Book review: "Gold" by Matt Murphy

June 5, 2025

There are two things that everyone knows about the discovery of gold in Australia - the location of the first gold discovery and that Edward Hargraves was the discoverer. Wrong on both counts, despite the claim by many towns and localities to be where the magic metal first appeared - along the Fish River near Oberon, at Ophir north of Bathurst, at Hill End, at Grenfell, at any place with quartz and a stream, ...

This book gives an excellent history of the discovery of gold in New South Wales (it was happening in Victoria at about the same time) and follows the "gold rushes" as desperate miners abandoned jobs and headed for the places where riches were to be made. Many of the rushers were totally unprepared for the weather conditions they might face (ever slept in a tent in Oberon in July without warm clothing?), the equipment needed (very few people found gold lying on the ground) or the amount of hard work necessary to actually swing a pick and find gold inside rocks. (And you had to buy the pick and panning dish from someone.)

Yes, there were those who made a lot of money, but apart from the very rare miner who happened to be extremely lucky, most of the money was made by the agents who bought and sold the gold and the merchants who sold mining equipment, food, clothing and the other necessities of life. Even miners who found significant amounts of gold rarely came out of the experience with more money than it had cost them.

And what of Edward Hargraves. Well, it turns out that he was a grifter with an inordinate ability to have people believe in him and support him. His traditional history is a masterpiece of PR and self aggrandisement, and he managed to create a legend with little basis in reality.

Australia is the third biggest gold producing country in the world (although now we mine it in tonnes rather than ounces) and this book is an excellent and well researched story of how it all began. If you want to study the subject further, there is a ten page bibliography at the back of the book that could keep you occupied for a very long time.

Highly recommended.

There is a copy of the book in the Oberon library. The author gave a talk about the book at the library on May 15.

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How long did a rush last. The photo below shows the remains of the O'Brien mine at Grenfell. This was one of the largest concentrated gold finds in NSW, yielding 129,207 ounces of gold over the life of the mine (worth $A670,289,738 at the trading price on the day this review was written). The gold was discovered in 1866, mining started in 1888 and it was all over three years later in 1891 and the miners went back to being farmers.

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