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Edward Hammond Hargraves: The Australian Gold Rush

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Edward Hammond Hargraves was a notable figure in Australian History. He was a gold rush prospector and his claim to fame was that he was said to have discovered gold in 1851, which initiated the start of the Australian Gold Rush. Edward Hargraves was born on the 7th October 1816 at Gosport, Hampshire, England to parents Elizabeth and John Edward Hargraves, a well-recognised lieutenant. He went to school at Brighton Grammar School but aspired to travel and explore. With this aspiration behind him, he set sail at the age of 14, and arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1832. Here he was hoping for a successful start to his future.
However, as the years passed, success seemed elusive. He tried his hand at many jobs but never really achieved in any of them. This included working on a property in Bathurst, gathering tortoise shell in the Torres Strait. He even purchased …show more content…

He was spreading his wings and hoping he would find riches in America. Yet the tale continued in a similar vein, and he found no luck in prospecting in California. Though his success was not much, Hargraves certainly was not one to give up and with his perseverance, He returned to Sydney in January 1851. His plan was to win a fortune not by mining but by claiming a government reward for finding the first gold in Australia. On his way to the Wellington area he saw promising samples at Guyong and, with the assistance of a man by the name of John Lister, found five specks of gold in Lewis Ponds Creek. In the next weeks, he travelled through most of that area with some success. His campaign depended on finding gold rich deposits and knowing he was unable to do this alone, he enlisted the help of Lister and other recruits, to continue the search, teaching those panning techniques and other methods that he had learnt during his time in

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