’s Office, the Police Barracks and the courts were erected on Camp Hill, now the present Rosalind Park in central Bendigo. The “diggers”, as the miners were called, numbered as high as thirty thousand and came from all over the world; from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland – along with Germans, Italians, Swiss, French and Americans. The Chinese population reached many thousands in the early gold rush period but their numbers dropped rapidly as the nineteenth century progressed. The Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo celebrates the contribution of the Chinese to the goldmining, cultural and commercial life of the growing city.

With the discovery of gold, Gold Commissioners were appointed in 1852 to administer Victorian colonial law and, from the Government Camp, Commissioner Panton dealt with matters chiefly arising from the Gold License. In addition to the imposition of the gold license of thirty shillings a month the diggers also objected to the method of collection by the police of the time. Between June and August 1853, Bendigo diggers took to wearing a red ribbon as a symbol of their objection to the license and to arbitrary government. On August 28th 1853, ten thousand diggers marched on the government camp and offered ten shillings for their September license; Commissioners Panton and Wright could not accept this gesture but did not collect licenses for September. The day passed without anger or bloodshed. The diggers were eventually to succeed in having the license replaced by a Miner’s Right.

The angry Red Ribbon protests by miners against the goldfields authorities in 1853 were orderly by comparison with the later Eureka episode at Ballarat. However, the earlier Red Ribbon Movement on the Bendigo field is increasingly viewed as being significant in the development of the democratic process in Australia.

Source: www.bendigohistory.com