The horses whinnied restlessly as the coachman, Jim Lowe, prepared their harnesses. Nearby, hanging at the entrance of the Cobb & Co booking office, this lantern beamed brightly like a beacon in the pre-dawn darkness. The passengers had been called for at their lodgings half an hour before – their coach was ready to make […]
Following the frenzied days of the gold rushes, which swept across various parts of New South Wales and Victoria between the 1850’s and the 1870’s, there was an influx of Chinese miners from these areas to Holbrook, then known as Germanton. A vast number of these men sought to find their fortune in the abandoned […]
In the 2004 book Time gentlemen, please!: Maitland’s Hotels Past & Present, a redrawn copy of this old undated plan of West Maitland was published, with an estimate that it was drawn around, or at least represents, the year 1858. But what evidence places it in the 1850s? For the Wonnarua people, the area depicted […]
Alfred William Eustace (1820-1907) was born in England and came to Australia with his wife Sarah and children in 1851. Among his paintings he recorded the first paddle steamer to arrive at Albury in 1855, as well as a painting of the Woolshed gold rush, one of only two known paintings of this gold field. […]
This enchanting heart-shaped gold nugget has little monetary value today but its unearthing at Ophir, near Orange, in April 1851 spurred gold fever far and wide. It became the first payable gold in Australia and commenced the nation’s historic gold rush era. The gold rush transformed many aspects of life in the Central West, and […]
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