Stock ID #174102 Gold Fields Statistics, 1862. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by His Excellency's Command [together with] Mining within Camp Reserve. Rushworth. Gold Fields Act. Order in Council.
Gold Fields Statistics, 1862. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by His Excellency's Command [together with] Mining within Camp Reserve. Rushworth. Gold Fields Act. Order in Council.

Gold Fields Statistics, 1862. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by His Excellency's Command [together with] Mining within Camp Reserve. Rushworth. Gold Fields Act. Order in Council.

Melbourne. John Ferres, Government Printer. 1863. Stock ID #174102

Two Victorian Parliamentary Reports, 18 + 2pp, 31.5 x 20cm bound into modern thin grained card wrappers in very good condition.

The first Report tables detailed statistical summaries for the lucrative Victorian gold fields and the gold-boom towns of Ballarat, Beechworth, Sandhurst [Bendigo], Maryborough, Castlemaine and Ararat in 1862-3, ten years after the first discovery of gold. The first Report is prepared by the then Secretary of Mines, Robert Brough Smyth. "Primarily responsible to the mining committee, he issued instructions to mining surveyors, compiled statistics and data to prevent the 'useless movements from place to place' of prospectors and obtained details of gold finds and types of digging machinery." (ADB). The Report includes three pages of tables detailing the mining population by "European" and "Chinese". Brough Smyth went on to write the compendious "The Gold Fields and Mineral Districts of Victoria" and later "The Aborigines of Victoria" (1878), which "arose from his efforts to gather information and artefacts of Victorian Aboriginal cultures at a time when their vestiges were fast disappearing." (ADB). The second single page Report outlines mining operations authorised within the Camp Reserve, Mount Rushworth, the whole to be overseen by the prominent jurist George Samuel Evans.

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Price: $225.00 AU

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