The Golden Triangle
64Goldmines in Victoria
In Victoria a southern state of Australia there is an area unusually rich with gold quite close to our Capital city Melbourne.
Melbourne is built around Port Phillip Bay, with other major cities like Ballarat and Bendigo within an hour's drive inland from Melbourne.
Moliagul, between Bendigo and St Arnaud is famous as the site of the "welcome stranger" a single nugget found at Moliagul which weighed 69Kilos! Many others have been found since, but this was the biggest,
A lot of large nuggets probably remain at Moliagul. This is due to the problem metal detectors have registering signals correctly through the local ironstone.
Many of the goldmines in this part of Victoria produced tons of gold, with one mine alone producing more than 40 tonnes.
Moliagul was and still is an exciting place to find gold nuggets, and a friend of my father did just that for many years after retiring, and found quite a lot of gold around the area, enough to keep him and his girlfriend in a comfortable lifestyle.
Ballarat still has a working gold mine for tourists.
Mining near Walhalla
In Victoria the gold rush started in around 1850 and continued for more than 15 years, many declaring the end in 1866. Walhalla lasted till 1911.
Melbourne was to grow very rich from the goldrush, and many other "gold" cities like Ballarat and Bendigo had huge boosts to growth from all the mining activity in the golden triangle.
Walhalla is well to the south east of Ballarat and Bendigo, but the area was very rich, and returned many thousands of ounces of gold too. The mountain and river views in this gold town are spectacular, as it is nestled in the river valley surrounded by mountains, and the town is very narrow due to the very narrow valley it is in.
Daylight hours are severely curtailed in the winter as the sun does not rise till late and sets early behind the mountains. Some wonderful and almost unknown mines are scattered right throughout this area, and it has been my privilege to have searched for gold throughout many of them.
More gold.
Starting from Walhalla there is gold all the way around Melbourne and even in some of the suburbs.
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Comments
Thank you UK Wordsmith, I will be writing more on the subject soon.
I remember when a huge nugget was found just outside Bendigo, in the early 1990's I think. It was brought into our local bank branch under police guard and kept in the safe overnight. Then left for Melbourne. Was quite big, just smaller than a football. It was found near Inglewood I think just north of Bendigo.
Thanks Jewels, I recall a large nugget from there, I will look it up and include it in the hub, great stuff!
you are Lucky for mining and searching thre :)If only I can come there... Thanks dear for the nice hub.
Earnestshub, Nice Hub you stirred up some memories for me as well. I can remember as a kid going out the back of Sabstepol in the mullock heaps and looking for left over scraps of gold.
Gold panning is fun in my neck of the woods. We make a fun habit of creek panning.
Hi, Earnest, if you're not careful you'll start a gold rush!
So all those stories on animal planet with those poisonous snakes were made up to discourage the rest of us from moving to Australia to get gold in them there hills.
Cool article about Australian gold rush... learned some cool stuff today.
Thank you JonTutor! Glad you found it. I have quite a few more of these, and more coming.
earnest...I'm a weekend prospector and have worked many creeks in North Carolina....often spending more for gas than the gold was worth monetarily....but the fun was worth far more.....now send me some rich dirt to pan.
We do have some rich dirt, but like America, most of it is not easy to find. Inside the BB Quartz was the richest ore I have ever seen personally, but an old friend of my Dad's still lives off the gold that he finds with panning and a gold detector for nuggets....
earnest....now I know I'm coming to Australia....finding gold....visiting you, Deb and Peter.....what an adventure that'd be. Think I could find enough gold to pay for the trip??? What kind of detectors are most successful down there?
R.Blue, there are organized inland trips that are very productive. 19 people on two of these trips found 19 oz of gold between them.
As for detectos, the Minelab GPX4500 hooked up to the 14" eliptical mono Gold Stalker from Coiltekis the go!
I always wondered why Melbourne developed into the great city it now is. Well explained!
It is amazing what was built by the gold rush. Melbourne and most of the larger cities in Victoria!
Hi, We have our own golden triangle in India...but that's more of a tourists circuit. :)
Thanks cashmere, I will take a look.
UK Wordsmith says:
5 months ago
An interesting and well written history lesson, Earnest. Thank you.